PHOTO OF THE DAY 12/10

Petrikov, Czech Republic

I couldn't understand a thing.

Everyone at the table was speaking a language foreign to me. Everyone at the table knew I was foreign to them. I tried to make out their words—and sometimes I did, but after awhile it all just became a mumbled blur, and I would find myself looking up at what looked like about a thousand little shot-sized bottles of alcohol lined up on the wooden shelves along the pub's backwall. Occasionally my girlfriend would pause in her conversation and try to explain what they were talking about, to which I would give her an understanding nod, a half-hearted smile to go along with it, and sip my beer. And before too long, I would be sitting there in my own separate world again, alienated and alone, still sipping my beer and staring at the little bottles on the wall.

When I got up to use the restroom, or as they call the WC, nobody at the table paid much interest. I was after all, only going to take a leak. And it wasn't like I was anticipating anything more than that either. Perhaps the pub's restroom would be dirty or have a wet floor—most of them did, it seemed. Or maybe it would smell bad. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

But rather than reading Czech graffiti or simply staring at a tile-wall while I stood at the urinal, I found myself instead staring out of a window at a most peculiar scene—one I would not have thought up on my own.

Nobody at the table so much as blinked when I returned from the restroom, yet when I grabbed my camera and went back in for another visit, eyes suddenly began to dart in my direction. Eyebrows began to raise. Whispers amongst the table.

There would be questions when I returned—not that it mattered.

I was on my own, and had found my quest.