Vintage Bus Adventure And Horse-Girl Bounding

31 Oct, 2025

The year of 2025 was quite eventful when it comes to public transport in Prague, the capital of Czech republic. We celebrated 100 years of buses in the city with a nice June parade of them, and then in October it was 150 years of public transport in general, starting with a privately owned horse-drawn carriage services. I couldn't afford to miss a good opportunity to snap photos of very cute vehicles, so I've built a habit of stalking the page of the public transport provider. And that's how I discovered an event made in collaboration to celebrate 120 years (next year) of Velká Chuchle horse track. A lot of round, above 100 years events.

I told my dad about this. We watch the big steeple chase cross country horse race every year, so I thought it would be fun to try watching a horse race (albeit not a steeplechase) for realsies. And dad did agree.

## Crafting our fancy

I've always associated horses with rich people and good videogames. I'm surely not the only one, after all, a lot of movie princesses had horses. Horse racing was quite the aristocratic entertainment in Britain for a while and I'm sure a lot of countries did get inspired by British customs. When the big race is broadcasted on TV, there's always segment on the pretty and fancy hats you can see in the audience. So, I had to have a fancy hat, as well.

I have this straw hat that I enjoy wearing. It's a little too big for me, but it's so basic looking that it's really easy to customize it to go with any dress or outfit you want. So, I knew I wanted to do some diy decorating. Now, since I've been playing Umamusume for a good while, I thought, wouldn't it be funny to get inspired by one of the umas? I had the perfect retro looking green coat/dress, so I settled on Satono Diamond.

I bought a wide and narrow dark green ribbon, a slightly lighter green ribbon with gold trim, and a very wide black lace (and a slightly narrowed black lace). I also came across golden hairclips in the fabrics store, so I knew those would be perfect. And I did also buy a transparent fabric as I could see that Satono Diamond's hair decoration has some white/transparent fabric thing going on.

I used the wide green ribbon as the base decoration of the hat. On top of that one I put the green-gold one. The wide ribbon was also used to make a big bow for the back. On top of the green, I put the narrower black lace. Then I wanted to have something wavy, just like Satono Diamond. So, I took the wide lace - it had periodic holes on top - and I threaded the narrow green ribbon through them and tied the lace around the hat. I adjusted the fold so that it was only on one side of the hat. I think this looked fancy enough already, but I wanted to include more gold. My mom let me borrow a golden butterfly and a white-gold flower. I repurposed a maroon flower I had on the hat before. The marron went well with the dark green. And that was my hat!

Dad and I in our fancy get up.

I had some bits of the green-gold ribbon left, so my mom made a little bow for my dad, with a green bird on top, so we could match and be cute. We were perhaps a bit too cute. A lottery company chose us to conduct an interview with us for their Instagram. That was quite funny. My dad was very shy, and I was very glad I did study the race programme carefully.

## The roundness of the 60s

The vintage bus in question was a Škoda 706 RTO MTZ. These kinds of buses were the main buses in the 60s. You can probably tell - they're very cute and round! Apparently, people used to call them “cucumbers”, “eggs” or “knödels” (due to the shape). The bus we went with has a symbolic evidence number of 4781, which is a reference to the original types of the bus back in the day. It used to be a city public transport bus in Jihlava, in 1978 it was sold and used as a changing room for farmers. In the 90s someone bought the bus thinking it would make for a perfect retro ride in few years, so they repaired it and made it look nice. They couldn't make the retro rides real in Jihlava, so it eventually got sold to Prague. They are quite rare, the ones in good condition at least.

This kind of bus came in four types - for city transport, for export (like the ordinary city transport one, but customized to suit the countries' needs), city-to-city one and lastly a one for international travel (to get to the beaches!). A fun fact I can offer is that one of the international ones was purchased by a cheese company and they rebuilt it into a mobile cheese store “Madetka”. That was in 2018. Not sure if it's still operational.

Škoda 706 RTO MTZ.

The bus departed from Jiráskovo náměstí to the racecourse. It was so windy that day, so I'm glad I listened to dad and sew a ribbon to tie it. The seats were quite comfortable, for an old bus at that. I think there were about 8 of us going. We got the race programme to study and a coupon for a sparkling wine at the racecourse. The bus ride was very retro, very bumpy. It was so impressive how the driver handled the device. Looking from the window I could see people smiling at the old bus, taking photos sometimes. Of course, you don't see something as nice every day. I thought it was very sweet that this little thing made people smile. Behind dad and I, there was a lady with her son. They were very loud (mostly the mom) but I did really enjoy how the mom treated the kid well. She let him tell her things like where were going and what road will we take.

## Sparkly wine seeking

Velká Chuchle, the finish line.

When we arrived, there was a long line at the cash desk. Thankfully, I had my tickets ready. There were gates with a barcode reader, and we did sucessfuly get in, no troubles at all. When we got inside, it was so big. A lot of grass. A lot of space. So, I thought, where do we go? We did see, in the distance, a horse machine for simulating horse racing. Looked fun to try, but we weren't courageous enough (and perhaps fit enough). I thought about what to do. We had the coupons, so perhaps a good plan would be to look around and see where we can get the wine and then maybe we would figure out where to stand/sit? So we did that.

We did just miss the first race, but we did see them go through the finish line. There were stands with alcohol, with potato crisps, with hats (in case a wind blew it off perhaps). We did see some fast-food places - hamburgers and sausages, that kind of thing. The coupon said restaurant, so we were on the lookout for something restaurant-y looking. We came across this small gate, where the trophies were displayed. The horses that just finished the race were in as well, walking in a circle. Eventually we did figure out that it is the winners who are showing off. This gate was close to the paddock, where the second race’s horses were showing off. The restaurant was said to be above the paddock, so I made dad and I go closer to the horses. We did not find the restaurant there, but the horses were very cute. I liked this one brown horse that had a yellow blanket with a star. Very confident looking horse! And she ended up winning the upcoming race.

Dally Star, the winner of 2nd race.

There was a building connected to the podium with stairs next to it. When we went upstairs, we found the restaurant that we wanted. Getting in and out was a battle, so many people around, everyone stuck in the door. Somehow, we did get in and we found the bar. Funnily enough, the bar was next to the back door that was completely empty, easy to get in and out. So, for the subsequent visits, we went in by the back door. We did get our sparkling wine in fancy looking plastic cups that I did get to keep.

## Informed horse-betting

When I told dad about the horse race, he was all like, we should bet on one horse! I wouldn't mind betting one thousand, he said. I think betting that much is too much, and I also thought he was just being silly. But we did look around to see where are the places for the bets. They were all over, on every corner of the building, and outside too. There were many people all around them. We agreed that we would bet on the main race later that day.

I did do my homework. I found the horse listing, and I clicked through all of them to see what their past career was like. I don't really understand horses, but as I mentioned earlier, I do play a bit of Umamusume. I know that a horse needs a good aptitude for a distance. And that's exactly what you can see in the programme (or on the websites).

Every horse has their parents and grandparents listed, with a country of origin. There is the owner, the trainer, the colour of the horse and the jockey. And then there are the recent races listed with the racecourse, type of race, category of race, distance, jockey, jockey's weight (I think), the placing, the distances between the racers, the odds and the name and time of the winner of the race. So, you can study it thoroughly. What I did was look at the distance of the race (3200 m) and I looked at the placements of the horses at races 2800–3200 m. I really liked Grand Canyon, he had only 3 races in his career at this time, yet he only did 3200 m, so I knew he's capable. His places also were 3rd – 1st – 2nd. The races were of IV. category and the one that we were betting on was a I. grade, but I really liked Grand Canyon. I did also like Vévoda. He's an experienced horse, he does a lot of races of different distances, and he wins a lot. Having two horses to bet on we decided to put 500 and 500 on both of them.¹

Now, it was time for lunch. We looked around to see what we can go have for food. Dad didn't fancy anything, and I didn't need anything. So, we did get some mead. It was raining at the time, and we noticed there is a betting place in a car and because it was raining it was empty. We haven't betted before, so we wanted to ask how stuff works, so we took the opportunity. The bookmaker was an older guy, he gave us a booklet with the odds for every race and also some commentary from the bookmakers about the quality and behaviour of some of the horses for the bigger (higher category) races. Very neat! We found out that you can bet on a win, or you can bet for placing - so, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5. I was quite surprised that it is this easy? The race had 12 horses, so you just needed the horse to be slightly better than the half. I also noticed that Vévoda was one of the three favourites - unsurprisingly, given his track record. We ended up betting that Vévoda would get 1-2 and for Grand Canyon, given he's a beginner, we betted 1-3. I did believe in him a little too much.

We went to the podium to sit. We went to the first floor so we would have a good view. We couldn't see where the starting gates were, probably behind the TV. We did have a good view of the TV and the finish line. Dad and I were speculating that the horses will probably do two laps (and they did). The first time they went by the finish line, everything was great! Vévoda was a front running horse, so he was in front - and he had a decent distance from the second horse I'd say. Grand Canyon was, like, sixth perhaps? He could do a third place, I felt like, the next round. Then we lost the sight of them and when they reemerged, I was very perplexed! Vévoda was second and Grand Canyon, I didn't see him. A lot of people were cheering for Vévoda, but it didn't help in the last spur. We did win, though. But, a shame. Eventually I found out that Grand Canyon was in the penultimate place. Oh well! I blame the rain, I was not counting with the effect of rain when doing my betting calculations.

A second before the finish, with Vévoda in the second (11).

## Cheesy conclusion

We ended up winning 1 925 czech crowns. We bet 500 twice, so the profit was 925 czech crowns, which is pretty cool. We celebrated with some more mead. The days after my dad keeps talking about how he will just sell the workplace building and become a professional horse better, because it has a way better interest than work. What a silly dad.

Visiting a horse racecourse was quite cool. I did end up having similar feelings as I did when I went to my first ever concert a year ago. It would have been better to watch on TV, I suppose. On TV you can notice when someone falls over, and you can see them the whole race. When we were there, we basically just saw the finish line. There was the TV you could watch, but it was quite far as well, I was too hard of seeing to enjoy it properly from the TV. I tried using binoculars, which was fun, but then everyone around me had way bigger ones. I would like to go again, perhaps with my significant other, however if I ever get to go to the cross-country steeple chase, I'll have to watch the stream back, for sure.

The journey back home was very crowded. It was not as comfortable as the vintage bus, not at all. We were standing sandwiched in a regular bus. There were some teen boys talking about teen boy things. They did mention McDonalds, so dad got hungry for some McDonalds. I didn't mind, it was on the way. I felt very bad for this girl on the bus with us. She was so tiny. No idea how old she might have been, but she was so tiny. I only heard her, didn't see her for half the ride. She did survive, a brave girl.

Dad and I weren't expecting a lot of crowds as it was a Sunday. Nobody goes out on Sunday, right? Seems like we were wrong. It was understandable that the people from the racecourse would want to leave as well, that was fine. But on the way to Prague, it was quite crowded too. Very interesting. When we got to the McDonalds, it was super crowded. Almost no place to sit. We did order some chicken-based burger labelled as new. We did not notice that it had a fried cheese inside. Big mistake. For dad. He was so full so fast. Apparently, we chose to go to McDonalds when there's a cheese season that's very popular. I suppose that's why there were so many crowds. Everyone loves some cheese.

I was taking photos with my analogue cameras. I wonder if they will work out. I wonder when I'll go horse-betting-seeing again. Perhaps in the spring, I'll enjoy the only G3 race we have here.

#diy #english #travel