How We Accidentally Rode Without a Valid Ticket in Prague — Even Though We Had One

On our second day in Prague we were looking for a ticket machine. We needed two all-day tickets and one 90-minute ticket. We knew SMS tickets were an option, but we thought: “What if our phones die or break? We’d have no proof of purchase.” So we went with the good old paper kind. 🎫

We found a machine somewhere near a metro entrance, bought what we needed, and headed to the bus that was supposed to take us to the Rudolfinum.

Prague streets and trams

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The bus arrived and we got on. Of course we wanted to validate our tickets right away. But what a surprise awaited us…

I slipped my ticket into the validator — silence. Nothing happened! 🤯 The bus started moving and we still hadn’t validated anything. My friend ran to the back to try the second machine — nothing. My husband went all the way to the front for the third one — also nothing. Not a single one of the three validators would accept our tickets.

So my husband went to talk to the driver, who had long since pulled away from the stop. He explained our problem, and do you know what the driver said? Apparently we had tickets in the “wrong format.” He didn’t really want to deal with us — he was probably running behind schedule. 🙄

At that moment my mind immediately went to those Prague YouTube channels and Janek Rubeš. 🙉 I told my husband: “Wait — did we buy these from some dodgy machine?!” We were completely stressed and baffled.

We kept trying, and in the meantime the bus passed two more stops. A very kind older lady had been watching us and said we should just stay on, that she’d vouch for us to any inspector. She was so sweet — but I’d rather get off than take that chance. An inspector would not have been as understanding. 🛑

So we got off at the next stop. We decided to try boarding the next bus, which came about half a minute later, and attempt to validate the tickets one more time. Nervous wrecks, we boarded the bus. And guess what? The ticket went through just fine! We made it to the Rudolfinum — but that stress is something we never want to repeat. 🙈

Next time we’ll just get SMS tickets and hope nothing happens to our phones. Or we’ll send the tickets to each other by text. We know you can also pay by card directly on board, but we’ve seen those machines out of order plenty of times too — and tourists ended up riding without a valid ticket even though they genuinely tried to pay. 🤦‍♀️

Has anything like this ever happened to you in Prague? How do you usually sort out your tickets?