Rewrite
There is nothing inherently relaxing about foreign travel. I have never been on a lads weekend, but I’m all too acquainted with the downsides of holiday excess. When I was younger, my typical city break would involve getting as wasted as possible on the first night, then spending the following day wandering around Europe’s finest galleries and heritage sites on the verge of passing out. I associate these trips not with personal growth or self-discovery, but mild diarrhoea. Instead of returning from them well-rested and ready to tackle the week ahead, I was always anxious, regretful, and terrified to check my bank balance.
Since then, I have become more wholesome – even smug – in how I spend time abroad, swapping cigarettes for smoothies and late-night boozing for early morning runs. So, when it was pitched to me, I was down for the idea of a lad’s holiday focused on “connection, personal growth, and breaking down societal expectations of male behaviour”. The trip was a partnership between travel company First Choice and Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), a suicide prevention charity (so it was #gifted), and aimed at empowering men to choose experiences they genuinely enjoy, rather than feeling drained and overwhelmed after days of non-stop partying. I have always felt a little ambiguous about mental health messaging aimed at men, partly because I am rarely the kind of man who is being targeted: a lot of it is about encouraging people to talk about their feelings, and as someone who regularly sends podcast-length voice notes about the darkest recesses of my inner life, this has never been something I struggle with – if anything, I might benefit from a campaign encouraging me to #ShutTheFuckUp. But CALM does good, important work, so I went to Prague with an open heart.
The idea was that we would be doing activities that you wouldn’t normally associate with lads holiday, and the itinerary certainly delivered on that front. On the first night, we – myself, three other journalists and four content creators – went to Folklore Dinner, an immersive dining experience in a cottage on the outskirts of the city. It was like a central European version of the below-deck scene in Titanic: there was a live violin band and dancers dressed in traditional Czech dress (I assume) – white shirts and red waistcoats for the men; purple skirts and hair ribbons for the women. When they asked for volunteers, I got up on stage and took part in a kind of sword dance, which involved progressing through a circle and thwacking a brown stick against the brown stick of the person behind you. It wasn’t very complicated, but I still managed to fuck it up: at one point I might have found this embarassing, but the new me – on a quest for personal growth and laughing in the face of societal expectations – cared not a jot.
The following morning, we went on a WW2 history walking tour, and then, that evening, we drove an hour out into the countryside for a brewery tour and a second immersive dining experience: this one had a Medieval theme and involved snakes, fire juggling, simulated sword fights, and some kind of jester who kept sneaking up behind people and shrieking at them (he got me good on more than one occasion.) This took place on the grounds of the sinister Dětenice castle: there were loads of creepy dolls, the walls were plastered with antlers and the ballroom featured a taxidermy tiger, his face frozen in a roar. I don’t normally approve of shooting animals and displaying their bodies as trophies, but this tiger presumably met his fate several hundred years ago, so maybe it’s fine.
There was a beer pouring session planned the following afternoon, but I don’t really like beer and I had some work to do, so I skipped it. I justified this on the grounds that getting away and having some time to yourself is an essential component of any mental health-conscious lads weekend – by ducking out of the trip, I was embodying its highest ideals. I went to a cafe in the Karlin area, which I discovered by Googling “what is the Williamsburg of Prague?” While only a short walk from the Old Town, the atmosphere in Karlin was dramatically different: quiet, relaxed, and cool in a very understated way. The centre of Prague is stunning – it’s easily one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to – but it can be oppressively busy. While acknowledging my complicity as a tourist myself, I sometimes find mass tourism kind of depressing, so I’m glad I got to see a different side to the city.
On our final night, we went to a concert in St Nicholas Church, which is right on Old Town Square. It was mostly instrumental organ music but every so often an opera singer would appear in an alcove and start belting away. The church itself was gorgeous, but I have to admit I wasn’t crazy about the concert, which had nothing to do with the quality of the music and everything to do with the fact that I am an uncultured philistine with an impoverished attention span – I felt like I was in a school assembly, but I’m sure my mum would have loved it. Later that evening, we went to a Czech tavern and ended up playing a raucous drinking game, the rules of which I would now struggle to explain at gunpoint. I hadn’t done this since I was at uni and it was really fun — maybe there’s something to be said for the traditional “lads holiday” activities after all; maybe there’s a place for unreconstructed alcohol consumption and immersive dining experiences.
Afterwards, we went to a place called Dog Bar, which, while disappointingly not canine-themed, was one of the strangest venues I’ve ever visited: a vast underground labyrinth of rooms with no music playing but a cinema screen showing season 3 of Skins, along with arcade games and several mounted displays of sex toys, some of which truly had me stumped as to their intended purpose. There was a boxing machine that I punched as hard as I could and got a better score than I expected. At the risk of reifying traditional ideals of masculinity, I found this pretty satisfying.
In the end, I’m not sure whether I succeeded in fostering any meaningful conversations or breaking down any social barriers. But the trip did make me realise that there’s something to be said for stepping out of your comfort zone and trying out experiences you wouldn’t normally consider – apart from anything, my Instagram story was popping. It also reaffirmed my belief that holidays are better when you’re not hungover all the time, and that being smugly fresh-faced is far more satisfying than being drunk.
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There is nothing inherently relaxing about foreign travel. I have never been on a lads weekend, but I’m all too acquainted with the downsides of holiday excess. When I was younger, my typical city break would involve getting as wasted as possible on the first night, then spending the following day wandering around Europe’s finest galleries and heritage sites on the verge of passing out. I associate these trips not with personal growth or self-discovery, but mild diarrhoea. Instead of returning from them well-rested and ready to tackle the week ahead, I was always anxious, regretful, and terrified to check my bank balance.
Since then, I have become more wholesome – even smug – in how I spend time abroad, swapping cigarettes for smoothies and late-night boozing for early morning runs. So, when it was pitched to me, I was down for the idea of a lad’s holiday focused on “connection, personal growth, and breaking down societal expectations of male behaviour”. The trip was a partnership between travel company First Choice and Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), a suicide prevention charity (so it was #gifted), and aimed at empowering men to choose experiences they genuinely enjoy, rather than feeling drained and overwhelmed after days of non-stop partying. I have always felt a little ambiguous about mental health messaging aimed at men, partly because I am rarely the kind of man who is being targeted: a lot of it is about encouraging people to talk about their feelings, and as someone who regularly sends podcast-length voice notes about the darkest recesses of my inner life, this has never been something I struggle with – if anything, I might benefit from a campaign encouraging me to #ShutTheFuckUp. But CALM does good, important work, so I went to Prague with an open heart.
The idea was that we would be doing activities that you wouldn’t normally associate with lads holiday, and the itinerary certainly delivered on that front. On the first night, we – myself, three other journalists and four content creators – went to Folklore Dinner, an immersive dining experience in a cottage on the outskirts of the city. It was like a central European version of the below-deck scene in Titanic: there was a live violin band and dancers dressed in traditional Czech dress (I assume) – white shirts and red waistcoats for the men; purple skirts and hair ribbons for the women. When they asked for volunteers, I got up on stage and took part in a kind of sword dance, which involved progressing through a circle and thwacking a brown stick against the brown stick of the person behind you. It wasn’t very complicated, but I still managed to fuck it up: at one point I might have found this embarassing, but the new me – on a quest for personal growth and laughing in the face of societal expectations – cared not a jot.
The following morning, we went on a WW2 history walking tour, and then, that evening, we drove an hour out into the countryside for a brewery tour and a second immersive dining experience: this one had a Medieval theme and involved snakes, fire juggling, simulated sword fights, and some kind of jester who kept sneaking up behind people and shrieking at them (he got me good on more than one occasion.) This took place on the grounds of the sinister Dětenice castle: there were loads of creepy dolls, the walls were plastered with antlers and the ballroom featured a taxidermy tiger, his face frozen in a roar. I don’t normally approve of shooting animals and displaying their bodies as trophies, but this tiger presumably met his fate several hundred years ago, so maybe it’s fine.
There was a beer pouring session planned the following afternoon, but I don’t really like beer and I had some work to do, so I skipped it. I justified this on the grounds that getting away and having some time to yourself is an essential component of any mental health-conscious lads weekend – by ducking out of the trip, I was embodying its highest ideals. I went to a cafe in the Karlin area, which I discovered by Googling “what is the Williamsburg of Prague?” While only a short walk from the Old Town, the atmosphere in Karlin was dramatically different: quiet, relaxed, and cool in a very understated way. The centre of Prague is stunning – it’s easily one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to – but it can be oppressively busy. While acknowledging my complicity as a tourist myself, I sometimes find mass tourism kind of depressing, so I’m glad I got to see a different side to the city.
On our final night, we went to a concert in St Nicholas Church, which is right on Old Town Square. It was mostly instrumental organ music but every so often an opera singer would appear in an alcove and start belting away. The church itself was gorgeous, but I have to admit I wasn’t crazy about the concert, which had nothing to do with the quality of the music and everything to do with the fact that I am an uncultured philistine with an impoverished attention span – I felt like I was in a school assembly, but I’m sure my mum would have loved it. Later that evening, we went to a Czech tavern and ended up playing a raucous drinking game, the rules of which I would now struggle to explain at gunpoint. I hadn’t done this since I was at uni and it was really fun — maybe there’s something to be said for the traditional “lads holiday” activities after all; maybe there’s a place for unreconstructed alcohol consumption and immersive dining experiences.
Afterwards, we went to a place called Dog Bar, which, while disappointingly not canine-themed, was one of the strangest venues I’ve ever visited: a vast underground labyrinth of rooms with no music playing but a cinema screen showing season 3 of Skins, along with arcade games and several mounted displays of sex toys, some of which truly had me stumped as to their intended purpose. There was a boxing machine that I punched as hard as I could and got a better score than I expected. At the risk of reifying traditional ideals of masculinity, I found this pretty satisfying.
In the end, I’m not sure whether I succeeded in fostering any meaningful conversations or breaking down any social barriers. But the trip did make me realise that there’s something to be said for stepping out of your comfort zone and trying out experiences you wouldn’t normally consider – apart from anything, my Instagram story was popping. It also reaffirmed my belief that holidays are better when you’re not hungover all the time, and that being smugly fresh-faced is far more satisfying than being drunk.
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