Notes From the Lockdown

or Love in the Age of Coronavirus

- Prague, CZ March 2020

It's Day 5 of the coronavirus quarantine in the Czech Republic. Borders slammed shut, all but essential grocery stores are closed, and masks are now required for all people outside. As of March 16, nobody is allowed in or out of the Czech Republic until somebody kills this evil little coronabug.

Normally people would think 'Hey, being trapped in the country with the largest beer consumption in the world ain't bad.' Normally that would be a good thing, just drowning your sorrows in the pub with the other poor slobs in Slobovia. But the pubs closed. Now the panic really begins in earnest. But since the Czech Republic consists of 50% drunks and 50% thieves, the government came up with a solution to keep the locals from setting the cars on fire and bashing in the pub windows to raid the medicine cabinet: beer windows. Just saunter up to the pub window, pay your money, and a hand thrusts the beer through the window.

Window Beer

On Sunday I ordered a pint of Guinness through a pub window in a nice pub in Žižkov. In this sad version of a drive-thru window, people just get their beer and stand 2 meters apart from each other and drink on the sidewalk in the cold. The pub was aptly named U Sadu. The charm wore off after one pint and I left.

But only a handful of pubs have the walk-up window. Most are closed. I saw an old man on the nearly deserted Prague streets yesterday with a bag of groceries and no face mask. Was he insane? Doesn't he know that he'll probably die if he catches the damn bug? Then I saw the contents of his paper bag as I passed: bottles of vodka and rolls of toilet paper. Apparently that's all you need in a viral apocalypse.

State of Emergency Declared

Czechia is the only country in Europe with such strict quarantine measures. Almost EVERYTHING is closed in Prague. The Czech government declared a state of emergency in a very brief statement, followed by a bunch of specific things which are hereby verboten for the next 30 days. They even released them in English for a change. Probably because they think the coronavirus is being spread by all the dang foreigners, not all these fucking Czechs who can't cover their mouths when coughing.

In addition to closing every damn thing, the long list of new rules includes closing offices and shops, forcing people to stay at home, requiring them to wear masks in public, and banning all events. The last one is a bitch. I bought tickets to see William Shatner in Prague last December. The event was scheduled for March 15 – and canceled the day before. Shat happens. But not in Europe.

Hoarding of Masks and TP

The CZ government requires people to wear masks in public and avoid general contact with others. That's all fine and dandy, but all the masks sold out in about 5 minutes. So the government decreed that those without masks must wrap scarves around their faces. I can fully understand the draconian mask laws here. Every other Czech aged 8 to 80 in this country puts one finger on a nostril and blows snot noodles on the sidewalk. And they love to loudly hawk up lung oysters and shoot them everywhere. Forcing them to wear masks might put an damper on some of that white trashery.

Smile!

But I've gotta hand it to the mask creativity of these people. In lieu of buying actual masks, Czechs just wrap scarves around their mugs. Or make their own masks at home. I've seen all colors of material wrapped around surly faces, from pillow cases to old Christmas socks. One lady strolled by with a red purse, red shoes, wearing a red mask while talking on her red cell phone. You go girl! Better red than dead!

Czechs must really be shitting themselves, because they are buying up every last roll of toilet paper they can get their hands on. People panic buy. Every time there's a hint of an emergency, scared sheep stock up on a billion pills and canned food. But this time, they're raiding the toilet paper shelves.

Why? Do they think that the companies will stop producing TP in the wake of coronavirus? And how is TP the ultimate measure of survival? This must fall under the 50% of Czechs who are drunks. Only drunks think survival depends solely on booze and TP. Like the old man in the street the other day with the bag of booze and buttwipes. Or my drunken college flatmate. He only ever bought booze and TP. Damn, did he see the future?

Free Movement Prohibited

If you've ever wondered about what life behind the Iron Curtain was like, wonder no more. As of this moment, the CZ guvvie dragged out the Old Commie Rule Book on this one. Cross border travel is restricted, and even taking leisurely walks is verboten. Everyone out for a walk must walk with a specific purpose. They're not even sugar coating the thing, as the doc reads 'Prohibition of Free Movement of Persons.'

Of course they can't prohibit people from shopping, and they specify exactly what is allowed. And everything on the list is completely fucking sold out. Masks, medicine, hand sanitizer, and TP. A worse bunch of capitalists I've never seen.

I demand that these people be returned to communist bondage at once, where standing in lines for oranges and toilet paper was the norm. They not only like it, they pine for it. The grocers regularly have sales called 'retro week' for a taste of the good old times: cans of processed meat by-products and random goods with plain brown wrappers.

Wide Body Jetsetter Grounded

As I wander through the ghost mall in search of the solitary store where I can buy canned beans for burritos, I think of those zombie apocalypse films. How can you not? There's panic, empty spaces, and bloody lunatics robbing the stores of precious rolls of shit tickets.

Do Not Approach the Bus Driver

One of the nice things about the lockdown is that family time isn't affected. I can still prop up the fluffy pillows in bed next to my sweetie, and watch 28 Days Later, followed by 28 Weeks Later. As one does.

I think about European history during war time. How the expat writers bumming around Europe writing their novels were suddenly whisked away by embassies and returned from whence they came.

I can't be whisked away anywhere, and not just because I'm pushing 300 lbs. I'm not an expat (and not much of a writer, if I'm being honest), I'm a permanent resident of the Czech Republic, forced to stay here until the virus dies out. I canceled my yearly trip the states to see my family. I didn't want to contract coronavirus while stuck in a plane for 14 hours, land in the states, go to dinner with family, and accidentally kill my dad. That would be awkward.

Soon after my decision to stay grounded, the Czech government made it official by slamming the borders shut. So by decree of the government of Czechia, I'm stuck here with all the slobs from Slobovia, without my pubs or my fried cheese for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, I can work from home.

But I can't cram my wide body into a jet. Fuck. Well, I'm off to the ghost mall soon; it's the only place I can go. I'll wander past all the closed shops and darkened halls to the light at the end of the virus-ridden tunnel: the only open supermarket. I think I'll get a bottle of vodka and a roll of TP, if I can get one.

Today I fast-walked with purpose, shoulders bent forward to the wind with the ghost mall up ahead. I now work at home and want to avoid this whole damn corona-poxy-lips thing. But it's amazing how quickly you run out of things in the viral apocalypse. I was wearing my mask, as were most sensible people I passed. But then a homeless man rose from a bench and lurched toward me with his hand out. The rat bastard wasn't wearing a mask or a scarf and he was asking for money. I gave him the stiff arm and shook my head no.

With no mask and sleeping in the cold, that guy wouldn't last much longer. But for a second, when he got in my face without a mask, I felt this urge to knock him down and run. That's what survival mode does to humans. Everyone gives each other the hairy eyeball, no trust.

In my case, I've probably just watched too many zombie apocalypse movies.

Prague Bus Driver, Day 7 of the Viral Apocalypse

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.

--

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.

ZEE PAPERS

Diving Deep into the Depths of Dumb

I finally did it.  A) Got married (Back in 2013. Yay me!), B) Boarded the bureaucratic slippery slalom slope known as European Residency.  Why not.  I've lived in Europe off-and-on for decades, never wanting to fully commit.  Always feeling daring not doing the paperwork.  Bureaucracy is for suckers, I've always said.  Sure, I knew that it would be a colossal waste of time (hence entire empires built on easy immigration for the right price, mostly for yuppie scummery and the like). The rest of us have to take our chances with the riffraff.  And by riffraff, I don't mean the unwashed hordes of Syrians pushing their way into the bowels of Europa, forcing her to slam her doors shut tighter than a frog's asshole (and that shit's watertight. Word.).  I mean the bureaucrats themselves.  It's refreshing to note that all the stereotypes about bureaucrats in the States ring true here as well: a finer class of classless idiots I have never seen. I had no idea this slalom course would be so fraught with idiocy, incompetence and downright ty-volery.

Firstly: all of your research and preparation is for naught.  They will find a problem with a semicolon in your rental contract and jam it up your actual colon.  And then you won't have enough passport photos.  And they won't be the correct size.  And in your picture, your shirt won't have a collar.  And you'll be smiling.  This is serious fucking business.  Do not smile.  I expected all of this, and as I am generally free several days a week in the winter, I just decided to dive into the depths of dumb and see how just long I could hold my breath.  I started the process before Christmas.  It is nearly Easter and  I have still not found that hidden Easter egg known as zee papers.  Jesus H. Lapdancing Christ. I shouldn't have started this process anywhere near Christian holidays in an atheist country.  I've been back several times, each time with more and more and more and...

Why won't they give me zee fucking papers?  Yes, I'm a gawd damned Yank whose ancestors fled the dark ages of Europa and finally settled into the deserts of Central California.  But I'm married to a Eurobabe!  This should be easy-peasy, right?  Nope. Apparently, there's a problem: I'm Japanese.  I know.  Who knew?  Well, THEY did.  The fine collectors of all my precious documents, upon closely inspecting all of them, decided in their infinite wisdom that I am in fact a Japanese citizen.  I even have a certified letter stating this fact clearly.  Even though they have copies of my U.S. Passport, marriage certificate, yadayadayada, they 'somehow' confused me with a person of Japanese persuasion.  I think I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so.

'Dear Mr. Robinskon.' 

RobinSKON?  Really?  Even if you started your day in typical old school Czech style with a six pack of beer and a bag of hot dogs for breakfast, you couldn't possibly think that 'Robinskon' is a Japanese name.

'There is a problem with your doorbell, so the foreigner police could not surprise you with a random visit, the aim of which was to enter your flat and ransack the dump, see if your wife is not just a cleverly-made-up blow-up doll—and to look for Syrian refugees.  Please correct this oversight immediately or we will not be able to process your application for residency.  And BTW: you're fuckin' Japanese. We really think so.

Sincerely, Your Immigration Tards.'

Well.  I beg to differ.  I have never been to Japan in my entire life and I hate sushi.  I am whiter than a yeti in a snowstorm—fighting Tilda Swinton.  Not to mention that I'm 6 foot 5 inches and 280 pounds. They don't make Japanese folks with such proportions.  Even the sumo wrestlers are short.  My Immigration Tards even gave me a deadline to correct all of my architectural and racial issues.  They must be satisfied by April 18, so I called them for the earliest appointment.  The kindly tard on the phone said that the earliest appointment was April 20.  Naturally.  Such is the nature of the tardbeast.   A late appointment would not do. So I rolled up my considerably long sleeves, grabbed the reams of zee papers issued to me thus far, and headed down to the office for the fourth time to sit in the line for a full day with the rest of the unwashed foreign hordes.  At this point, the security guard should give me a high five.

At the entrance to the Tardis, I showed my letter to the man in the booth.  I pointed out the sentence in the certified letter where it declares in no uncertain terms that I am certainly Japanese.  The man and the booth could not possibly be an actual bureaucrat, because he cracked a smile.  Then he looked me up and down, checked the letter again and declared "Well, obviously this is some kind of mistake. It even says here that they recorded your U.S. Passport number and I.D."

"Yeah?"

"So just go upstairs with the corrected information and and wait for your number to be called."

By 'corrected information' he meant my new flat and rental contract—and my honky white ass, to prove once and for all that I'm not Japanese.  I didn't have the stones to tell the man that my 'new' flat has a doorbell system from the dark ages, and that there would be no chance—yet again—for the foreigner police to ransack the dump in search of blow up dolls and Syrians.  That's ok. They would find that out soon enough.  And they'll make me come back.

Upon climbing my way out of the Depths of Dumb, I thought about something else the very non-bureaucratic sentinel at the gates of the Tardis told me:

"You're not Japanese."

"Ya THINK?"

"This is some kind of mistake.  You could complain."  Then he handed me a small strip of paper with an email address and a phone number.

Complain?  Ninja please.  I've got the biggest complaint form in the whole wide world.

It's called my blog.

---

Stayed tuned!  Will Big Sir be shipped off to Japan and forced to eat seaweed? 
Or will he finally be given the right to live in peace with his Eurobabe in their substandard, rusty-doorbell-adorned dump in the industrial suburbs of Prague?

We Can Be Heroes

Just for one day.

HEROES! GET YER HEROES! TODAY ONLY! screamed the newspaper salesman in my head. One downside to a 20 year media boycott (no telly, no radio, no 'news' other than online) is that I heard about Bowie's death via my fb wall. Days after. So I can't remember the exact time and place. I remember when Elvis died: I was in the back seat of Dad's car and the news oozed through the radio off the tongue of one of those sleazy, doped up rock n roll radio announcers to the backdrop of 'Moody Blue.' As well it should have. Those were the days. Now and forever, instead of remembering the exact time one of my heroes (like Bowie) died, I'll remember a homogeneous blob of news McNuggets served up via (anti)social media.

I don't have a telly, but I still managed to 'acquire/finagle' some American late night comedy shows. All of them had Bowie bits (not 'bits' as in 'pieces' of him, my sick UK/Irish friends). Memorials, footage, music, all of it. They showed flowers and candles on Bowie's Hollywood star, outside his house, outside all of his former houses ever—including his Berlin residence (my auld pal Der Irische Berliner was there). Though I was in Prague at the time of hearing of Bowie's passing, I will never forget my Berlin-Bowie connection.

It was early December in 2008, the last day of my Scouting For the Next tour. It was the end of my Decade of Decadence in Prague and I needed a new country to violate. I was on a 3 day bender, a tiki bar tour of Berlin with one of my Pragueish-American (that's a nationality), Prague-tiki-bar-owning friends. We were hung-the-fuck-over, sprawled out in the lobby of a Berlin-Kreuzberg youth hostel, awaiting our return to Prague. They were playing Bowie on the hostel speakers. Then I heard the softly warbling voice of Bowie transform, Reichisch-dictator-like, into ICCCCHHH!!!! ICH BIN DER KÖNIG! UND DUUUUUUU!!!! DU KÖNIGEN!!! Bowie was screaming 'Heroes.' In Deutsch (Deutsch must be screamed to be truly effective)!  At the time, I had no idea that Bowie had lived/loved/recorded in Berlin. HELDEN done in Deutsch confirmed it: only non-Americans bother to learn the language of their host countries. The truly great ones even learn to sing it (though to be honest, English lends itself better to lyrics. I mean ICCCCCHHHH? Really? I fucking LOVE IT).

While I age ungracefully, wideness setting in the body and mind, I remember my heroes, and where I was when they died. Most of them died while I was abroad. Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, DeForest Kelley (Bones!), and Bowie. Most of my heroes are/were rebels, outlaws and misfits. I would have it no other way. What put the choke in my throat about Bowie's death wasn't the flowers, the mourners or the non-stop Bowie-a-thon music. It was a scribbled note left on Bowie's Hollywood star, which bore a quote by another famous misfit, Guillermo del Toro:

"Bowie existed so all of us misfits learned that oddity was a precious thing."

And so he did. And I'm feeling pretty fucking proud to be an oddity right about now.

Bir Sir (when he was just a little sir) saw Bowie perform live in Mountain View some time in the 90s.  It's all a haze.

Über Rexpat

The....CRONE.....the.....CRONE...

There was a film about the expats in Prague. It was low budget, über-specific, and full of Kafka references and in jokes suitable only for wannabe writers, drunken English teachers and other hapless fuckers with high expectations drowning in a sea of cheap beer. But in the bowels of that particular bog lies a sad truth:

We keep coming back. The film Rex-patriates parodies the sad losers, exuberant dreamers and trust fund slackers who can find no other place to call home. The city, the beer and the women are all beautiful, cheap and gorgeous. But unlike 'creative and cultured' cities like Paris or (recently) Berlin, Prague does in fact suffer fools gladly. I lived in Prague from 1997 to 2008, bouncing back and forth between the States until those bounces became fewer and further between. But even after a failed six year mission to wipe the smelly hipsters off the face of Berlin (2009 to 2015), I returned to Prague. Hi, my name is Craig. I am a rexpat and an exuberant dreamer with no funds in which to trust. So I make my meager way in this world. My way. Every day.

 Já jsem vůl

In past lives I was a Praguelodyte and a Dunkin' Berliner. Now I am a loose can(n)on, a feckless wanderer, a blogger without a cause. Sixteen years spent in Prague and Berlin eating and drinking several metric tonnes of fried cheese, beer, sausage and donuts has made me what I am today: The Wide Body Jetsetter. I am dangerously close to paying for two seats on the plane.

Serial Expatriate

I keep arguing that if you live abroad long enough, you can shed the expatriate label and become something else. What that 'something' is is yet to be determined. I'd like to think I am an American refugee, but this is now not the time nor place for that argument. I have in fact fled my home country in search of a better life. But as I am from a rich country, did not leave with bombs falling behind me, and I did not arrive in a rubber dinghy with children clinging to the sides, I'm just a garden variety rexpat. I'm not a digital nomad; I don't live on an beach in Thailand writing travel blogs and/or designing websites like my good friends Ari and Michael. I'm jealous of them and those like them. But I may just lack the true grit needed to weather the humidity, malaria and mosquito storms. That and the fact that I hate the heat. I wear a Hawaiian shirt in the frozen meat locker of Central Europe.

Stayed Tuned

Travel, fucker. Burn the job, the house, the kids (just kidding; take them with you) and get out of the system which is bringing you down. Choose your own life, your own rules, your own way. The only thing keeping you from doing exactly what you are meant to do in your life is fear. That's OK. I have it too, every time I relocate without a plan. In this blog I will tell you all about the good, the bad and the ugly of living abroad, dodging red tape, traveling on a shoestring and living abroad long term. I will probably also include various scraps of all the other 20 years of travel stories which didn't fit into my Prague or Berlin parameters. Sometimes I will just tell you the best place to get a kickass burrito or a truly dope pizza. Or maybe just dope (I'll have to ask my stoner friends, though).