Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone:

Day 2 Without Running Water in the 21st Century.

I had just coughed, sneezed, hacked, hawked and spit my way through Day 5 of my Yearly Common Cold when the water went out in the building. I desperately wanted to wash every trace of rhinovirus from my fetid skin, so I turned on the shower. Drip, drip, fffsssssst. Nothing. Fuh. Kin. Ell. Suddenly the need to shower felt dire. My clammy skin started feeling itchier, and I imagined my rhinovirus reinvigorated and running rampant on my entire epidermis, teeming and multiplying and bashing into each other with tiny, infectious horns.

The wife had just called on her way home from work and she was hungry. I never know if she's going to come home hungry or grab something on the way home. Such is the mystery of my life. But I do know this: if She Who Must Be Obeyed gets hungry, She gets MEAN. So I managed to drizzle leftover water from the morning coffee pot into a cooking pot, add rice, and begin the boiling process. Fortunately I had some frozen, microwaveable Iceland Indian curries in the freezer, or I don't know what the fuck I would have done.

The Long Line For Water 

Nothing screams communism like a long line waiting for allotments of rare commodities. When a water pipe bursts somewhere down the road at 9 pm on a subzero night, the substance that covers two thirds of the Earth suddenly becomes as rare as a brain in a Republican White House. “Get some containers to fill with water! We're going out to get fresh drinking water!” She commanded. Apparently, She had done this before. We were not the only ones without water. The entire block was down at the end of the street gathered around a tanker truck with the words PITNÁ VODA (drinking water) painted on the side. We gathered a bunch of plastic containers and proceeded out into the cold, after a brief debate on whether or not the containers were clean. I saw drops of stagnant water on the bottom and squelched.

“I don't know...this doesn't look clean. Could be old bacteria,” squeaked my germ-addled brain.

“This ain't MEXICO! Let's go!” She prodded. No, I thought, it's Praha-Libeň, the rusty-dusty, moldy-oldy industrial suburb. What could be cleaner?

So we left. Halfway out the door she whirled around on me: “Go back and get a bucket!” She ordered. “Why?” I questioned, “Duh! Toilet!” She barked. Oh yeah. Even the toilets won't flush. How do people live like this? We dropped our plastic payload on the wet cobblestones and waited. There were people milling about the water tanker in desperate clusters. How can people in a European city run out of water in the 21st century? It was like we were suddenly thrust into an African village, with a UN aid truck dispensing water in the sub-Saharan desert. Only we were much colder. And much whiter. A woman in front of me fumbled with tiny glass jars until one of them hit the ground in an explosion of shards. She immediately started picking up the pieces of glass with her bare hands. I stifled the warning forming on my tongue. Maybe I wanted to see blood running on the cobblestones; the usual arcane thoughts crossing the mind of a bio-bag made up of flesh and 98% water.

My turn to fumble. There were two taps on the truck to serve about 20 or so people. The line was growing, but my turn came. I was trying to bend over and stand up the 5-liter plastic drinking water container while maneuvering the large black hose from the truck into position. I needed another hand. Suddenly the valve turned above me and the precious, life-giving, waste-removing water began to flow. All over my shoes and up my legs. I yelped and wrestled the hose into the container. I looked up and saw a grinning Czech man with his helpful hand on the water valve. The passive-aggressive fuck. Děkuji! I thanked him, pronouncing it more like dickweed. The wife asked the water truck driver about the situation and returned with the news: no water until the next morning. Maybe. He couldn't be sure. He was just the driver.

A Rude Awakening

8 am this morning, pounding and thumping on my ceiling. Great. Some more of that ubiquitous renovation that begins exactly at 8 am (7 am in East Berlin), continues for 30 minutes, then stops. I like to call it the Communist Rooster, the swaggering, proletarian cock which crows to announce the beginning of the dark new day, and the bane of my existence as a freelancer who craves sleep.

I threw the sheets off and splashed the drinking water from the 5-liter container into the coffee pot. The water was still off. After my coffee I ventured into the water closet to check on the toilet situation. The wife had already left to work before I woke up, and I wondered if she had any trouble hoisting that water bucket over the toilet to flush it in the morning. I opened the WC door. Mother of all creatures, great and small! It was like someone had slaughtered a water buffalo in there. Water all over the floor, pieces of TP everywhere, bucket half empty. I sympathize with you ladies. Y'all have to wrap your arms in TP every time y'all go to the loo. And hoisting a heavy bucket? Motherfuckit. I mopped up a bit and took my turn.

Libeň La Vida Loca

The drinking water should last for a few more hours, and the toilet bucket for one more flush. Before I went to bed, I managed to find a package of wet wipes in the bathroom, and that was my 'shower.' Since those little soapy baby wipes are about the size of a 20 dollar bill, and I am 6 foot five, 280 pounds, I had to use half the package just to clean my priority regions.

Day 2 of no running water, piles of dishes in the sink, wads of used baby wipes on the bathroom floor, mop, bucket, and a dead water buffalo in the WC. Yes, folks, we are indeed Libeň La Vida Loca over here. And paying cheaper rent always has its price. I just found out that the water won't be repaired until late in the afternoon. There's only one thing for me to do in these type of apocalyptic scenarios: go to the pub for pivo and smažený sýr.

We Don't Need No Stinking Bridges!

Cruising On 7 Prague Ferry Boats on the Vltava River

A thousand bursts of sunlight reflect off the Vltava's waves like paparazzi flashes amid the smooth gliding of swan starlets. I'm on the river with a beer in my hand and I'm reminded of my river hometown. There, millionaire douchebags sail up to the overpriced river bars. Here in Prague, a solitary ferry boat chugs up to the landing and I climb aboard.

There are 17 bridges spanning the Vltava River in Prague, but other than Chuck (Charles Bridge to the tourists), bridges are like. So boring. Fortunately, Prague also runs ferry boats across the river all throughout the city for those who don't feel like braving the tourist hordes on the Charles Bridge or risking their lives on the many decrepit and crumbling bridges in Prague.

I've lived in Prague off and on for more than 10 years and I'd never even heard of the river ferries. They don't seem to be mentioned in any guidebooks I've ever read, nor do they strive to be noticed in any way at all. Since I spend too much time on my pc and rarely get out like I used to, I decided to ride all 7 ferries in Prague over the last month. Because that's how I roll. Um, float.

So don your most ridiculous sailing attire, get your map app humming, and look for the word přívoz. Don't worry, there's also a nice blue square icon with a white slash through it. This is apparently the symbol for ferry.

P7: Pražská tržnice - Rohanský ostrov: Maiden Voyage

Prague river ferries are part of the Prague Integrated Transport (PIT). The acronym is much better in Czech. The same 32 CZK tram/metro/bus ticket you normally use works on the ferries. If you have a month ticket or daily pass, you can also use the ferries for free. If you don't, just buy a normal ticket on the boat. On certain ferries, the ride is free. You can also take your bike, your kids, your dog and your baggage. But don't do that shit, you selfish fuck. Choose only one of those things. My wide body needs to sit somewhere.

While waiting for the ferry to arrive at the dock, I wondered how a Prague ferryman would behave. Prague transport operators run the gamut from screaming mulletheads (buses) to homicidal maniacs (trams). I was half expecting either a morose Stygian ferryman or a pleasantly-soused rummy. I was surprised to find a jovial man with a blue-and-white striped shirt, 80s shades and beard stubble. He pointed to the rear of the small boat to a white, fake leather couch seat. He threw the stick forward and my wide ass plunked down on the seat. Zappa and Clapton songs cranked out of a solitary speaker as the cool breeze whipped off of the water. I almost expected to be offered a Mojito.

The P7 ferry crosses over to Karlín, with a third mystery stop at Štvanice Island. I have no idea how to get there. That's ok. There's not much there. Instead, disembark and carry out your orders on Rohanský Ostrov. Walk up the steps and veer to the right. Walk a few minutes until you arrive at a bunch of concrete slabs crafted into benches. Sidle up to the bar shack and order a craft beer. Another shack serves burgers and fries. Swing your head from left to right. If the coast is clear of hipsters, sip your beer and munch your burger in peace and relax. There are also plenty of places for the chilluns to run and swing around the place.

P1: Sedlec - Zámky and P2: Podhoří - V Podbabě

The farthest ferry boat trip from Central Prague is also the most fun: P1 from Sedlec to Zámky. The fastest way to Sedlec is an hourly train running from Nádraží Libeň to Sedlec. The trip only takes 10-15 minutes to cross the entire city. Screw trams and the Metro. That shit takes 40 minutes. Hop on the Sedlec train at Nádraží Holešovice as well, or start at Nádraží Libeň if you happen to be Libeň la vida loca like me. The best part is that both the train and ferry are included in your PIT ticket.

A brief walk from the Sedlec station down to the ferry landing affords an idyllic view of country life just outside of the city. While you wait for the ferry, you can already see people on the opposite shore biking, rollerblading, and sitting drinking beer in a little beer garden. You may begin salivating while dreaming of the tasty beer awaiting your river crossing.

Once on the opposite shore (Zámky), you are immediately greeted by a beer shack serving the Golden Stuff of Life in a nice garden setting. You can also grab a snack there or visit a nearby dog shelter. Or you can just take my advice and walk down the bike/blade/foot path along the river back in the direction of Prague. It's only a couple of km's back to another ferry port, with 3 or 4 nice little shacky-wackies along the way for you to stop in and slake your thirst and fill your belly with junk food, all with a nice river view. And if you thought I was just in this for the short boat ride and the walk, you're on the wrong page, Bubba.

Stop at U Sluníčka to cop a squat on a nice terrace with a radio playing Czech country music. The friendly old timer serves two kinds of beer: country AND western. A short walk past U Sluníčka is a smaller shack named Modrá Kotva, which sells ice cream and beer. There is also a little kiddie playground. Now that your beer tank is filled, you're ready for the longer part of the walk. Keep on dodging those cyclists and bladers until you round the bend in the river to the last two stops on the tour. Hit up Stánek u Vody for a great variety of beer, homemade sodas and grilled snacks. They've got a barrel grill with a smokestack on it, yo. And on the hot days of summer, a cool mist from an elevated water hose helps you chill. You can also bounce yer chilluns on a trampoline to keep them away from your beer. Kids have a collective genetic memory stored from medieval times when the water was so bad that they gave beer to chilluns to keep them from dying of thirst. That's why they keep trying to steal your beer to this day. You're welcome.

If you still need to stop for a beer again before you leave (and I would be personally disappointed if you didn't), yet another beer garden awaits a few steps down the path. Kolonial serves the popular Únětické pivo in several varieties, along with food, like my personal favorite gut buster: Smažený fucking sýr. Oh yeah. After your beer and sýr, board the P2 at the Podhoří ferry landing nearby and take it back across the river to V Podbabě. A short bus ride later and you're at Podbaba, where you can take a train or a tram home.

P5: Císařská louka - Výtoň - Náplavka Smíchov

This ferry line gives you more bang for the buck. Three different ferry landings deliver a longer ride than most of the other ferries. Start from Výtoň tram stop, walk down Náplavka toward the rail bridge crossing the river. Right below the bridge is the ferry landing. Depending on which ferry you catch, you'll either be ferried to the opposite side of the river (Náplavka Smíchov) or Císařská louka, a long island with an amazing view of Vyšehrad Castle on its rocky perch. There's also a shack renting boats and selling beer.

The ferry to Náplavka Smíchov is best for taking in the dual farmer's markets operating on opposite sides of the Vltava on Saturdays. It's 90% overpriced hipster bollox and vegan bait, but the beer is tasty. Also, the P5 is one of the only free ferries on the river. Which means it delivers more bang for no buck.

P3: Lihovar - Veslařský ostrov

Another ferry ride with a decent duration is the P3. Most of the ferries plow the river in a beeline for the opposite shore, but this one navigates a diagonal course between Lihovar and Veslařský ostrov, which lets you enjoy the cool river breeze and the hypnotic hum of the motor even longer. It's not the most popular ferry route, so you might even get to ride alone and pretend you are some kind of low rent gangsta with his own boat and captain. Hey, my delusions have no grandeur. Once you reach the island, there's really not much to do there but walk across a bridge to the shore and board a botel moored on the Vltava. That way you can still get your beer/boat combo to make the trip worth it. After a pleasant buzz, I walked back across the bridge to the island and took the ferry back to Lihovar and the tram stop nearby.

P6: Lahovičky - Nádraží Modřany: Goatpocalypse Now!

The P6 ferry drops you off on a desolate shore; scrub brush and tall grass and nothing else. Resist the urge to go straight ahead down the dirt path. That leads to absolutely nothing but a highway you can't cross. Trust me. I walked that bastard in search of a microbrewery called Kail. Never got there. Veer to the right immediately upon leaving the ferry and walk down the river path for several minutes until you see signs of civilization. Here I use the word 'civilization' very loosely. You'll come upon a very bizarre scene: dozens of dilapidated campers, vans, caravans, and old trucks in a junkyard setting. And goats. Dozens of goats staring at you with those evil little devil eyes.

Fortunately there's a beer shack (Stánek u Alexe a Irči) in the middle of the goat apocalypse. After you step over the little clusters of goatshit, have a seat on some very worn plastic furniture and sip your beer. Hey! Look at that! It's Kail beer. Sipping a microbrew in the middle of a herd of goats has got to be one of the most bizarre things I have ever done. This just proves that Czechs will put a beer tap ANYWHERE. But don't you worry about those goats. By this time they'll be back to happily chewing on caravan furniture and bleating merrily. Too bad they didn't serve Kozel beer.

P8: Troja - Císařský ostrov

Last and certainly least, the P8 ferry is just a replacement for the collapsed bike/foot bridge that used to connect the island to Troja. There is nothing to do on that little island except step over heaping mounds of horse doovers and dog piles from the stables and kennels. You can safely skip this ferry unless you enjoy all dogs and horses and no beer. And with that, my ferry guide to Prague is complete.

Waitaminit, Big Sir! You said 7 ferries and I see P8!

You can count. I'm so proud of you! You may have also noticed that I omitted P4. Not because I enjoy messing with you (though it's tempting), but because P4 is so far out of Prague that it hardly seems worth the trip. Also, only one leg of the ferry journey is connected with Prague public transit. You could easily get sucked into sailing out of Prague for 150 crowns down the Beroun River toward Karlstejn...which sounds pretty good actually. But it's not in the scope of this particular blog post. Maybe next time...

This Indian Summer (Babí léto, or granny summer in CZ) is done for, but there are a few sunny days left. You've got until the end of October to get yer butt out there, take these ferries, and enjoy those beer shacks. The ferries stop running and the shacks slam shut (many are open only on weekends now). Then there's nothing left to do but go home and burrow in for the long winter and dream of Spring.

Beat the Prague Heat!

How to Beat the Bejesus Out of This Bastard Prague Heat.

photo via Flickr by ataferner

If you happen to be in Prague right now, this heat wave might make you think about moving to the North Pole to bask in glacial darkness for 24 hours per day. Europeans don't have AC. Even when the last EuroHeatWave killed 14,000 people in France, they did not install AC in their quaint little maisonettes. Non. They just said c'est la vie and ate a snail. That same heat wave killed more than 70,000 across Europe.

So when the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof, and your shoes get so hot you wish your tired feet were fire proof, follow these Wide Body Jetsetter tips to keep your hot ass cool.

Heat Follows My Wide Ass Everywhere

Where I come from it gets hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Growing up in the Central Valley in California is like sitting in the waiting room just outside of Hell. And whenever one of those smarmy TV reporters did their weekly How to Beat the Heat report, I wanted to beat them like a red-headed stepchild. Easy for you to beat the heat in your air-conditioned studio, to which you drive to-and-from in your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned house. All of my working poor life I had to drive 20-year-old cars with no AC to and from jobs with bosses so cheap they only turned on the AC in their offices and let the labor slowly suffocate in the heat. At home? If I happened to have working AC and turned it on for more than five minutes per day, it cost me $300 per month.

I have always hated the heat. Even when I was a skinny bastard. Imagine how I hate it now, with 100 pounds of blubber strapped onto my frame. When the sun bakes down on my skin, I feel like a walrus slowly turning on a spit. Goo goo g'joob. So these are the things I do to avoid heat stroke, heart attack, and heat rashes in my nethers:

Heat-Beater #1: Get a Job in a Modern Building

Prague is surrounded by a sea of gray concrete Soviet block housing and new tech offices in equal proportion. Get your ass a job in one of these tech companies. If you have an IT degree, you're gold. If you're a 'creative' soul (doomed) like me, you'll have to work in the mail room or strapped to a phone line listening to people call you a cocksucker because your company didn't send them their collectible train on time. But hey, these offices have AC, so it's better than sitting at home slowly sliding down your sweaty, faux-leather couch.

Heat-Beater #2: Tramspotting

They now have air-conditioned trams in Prague! Finally! Sure, there are only about 40 of them, but some wise soul at the Prague Transport grew tired of having to scrape dead old people off the tram seats every summer. So they bought a fleet of new trams with AC in them. You will know them by their orange racing stripes on their noses. However, you can lead a horse to water...

The Prague Transport web forum is filled with complaints from Czechs saying 'bullshit tram with bullshit people opening windows so the AC doesn't work. Total bullshit.' Yes, the word 'blbost' was translated on the fb forum as 'bullshit.' I've been lucky enough to have ridden the AC trams without windows opened by shitbirds. That AC REEEEAAAAALLLLLY works, man. It's like stepping out of a desert into a meat locker. I pity the vůl who tries to open the window on my watch.

Heat-Beater #3: Run Behind a Water Truck

The Prague roads get so hot that they get all gummy like caramel, so you will often see huge orange tanker trucks spewing water from all sides on the road around them. When the day is hotter than Georgia asphalt, run behind that water truck and cool your jets. Sure, that water plume may contain chemicals known to Putin to melt the faces off of journalists, but WTF are you gonna do when it's over 95 fucking degrees outside?

Heat-Beater #4: Like. Go to the Mall.

photo by Tiia Monto

I view the mall as a necessary evil, a temple to mass consumerism peddling mostly overpriced blbost to rehabilitated commies with too much cash and credit. I call them Czigga rich. Anywho, malls are not just for hormone-addled teens anymore. Grown-ass adults like me go there to slowly putter up and down the frozen food aisles in supermarkets til I get goosebumps. You can even buy cold beer on tap and just casually sip it for hours while watching all the spotty teens and their Czigga rich parents strolling by. If there's a cineplex in that mall (and there usually is), go watch the latest Hollywood blbost and snort up the AC like a Hollywood producer snorts the booger sugar.

Heat-Beater #5: Wake Up at the Crack of Dawn and Open All Your Windows

As much as I hate mornings, as much as I'd rather sleep til noon, my wide ass wakes up stuck to my sweaty sheets at dawn. And I have my number 2 fan on me all night. I stagger to my feet, bounce off my walls, throw hot coffee on my face to wake up, then open up all the windows in my flat. Can't leave them open all night, nosiree Bob. I live on the ground floor in the ghetto and gypos would crawl into my flat and steal my widescreen and my wife. Plus it stays hot all night until about 5 am.

Like a Monkey With a Machine Gun

Czechs have AC but they don't know how to use it. Most of the buildings in Prague were built before AC was invented, so central AC is out of the question. This means overpriced fans and overpriced portable AC units. Don't try to buy a desk fan in a Czech appliance store, the greedy bastards will charge you 50 bucks for a Chinese-made fan that costs 5 bucks to produce. And the portable AC units cost more than a used car. Go to building supply shops like Obi or Hornbach. I got a desk fan for only 300 crowns ($12). It's my number one fan.

Like anything new, it takes time for the monkey to figure out how to get that spark onto the stick pile. Such is the AC learning curve. Take a look around Prague. Anytime you see one of those portable AC units in a small shop, the stupid bastards have the front door wide open, with the AC vent hose just snaking outside. Big Sir's Final Tip: AC basics. Dear knedlikyheads, they've got instructions in Czech on that portable AC unit that cost more than your old Škoda. Here's how AC works: it sucks the hot air into the unit, passes it through a compressor, condenser, and evaporator to chill that air out. Then it spews cold air into the hot space. That big white hose on the beast is not the tail. It vents ugly, stale, hot air. So that needs to be connected to a vent in your window or wall. Anything else is just pissing into the wind. Maybe these are the same idiots who open the windows on the AC trams.

And with that, I'm turning on my number one fan and closing my windows. It's 10 am and already starting to get as hot as fuck. Stay cool, my ninjas.

All Hail The Mighty Goat!

Beer Guzzling With Bleating Goats at a Czech Village Brewery.

Each year in June, thousands descend upon the otherwise quiet village of Velke Popovice to drink beer with live goats. Den Kozla or Goat Day, or Day of the Goat (which sounds decidedly more wicked), is a yearly celebration at the Velkopopovicky Kozel Brewery. Most beer labels in Europe have a dead king or an overweight noble dandy on the label. In the U.S., all the beer containers are as boring and bland as the beer inside. But not my favorite Czech beer, no sir. It's got a goat. A big, hairy bastard with twisted horns holding a foaming beer glass.

Spinning for beer and fabulous goat swag

I don't have too many rules binding my life, but I have beer rules: 1) in Germany, drink beer with a monk on the label, 2) in Czech, drink beer with a big wicked goat on the label.

Maybe I love the Mighty Goat because he reminds me of a simpler time when my religious parents forbade me to listen to hard rock music, so naturally I went to the music store (when they had those) and stared at the heaviest metal albums I could find. And they all enticed me with their red and black covers blazing with pentagrams and goats. Apparently, the goat represents the devil.
Hell yeah!

Den Kozla: Ancient Pagan Ritual of Beer Swilling

What are they feeding those goats?

Normally the wife likes to drag my lazy ass out to the woods to climb giant, slippery rocks or to get attacked by ticks and mosquitoes. If I don't feel up to plummeting to my death or contracting lime disease, I am always free to suggest a cultural event worthy of a discriminating European. Like a gypsy stomp. That's about as discriminating as it gets here in Czechia. But I tend to avoid organized hate rituals like we have in the States (tiki torch Nazis ferfuckssakes), so we just have to conjure up some culture from dead composers and artists in dull mausoleums.

Until the dawning of the Day of The Goat. Then we pagans don black robes, gather in a field, tie up a goat, dance around the writhing, bleating beast, rip its heart out, and then summon hellfire. Or we drink heinous amounts of goaty beer and suck down more sausages than a train station hooker. One of those. Either way, the shadowy figure of Pan smiles on us.

Despite its sketchy image in dark music, the Den Kozla goat fest rages on every year, and I've now been to three out of 26 of them. They never cater to metal heads by making a goat shirt with a pentagram, nor do they play headbanger music. It would certainly draw a crowd, as evidenced by the metric fuckton of mullets in this country. They would still make buttloads of money on beer. But maybe having a bunch of hopped-up headbangers chasing the goats around with meat cleavers is a bit awkward. So Czech folk music will have to do. And it does.

Helter Skelter in a Summer Swelter

It was a blazing June day at the brewery and shade was scarce. As an industrial building complex made up of mostly brick buildings and cement roads, shady spots were at a premium. People were crowding into small swathes of shade cast on metal fences along sloping lawns. Since I left my stained, rain-soaked old straw hat on Palatine Hill in Rome last month, I would need new head gear, pronto. The alternative is a hat-less fat dude drinking beer for hours in the hot sun. What could go wrong?

The Kozel Times

I grabbed my Den Kozla straw hat for 99 crowns. I would not bake my noodle in the sun and suffer heat stroke after all. What a bargain. I bought a Den Kozla shirt as well, not because I worship the Mighty Goat, not because I revere goat beer as the nectar of the gods, but because they actually had a shirt in my wide-ass size. I usually ask for size WBJ (Wide Body Jetsetter) or TFA (Tall Fat American). I am usually disappointed. But not this year! I found the only 3XL t-shirt within 500 kilometers. Maybe some genius finally figured out that some of the types of dudes who inhale beer and sausages all day might be a bit on the big side. Or maybe they've always had fat bastardware in my size, but all the fat dudes show up at 8 AM to buy them all. Which reminds me of yet another beer rule: I never drink beer at 8 AM unless I happen to have stayed up all night long drinking beer til 8 AM.

Coke or goat dark, kid?

As the day sweltered on, the cold refreshing goat beer was all that stood between the crowd and dehydration. I was right at that moment of the magical balancing act between the dehydrating effects of sweating in the sun and the diuretic effects of alcohol. One would think that after 6 or 7 beers, one would need to go to the toilet. One would be wrong. My plan was to slowly replace the liquid in my sweat glands with golden goat beer. After hours of walking around in a foggy haze of heat and alcohol, I stumbled into a cold stream of water spewing forth from the side of a fire truck. Children were splashing and running through the water jets chasing rainbows in the mist. It was suddenly like Harlem in the 1960s. With much better beer.

Den Kozla: Refreshingly Hipster Free

Brother from another mother

Nowadays you can't swing a dead cat around for more than five minutes before it sticks in some hipster's greasy beard. The beardos tend to congregate and coagulate around street food stands, 'farmers' markets serving up nothing ever eaten by farmers, and any event promising overpriced craft beer. But the Mighty Goat is keepin' it real: only three kinds of beer are tapped at Den Kozla: goaty original, goatesque amber, and goatacious dark. Served cold and cheap. One of the best things about Goat Day is that each year they release a new goat beer which is only served at the GoatFest. Once it has been tapped, drunk, and pissed into the bushes, it will never be seen or heard from again. This year's Goat Special was called Mistrův ležák (master lager), a pleasing amber lager with a crisp start and a smooth, refreshing finish.

No kale or gluten free hipster hovno here; the food stands are 100% Czech: pots of goulash swinging on chains over fire, deep friers cranking out massive potato pancakes, and enough klobasa to choke a dozen donkeys. You will not find one single avocado smashed on toast.

OGG: old gangsta goat

But you will find plenty of live goats and costumed goat people at Den Kozla. You can also visit Olda the Goat, the official mascot of the Velkopopovicky Kozel Brewery. He stands behind a fence under a shade tree waiting for your selfies while munching grass. This year, Olda seemed much older. He had shed some of the wild, curly goat hair of his youth, his goaty goatee was looking a bit gray, and he didn't seem like he could hold a foaming beer stein like he used to. I feel ya, OG.

We middle-aged old goats gotta stick together. I 'kid' you not.

50 Shades of Czech Easter

Annual Ass-Whipping for Fun and Fabulous Prizes...

In the Western time-honored Easter tradition, children flock to the green gardens of suburbia in search of colored Easter eggs. Meanwhile, in Czechia, boys gather willow branches, weave them into switches, and chase women through the streets until they catch them and whip their butts reeeeeaaaallll gooooood. And the women give them colored Easter eggs and candy for the effort.

“It's a pagan fertility ritual!” squealed my hippy-dippy California friend when he visited me in Prague in 1998. There was some truth in his wild guess. Most pagan seasonal rituals were eclipsed by the Mighty Church in an effort to quash them by substituting religious celebrations in their place. Both Christmas and Easter coincide with the pagan celestial celebrations of the winter solstice and the spring equinox. And that is not a coincidence.

More Easter Than Most Countries

In the West, we get a couple of days off to celebrate Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But in the grand old tradition of taking it easy and enjoying life, select Europeans get extra Easter holidays. They've got Ugly Wednesday, Green Thursday, Good Friday, White Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday. All they need is Fat Tuesday and a bit of jazz and it could be Mardi Gras.

My wife and I took advantage of the long weekend to leave Prague and spend time pursuing one of my favorite pastimes: eating fried cheese and drinking beer in castle pubs. For all of these events to come to pass, all planets in the cosmos must align properly. And in the sleepy medieval town of Loket, all portents pointed to pleasure and I got my wish.

What Is the Meaning of This?

Be good and beat some butts!

The boys and men take great care in selecting willow branches with just the right bend and just the right 'spring' in the wood. They must be supple enough to be twisted and woven into braided whips capable of beating eggs out of the most resilient of booties. The ends of the whip are decorated with colorful ribbons, and the finished Easter Excalibur is called pomlázka. If the boys are all thumbs or too lazy to climb a tree, they can always buy them pre-assembled by senior citizens trying to make a buck.

Next they take to the streets in search of butts to beat. When they find a girl, they chant “Hody, hody doprovody, dejte vejce malovaný, nedáte-li malovaný, dejte aspoň bílý, slepička vám snese jiný…” which means 'Give me all your eggs and I'll return the favor by beating your bum with this here switch o' mine. Oh, and those eggs better be colored as well.' This is not assault, nossiree Bob. Recipients of the ritual beatings bear not only light red welts on their buttockal regions, they will also receive blessings of health and fertility. Traditionally, girls who did not get threatened at whip-point for their precious eggs felt neglected, undesirable, and were forced to join a convent. Holidays are harsh.

A Village Easter Monday Bristling With Whips and Wicker Baskets

Hold your whip higher, son. 

Up until last weekend, I'd never witnessed this ritual firsthand. Mainly because these secret pagan traditions are nowadays only practiced in small towns and villages, away from big cities and the prying evil eye of political correctness, cultural condescension, and general assault charges.

We stomped around Castle Loket on Easter Sunday, I ate my smaženy sýr and drank my castle beer, and I got some wicked castle shots for the old photo archive. Easter Monday we checked out of the B&B and embarked on a casual walkabout of the old village for a few hours before heading over to Karlovy Vary, then homeward.

The first punters presented themselves. Three Czech boys in their late teens swung their pomlázky like gunslingers at high noon. They sniffed, snorted, grunted, giggled, swigged their beers, and checked their smartphones. Hell, they're teens after all. Maybe they had a booty map app.

Young Whippersnappers

As we winded on down the road toward the village bus stop, we saw several boys ranging in age from 8 to 18, all armed to the teeth with whips and grins. Most of them carried wicker baskets full of colorful eggs plundered from village booties. But not a girl in sight anywhere. Were they hiding in their cottages with pillows on their sore rumps? Did they all become feminists overnight and start whipping boys' butts in revenge?

I didn't stay long enough to stalk the girls and ask them to comment for my bloggy-woggy. Instead, we switched venues to view another form of cultural oddity known as Karlovy Vary. It's not just a Czech spa town, the home of a film festival, and the source of Becherovka. It's also a weird kind of hybrid of Moscow and Hollywood, where uber-rich New Russians buy gaudy jewelry from store windows and prance about like Stalin's stallions.

But that's a story for another day...

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photo: Gabriela Sarževská

When the Wide Body Jetsetter isn't busy eating fried cheese in castles and practicing Easter whip fu, he makes a modest living as a professional photographer and a freelance writer, which seems to explain an awful lot.

Smells Like Czech Spirit

There must be at least one metric fuckton of internet advice for cheap travel and how to do the whole Eurothang on a tight budget. They all talk about cheap hotels, cheap flights, etc. But then they neglect the obvious. What if you move to another country and stay there? What the hell do you do when you run out of money and get that nervous twitch that screams GIMME BOOZE?

I'm not an alcoholic, but I played one on TV. As your Wide Body Russian general, I command you to drink vodka if you happen to be stuck in Russia. You'll need it. That Putin is a scary fuck. Especially when he's shirtless on horseback. But if you happen to be stuck in Prague, as many of us are, take my advice: drink the local spirit. Find out what it is, drink it, live it and love it.

The Beer Spirit

But Big Sir, ain't beer the Czech local spirit? No. Beer is not a spirit, Junior, but it most definitely is the most popular beverage in Czechia, the one which earns them the dubious honor of being the country with the most per capita beer consumption in the world. Per capita is pig latin for dividing the total beer sales with the total population, every man, woman, child and baby, to get a number that sounds very impressive. It's lazy math. Most of the babies here don't drink beer, and if they do, they can't handle it at all. And nobody is willing to go door to door to survey the beer consumption of the common peeps.

Proof that per capita stats are bullshit: Germany held the title of being the biggest beer drinkers in the world for at least an eon. It's true. Some of them are HUGE. That's why they invented bucket pants. But the Artist Formerly Known As Czechoslovakia had a velvet divorce, the husband kept the beer, the Bohemia, and the tourism, and that poor bitch Slovakia kept their wine drinking and the velvet Elvis paintings. Now Bohemia was suddenly promoted to the King of Beer Drinking simply due to long division and lazy bullshit numbers.

One thing is true though. Czech beer drinking is legendary. They first started brewing beer in Bohemia in 993 at the Břevnov Monastery in Prague. You can still go there today and drink beer. Fuck yeah. Euro-monks started beer, perfected beer and made it holy. WBJ beer rules: if a bottle of beer has a monk or a goat on the label, I drink it in the name of the father, the son, and the holy goat. Beer brewing during medieval times was a healthy alternative to getting dysentery from drinking the Gothic water. That's when children started to drink beer proper. So maybe the whole per capita thing started then as well.

Drunk as a monk

Sage Advice From the Godfather of Expat Alcoholics

One year I decided to leave the brisk Prague winter for the warmer climes of Cyprus. It was easy math: I wasn't making any money over winter, I was spending all my time in the Tiki Taky bar pining for the sun while drowning my sorrows in sunny beach drinks. A friend lived in Cyprus at the time and invited me to drive around Cyprus in his caravan. I was immediately worried. The flights were cheap enough, and crashing on the floor of his van would cost me gas and beer. But Czech beer was about a buck. Everywhere else in the world it was 5 bucks.

“Wherever you go, learn to drink the local spirit,” said the drunken expat sage. I later discovered that in southern Cyprus, Zivania was the cheap local spirit of choice. Zivania is a cheap brandy distilled from grape skins or something like that. When faced with five dollar beers, my friend and I chose to spend that same five bux to buy a bottle of 'Nirvana' as we called it. On brief forays into North Cyprus, the Turkish Cypriots smiled and shared their raki with me.

The Prague Spirit: Gargle and Swallow

Of course they have local spirits in Czechia, and it is my duty as your attorney to inform you that they are all cheap and disgusting. But if you are faced with sudden twitches from debilitating alcoholism or the fear of gluten in the beer, you may need to suck it up, buttercup. After you choose to stay here and your travel money runs out, you are faced with some very harsh choices:

1. Teach English
2. Work in a call center
3. Pimp your juicy booty out to pay the rent
4. Learn to cut your booze budget

I've tried all the above except the sales of my juicy booty. I'm saving that for marriage. I've tried all of the local Czech spirits, for medicinal purposes y'understand. The most popular ones are (in no particular order) Becherovka, Fernet, Slivovice, and the Mother of All Hooch: Absinthe. While each spirit varies in its ability to gag you, tie you up and torture you til you vomit and/or shit your guts out, they're all cheap enough to fuck your ass up on a budget. The bad news: most of these spirits taste like either mouthwash or cough syrup. The good news: if you are the kind of ninja who has rifled through your medicine cabinet at home looking to get an after-hours fix from your Robitussin or Scope, you would be perfectly at home in Prague.

Becherovka

This is often described as either herbal, aperitif or digestif. That means they want to sell it to hippies who drink it both before and after each meal. It is made in Karlovy Vary, aka Karlsbad, home of a major film festival and a more major Russian mafia presence. It's the only town in the Czech Republic where I've seen more Russian newspapers than Czech ones. To prepare for the Becher experience, imagine throwing a shot of mouthwash at your throat. Gargle, rinse, repeat. If you are desperate, swallow that swill.

Aparently, Becher's got a bunch of herbs n shit, so it's supposed to be a healthier way to get you blotto. I once knew an American expat who was addicted to Becherovka. At the end he was seen curled up in a fetal position clutching an empty Becher bottle, gently rocking back and forth and staring at the bottle with red eyes. They had to ship him back Stateside in a basket, but his breath was minty fresh.

Fernet

Shoe polish?

The choice of the proletariat. It's normally about a buck a shot, compared to 3-to-5 bucks a shot for anything remotely drinkable. This shit is 40% alcohol and 100% cheap at a buck a shot. If you're in the average working class Czech pub (and you should be, what are you, a bistro bitch?) and you see a Czech man with a beer and a shot, chances are it's a Fernet. Unless it's his birthday. Then it might be a shot of Slivovice.

Slivovice

You'll find Slivovice (plum brandy) in two types: the respectable kind sold in normal Czech bars with pictures of plums on the label, and the homemade variety, offered willy-nilly at someone's birthday party. Domaci slivo is most likely made in the bathtub of an unemployed truck driver. Sure, the booze may kill all bacteria in the bathtub, but who wants to drink dodgy chunky style booze unless they are constipated and in dire need of a super colon blow cure? ExLax ain't got nothing on this shit.

Absinthe

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

Absinthe is one of those rare liquors that get banned by the Powers That Be. Too many people were getting fucked up on a major hallucinogenic level and too many artists were getting inspiration. While this type of behavior flew in France for la bohème, the Prague commies forbade it in Bohemia. Maybe it was banned due to its association with wormwood, hallucinations and rebellion in general. I can't be certain, but maybe lighting a match under a spoonful of absinthe and a sugar cube was too much like a heroin ritual to be allowed to permeate the general masses with impunity.

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Gentle reader, I sure hope my medicinal advice finds you well. As your Wide Body Jet Setter, your Personal Jesus, and your attorney, I advise you to enjoy life with a pinch of salt, a shot of the local spirit and a liberal application of the liquor arts.

Libeň La Vida Loca!

Life in a Grungy Industrial Prague Suburb

The corridor from Prague Libeň through Prague Holešovice has a reputation as being an ugly, dodgy section of Prague best avoided (say 'Palmovka' to a local and watch their face twist). This is mainly due to the dearth of abandoned factories, plants, manufacturers, and other industrial-age relics left behind when Soviet communism died a vodka-soaked death in the Eastern Bloc. These areas are now mostly inhabited by the poor. You can still see the tall, round brick smokestacks left behind in empty dirt lots, like phallic totems of the mighty proletariat.

I moved to Praha-Libeň quite by accident. I've lived in many areas in Prague over the years, including Strašnice, Bubeneč, Smíchov, Žižkov, Nové Město, Zahradní Město, Stodůlky, Řepy, and Letňany. A lot of expats prefer to live in more central, popular areas like Staré Město (Old Town), Vinohrady, Malá Strana or Žižkov. I prefer not to give the landlord parasites most of my earnings, so I live slightly further afield.  It also means I can live in cheap neighborhoods completely devoid of pretentious expat douchebags, which is its own reward.

Libeň la Vida Loca: a Micro-brewery and a Mexican Food Store

Even though I tend to live in unpopular areas relegated to the poor, unwashed masses (like me), I have a truffle-pig snout when it comes to rooting out the good shit in every area I've lived.  I used to take trams and buses to poor, punk, working class Žižkov all the time just for a drink, but many of my favorite bars there shut down. After moving to Libeň, I was very surprised to learn that there are some decent digs for food and beer right in my own dreary working class suburb.

I never thought a taco-teased, burrito-bombed California dude like me would find a place for real Mexican products in Prague. Then I stumbled down a narrow passage one day after a fried cheese binge and found Mexicali Mercado. There I found:

- Restaurant quality tortilla chips.
- Real corn tortillas in several sizes, from enchilada to street taco.
- Refried black beans, chipotles in adobo sauce, enchilada sauce, and mucho, mucho mas.
- A fresh food kitchen in the back. Admittedly, I skip this as I prefer to make massive amounts of comida Mexicana en me casa. Plus they once put red cabbage on my taco. Fuj.

Sadly, that once-mas-fina Mexican joint has succumbed to all the usual greed, incompetence and rudeness famous in Prague. I watched many of my favorite products double in price overnight, got bitched at when I questioned the padded bill, and mucho attitudo in general.  Chingala! I guess I'll have get my vida loca elsewhere. Fortunately, the Albert store in the nearby Harfa mall stocks the same tortilla chips for only five crowns more, plus half-price jalapeños.

In my day, they called small, non-industrial breweries 'micro-breweries.'  Now the term seems to be 'craft beer breweries.'  The difference is simple: micro-breweries make their own beer in many varieties and serve it to discriminating beer consumers for reasonable prices.  Craft breweries make their own beer in many varieties and serve it to fucking hipsters for twice the price.  Yes, I can say that because I am a discriminating beer consumer.

I like to walk along the path by the creek from the park and approach Kolčavka Pivovar from the back. I'm sneaky like that, plus I love the sound of burbling creeks to whet my appetite for beer. Kolčavka brews dark beer, strong dark beer, light beer, strong light beer, IPA, summer ales, winter ales, Irish red ales, bitters, bittersweets, seasonal beer, super strong beer and a partridge in a pear tree.

Libeň: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

There are still signs of the usual poverty associated with cheaper and uglier areas.  I'm lucky enough to live on a nice street surrounded by older buildings with fancy facades that remind me a bit of the Old West towns in the States. Adjacent streets have ubytovny (boarding houses for imported Eastern European laborers), gypsy slums and service warehouses.

Once I took a long walk on a dodgy trail on a hill overlooking Libeň, prodded along by my wife, who is allegedly concerned with my health, yet likes to prod my ass up dodgy trails to slippery precipices at every opportunity. I was just looking down to my left to avoid sliding down the hill, when she said 'watch out for needles! Junkie camps ahead. Junkie camps? What ever happened to your garden variety homeless camps?  I paused mid stride to evaluate my chances of either trodding on an HIV needle or sliding down a hill onto cold steel train tracks below, and I looked up. The sun was just setting over Libeň. I could see the train tracks below, and old warehouses and buildings with plants growing through their roofs. I couldn't see our flat, but I could easily see the O2 Arena, where I once heard Ennio Morricone conduct an orchestra playing his greatest movie hits of all time.

Several other islands of goodness are scattered across the landscape. A Chinese joint on Sokolovská offers an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet (11 am – 3 pm) for 109 crowns. My favorite local Czech pub, Kovářská, has the best fried cheese in Libeň. This area also features a high concentration of Vietnamese grocers and discount food outlets (aka Food Crypts), if you're into that sort of thing.

Libeň and the Winter of My Content

Once I took a Sunday stroll for a Sunday smažák. Zero degrees celsius with cold winds nipping at my nose and Jack Frost chewing on my ass.  I like cold, but Jack needs a muzzle.

Visions of dark beer and fried cheese dancing in my head; no dark beer today.  I've always enjoyed a dark beer on a cold day ever since my London/Dublin daze.  In Czech, you have to get used to things running out at any given time.  Kolčavka always rotates the beer stock, and offering Summer Ale in December seems like a perfectly Czech thing to do. So I ordered an IPA. They were not out of fried cheese. Those lucky bastards got to live another day.

This Californian has seen many snowy winters in Europe, and I still thrill at the first snow. Leaving Kolčavka that night, the previous wind chill was replaced by the pin pricks of ice crystals in the face.  I grinned and let them melt on my teeth. There were a few days in the last weeks where it only threatened to snow; barely-visible flecks of white dancing on the wind but never sticking to the ground. That shit doesn't count.  This was a right proper snow with white powder on the ground and  black footprints breaking through to the pavement. Along my path home, winter boot heels left their mark with tiny dog paw prints alongside. I could see the history of the snow dog's walk, his tiny feet breaking stride with his master to leave the path and mark a bush, or to bolt 90 degrees opposite to greet an oncoming human.

I walked by my favorite creek-side path passing under the fractured columns of the broken bridge, its blackened surfaces standing in stark contrast to the tiny snowflakes and brownish-black evening sky. The creek burbled and sang along with the thumping boot tempo of my bustling feet.

Full Kafka Jacket

A Virtual Metamorphosis in Prague

As mentioned before in previous posts, the wifey likes to drag my ass out of the house, kicking and screaming. She does most of the dragging and kicking, I do the screaming. In the summer, it's mostly about prodding me up slippery rocks to a near death experience on a precipice. With selfies.

In the winter, I get a brief reprieve from nature walks with the Black Widow in the form of cultural outings. Sure, as a wide body I much prefer to stay ensconced in my comfy black office chair while marinating in coffee for the entire winter. But eventually the chair's genuine Corinthian pleather seats need a breath of fresh air, and its creaking wheels need a goddamn break.

Enter: Goethe. He creeps up all stealthy-like, that dead German poet. He's got an entire institute by the river, dedicated to the language and culture of Deutschland. I'd never been there before, but last night marked a very unusual affair: a Kafkaesque exhibition, featuring a virtual reality experience wherein you become a giant bug.

Hot damn! What a great idea! It's like leaving the comfortable cyber-womb of home, riding the Metro, and being jacked back in to a 3D cyberworld! (Inner geek-child screams WAA-HOOOOO!!!!)

The quintessential Kafka story (read: my personal favorite) Metamorphosis is, was, and always will be the finest metaphor for insignificance and alienation ever written. Kafka published the book in 1915. He was clearly disenfranchised with the drudgery of selling his soul as an insurance office clerk in a faceless, Capitalist machine. Too bad he didn't live through the Czech communist period. Oh, the alienation he would have felt then. Can you imagine the novels?

Stir Fried Bugs and White Wine

Kafka was born in Prague in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since he wrote in German, he was naturally embraced by the Goethe Institute. I'm assuming. I like to do that. It doesn't matter. There was a waiting list to enter the virtual world. Just enough time to horse down a half dozen glasses of free wine.

Of course they put up several roadblocks to the obvious free wine pillager. Corridors clogged with people unable or unwilling to get the fuck out of my way. And a hippie stir frying actual (not virtual) bugs. Worms, roaches, and other creepy crawlies. Right in front of the corridor leading to das wein. Dafuq?

I'll never understand hippies. First, they're vegetarian. Then vegan. Then raw. There's nowhere to go from there but back up the damn food chain: bugs. “They're very rich in protein,” proclaimed the hippie chef. I knew it! Thought I, These vegan bastards are gagging for protein. And there is no better way to gag on your protein than to feel the crispy legs of a crusty cockroach clawing at your craw. The hippie chef informed my wife not to chew on the roach, but to chop it in half and suck the guts out. Fuck that freak (the hippie, not my wife). I skipped the creepy crawlies and proceeded directly to the free wine.

I didn't see any bottles, just glasses filled with white wine. I guzzled the first one to wash the imaginary taste of roach guts out of my mouth. There was a tingling behind my teeth and the front of my tongue (roachy?), and my experienced art palate told me that this fine bubbling sensation smacks of a fine Gewurztraminer. Or heavy sulfites. I can't possibly be sure, as my wine snobbery is limited to guzzling free wine at various art gallery openings around the world, from ghetto boxed wine to high end vintages way too fancy for my rock and roll lifestyle. This particular number turned out to be a very nice Riesling. I knew it had to be something German.

These people were taking the whole bug thing too far. It made me almost retch up my lunch nachos. The wife had no problem eating the bugs. I'd already seen her eat bugs at a fair in the mountains when we were in the States a few years back. But I've always assumed that mountain folk ate bugs. And tourists. But still. How in the holy hell do you eat a bug?

Gettin' Buggy With It (photo by Gabriela Sarževská) 

Half empty plates of bug carcasses lay pell-mell around the exhibition hall. Half torsos and thoraxes oozing goo, legs awash in soy sauce and red peppers. Gag me with a spoonful of bugs. I swaggered through the crowd, trying not to think about the bugs. I found cold comfort in a Berlin photography book in the bibliothek. Thank fuck for squats and riots in the 90s.

The Alienation Tent

I finally got buggy up in that beeyawtch. I donned slippers with plastic doodads digging into my feet, then the gloves and the magic helmet of doom. It was incredible. I've done the VR thing before, but this one takes the roach cake. My outstretched hands were now segmented, insectoid arms feebly fumbling for door handles. I had to find a key and unlock the virtual door.

An incredible view of Old Town Prague out of the virtual window, a small room with desks, drawers, and the mirror. The mirror! Spoiler alert! Look in the mirror! It was taking the video game world to a frightening level. I'm probably way behind the curve on this one, and there are probably already many modern video game dens full of pimply-faced geek-children with virtual realities strapped onto their socially-awkward actual realities.

After minutes of searching amid knocks at the door and calls for Gregor the Bug Man, I finally found the key, placed it in the keyhole, and turned the doorknob. What would be on the other side? Would the landlady whack me with a virtual broom and chuck an apple into my soft, white underbelly?

Find out for yourself in this ongoing exhibition, which runs now through March 31. Last night was the opening of the show, so you probably won't get to drink any free wine or eat any bugs. Unless that gawdawful hippie has nowhere better to go and nothing better to cook.

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Virtual Metamorphosis at the Goethe Institute, Prague