Prague Pizza Putsch

Long ago in the Roaring 90s in Prague I had a blogger gig for something called Pell-Mell: CyberNews for Expats. I had to churn out a whopping two (2) blog posts per week in exchange for rent. And I could choose whatever twitching topic fell out of my pivo-addled brain.

When I completely ran out of grist for the mill, I once wrote an article with the title Prague and the Great Mango Chutney Shortage. Of course there was a mango shortage; nobody here ate tropical fruit in the 90s. There were only about a half dozen Indian restaurants in Prague at the time, and only one of them offered mango chutney on the menu. And it was a Pakistani restaurant. One day they ran out of mango chutney. The shortage lasted for weeks. Imagine my expat rage.

20 years later. There is now an explosion of international dining options in Prague. Now that these ex-Commie fuxes have had 30 years to get with the program, I wonder why, in 2022, you can hardly find a pizzeria or Italian restaurant in Prague with garlic on the menu. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Italian food without garlic is like a day without sunshine.

Pizza Everywhere

As Capitalism slowly oozes over the former commie soil and replaces everything with rampant consumerism, pizza restaurants popped up everywhere in Prague. In fact, I believe that there are nearly as many pizza restaurants in Prague as pubs—and that's saying a lot in the beer drinking capital of the world.

At first the Chinese restaurants starting taking over the failing Czech pubs that only offered warm, flat beer and tepid food with botulism sauce, served by a drunk with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. No wonder the Asians took over. At one point I remember seeing my old street in Prague with up to 15 Chinese restaurants on one street, sometimes two of them were right next to each other. They all had the same photo menus in the window, dishes M1 through M19, all exactly the same chow at the same prices.

Clearly this was an immigration scam. Nobody wants Chinese food in Prague THAT badly. But one thing about the swill: it rarely gave you food poisoning and the staff were always Asian. And courteous.

The Prague 'pizzeria' of today is filled to the rafters with Czechs, and they bring all of their hideous, flavorless, peasant food habits to the table. Sadly, this includes pizza with saltine cracker crust, ketchup for sauce, lumpy Czech cheese in thin, see-through strands, and almost no flavor whatsoever.

You would think that with thousands of pizza joints in Prague, some of them could carry garlic, right? They've got garlic in Czech restaurants; it ain't a stranger.

Czech Food: Bring a Guide Dog for the Bland

I remember a Frenchman on a Prague expats forum wrote “When searching for Czech food, bring a guide dog for the bland.” It was his forum signature and it appeared on every post. Maybe he was trying to tell us something. Every time he posted. Fair enough; the French found a way to make snails edible.

But Frawnchy wasn't far from the truth. Czechs have very bland taste, and rarely use any form of spices or herbs stronger than oregano. Ketchup is too spicy for them, as the markets offer 'mild ketchup' for those who cry like babies at the thought of normal ketchup. So it is quite normal for the Czech interpretation of pizza to include sauce without any herbs, and pizza without garlic. Without oregano, basil, and garlic (and any decent amount of cheese), you might as well take that Czech pizza and throw it like a Frisbee. If only because it tastes like one.

Paltry Prague Pizza

I've given up on finding 'American style' pizza in Prague (No. American pizza is not just thicker crust. It's thicker cheese, thicker toppings, and thicker flavor). Now I search for the hole-in-the-wall joint where some pizza chef spent time not only in Naples but also in New York or any other American city. Sure, Naples may have invented pizza, but it was definitely not perfected there. Its thin, burnt cracker crust, paltry toppings, and weird greens on top ain't cutting it in my Wide World, friends.

But one thing Italy has in buckets: garlic. You can smell the pungent smell of garlic wafting out of the window of every single restaurant in any Italian city you visit. So why, for the love of all creatures great and small, do the Czechs forget to offer garlic on their pizza?

Some Prague pizzerias offer one pizza with garlic on it. And there ain't much more on there. Or worse, the damn thing has eggs on it. Or corn. MUH?!?

Garlic isn't for everyone, granted. But it should be offered as an added topping, like the dreaded anchovies in American pizzerias (Which baffles me. Nobody eats anchovies). Just in case some weirdo wants pizza with flavor. Garlic costs nothing and keeps well. Just sayin', Czechies. Lose the corn, the tuna, and the eggs. That shit don't belong anywhere NEAR a pizza. Get garlic, bitches.

Ironically, Czechs Eat Garlic

What makes the Great Garlic Gastronomy Conundrum even worse is that Czechs are no strangers to garlic. In fact, two of their most famous dishes have enough garlic in them to vaporize a village of vampires.

Topinky: fried slices of bread with 3 or 4 RAW garlic cloves on the side. You take the raw garlic and scrape it across the surface of the fried bread until it becomes a smooth paste. Then you eat that stuff, shake your head, and yell YOWZA!

Bramboráčky: (potato pancakes): grated potatoes with garlic, green herbs, flour, and eggs, fried in a shallow pan. These Czech staples often come so loaded with garlic that you reek of it for days. Delicious!

Too Complicated for Czech Palates

Czech food is simple food, handed down for generations. It's hearty, heavy, and hefty enough to fill your belly on a cold winter day. Maybe the flavor fell out of the food during communism, when gray banality ruled the day, and thin gruel was paradise to the poor bastards. I dunno, I wasn't there.

Perhaps having a combination of pizza crust, rich, flavorful sauce, gooey mozzarella cheese, and a fistful of fancy toppings is a bridge to far in Prague. It's quite rare to find a Czech pizza with more than 2 toppings on it. A typical pizza will have mushrooms and ham, or ham and olives, or ham, ham, and ham (they dig on swine). Perhaps adding such tongue teasers as garlic and oregano to their pizzas would cause their dumpling-shaped heads to explode.

Big Sir's Favorite Prague Pizzas

Johnny's Pizza: Boo-Yow!

If I could combine the fantastic crust of 360Pizza with the brilliant pies of Johnny Pizza Bar, I would be in heaven. Johnny offers garlic on several of their pizzas and you can always add garlic to any pizza. Sadly, 360Pizza offers no garlic on the menu. Which is a shame, because that pizza dough is the closest thing to American style pizza dough in Prague: crispy on the outside, soft, fluffy, and chewy on the inside. It's the only pizza crust I actually eat all the way to the edges. I usually throw the Czech dried-out-cracker pizza crust to the damn pigeons.

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If you have any Prague pizza perfection to share with me, let me know. Even if garlic ain't your thang, let me know about the place, the pie, the toppings, and the dough ray me, muchachos. Don't worry if the place has no garlic on the menu. I will soon start wearing garlic garlands around my neck like jewelry just in case I need to break off a clove or two and flavor the shizzle out of my next pizza.

I will scrape that raw garlic right then and there on the thin, crispy crust. Don't make me. I'll do it.

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.

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.

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.

Spontaneous Spa Town

As firmly established in my last post, my wife loves to drag my lardy ass out of the house randomly and for no purpose other than to watch me sweat, squeal, bitch and moan. Of course she says she is doing it out of love—and to make me do healthy things in nature to keep me from having a heart attack. But the very nature of these healthy things usually places me at high risk of a heart attack. So it goes.

On this particular day, the usual bribery was in place: I promised to get my ass out of the house, walk medium-to-great distances for no reason, then I get to have fried cheese and beer in a village pub as a reward for my efforts (if I'm not killed in the process). I had a brilliant plan: take a 15 minute tram ride over to Hloubětin Chateau (like we did last week), get pics from the opposite side (for better lighting), and to retire to the Old Czech Pub in the 18^th century house just down the road. It was easy peasy, no major hiking, and minimum effort for maximum reward. I'm just going to cut to the chase: gray skies. Bad lighting. No photography possible. No chateau walk. No old pub possible as a bribe/reward. Fuck.

Plan B: Is This Where I Get Cheated Out of My Fried Cheese?

Then she pulled a plan out of the spontaneity hat: 'Let's go to Poděbrady! It's got spas and springs and blah blah blah.' I tuned out due to a short attention span. But since the train trip was an hour each way, there would be no chance for her to finagle her way out of the promised land of beer and fried cheese.

Poděbrady, like all Euro-towns, has a history. And it is either unintelligible or unpronounceable. The hipsters and trustafarians living near Jiřiho z Poděbrad metro station can only call it JZP. But Jiři is George and he is from Poděbrady. But he was also the King of Bohemia in the 1400s, a Hussite (Protestants Against Catholics, or PAC man, if they'd had acronyms back then). You've gotta give Prague credit for fighting the Catholic power: Jan Hus (Statue and Church in the Old Town Square) and Jan Žižka (One-eyed general and Catholic-ass-kicking patron of the whole Žižkov quarter of Prague). The Two Honzas (nickname for Jan) won many battles, but lost the war. Catholicism ended up dominating most of Europe, but the Czechs settled on good-old-fashioned Atheism as a final result. A most excellent tie breaker if I do say so myself.

Healing Waters and Horny Old Folks

Poděbrady is also a spa town. Bohemia has many of these, the more famous of which lie in the mountain range between Germany and Czech (Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázně, etc.). If you have the geographic blessing of spring water for drinking and soaking, some of the best beer in the world, and a history of treating heart patients—well, it was fate that I would have to go there. If I had a heart attack during the hours of walking, I would be in the right place.

As we walked down the long promenade-slash-park from the train station to the Old Town, several fountains enclosed in glass greeted our gaze. Sadly, most of the fountains were as dried up as the old ladies milling about aimlessly. Then my wife said something really frightening: 'This place is famous for old people getting laid.'

'UGH! Why would you say that? Now I can't UNHEAR that!'

Then she proceeded with the tired old 'you prude' argument, saying it was perfectly normal for crotchety old farts to chase wizened old prunes around in the sauna. Just because they 'can' do something, doesn't mean that I need to hear about it. I blame the damn Viagra. It's like Bill Maher said regarding boner pills for old folks: 'Grandpa! Leave that old bag of bones in the next room alone!'

So with the awful imagery of fragile fossils fornicating, we continued on until my first requisite stop, the old castle. To many Americans, the European castle is a fantastic remnant of a steel-and-stone history, and a reminder that America isn't old enough to have castles. So I've spent the last 20-odd years drifting around Europe catching castle pics and stomping around stone ruins. My full imagination employs itself: high stone walls with tiny windows strong against the barbaric hordes, lofty round towers seemingly made with the sole purpose of keeping the peasants out of the princess's knickers, and cold, hard halls filled with the smell of roasting meat and the sounds of heavy mugs of beers clunking together with HOORAHS and hey...

...Is that a pub over in the castle courtyard?! Yes! Maybe they'll have swarthy barmaids swinging swine clubs amid drunken lords. Or at least have a slab of sýr for me to slide down my gullet. Sadly, it was only a cafe. But still. A cafe with a view to a 12 century castle is better than a sharp lance in the eye. For some strange reason, my babe didn't like the castle. It was too square and well, too military for her. She prefers the quaint, frilly castles of the renaissance and baroque periods. In the 12 century, castles were built for function more than form. But we wouldn't get to find out what lies in the hallowed halls of Poděbrady Castle on that day. All castles close to the public at the end of October. Which is a pity. Just when the cold and wet air whips clouds into battle formation, filling the skies with castle clouds (my phrase for heavy, black/gray puffy clouds which add to the mystery of a castle picture), they close the fuckers.

A Dram of Whiskey, A Jug of Water, A Slab of Cheese

Well, at least I got a warm whiskey in the cafe to bolster my spirits. Then we finally found a working tap which dispenses the famous Poděbrady mineral water, right there in the castle courtyard below the maiden's tower. After filling up a jug with the water (which tastes of salt and iron), we slowly wended our way back through town, stopping for my (YES!!!) smaženy sýr, hranolky and tartarka, washed down with local beer.

Carrying a backpack with a tall jug of water in it can be challenging, and the jug often flopped over in my backpack, requiring my wife to get into the pack and wrestle it back into shape, muttering under her breath, “Damn thing handles like a bag of dicks.”

I am so glad I took the time to teach her my favorite redneck aphorisms.

Photos by Gabriela Sarževská

The Swine Club

A Blunt Instrument Best Used in Hand-to-Hand Combat

The first rule of The Swine Club is: you tell EVERYONE on the internet about The Swine Club. You just need to know the secret code: Pečene vepřove koleno (petch-eh-nee veh-przhovee koh-leh-no). This is Czech for 'roasted pork knee.' It is a massive chunk of swine flesh served on the bone, au naturel, on a board with a knife sticking out of it. Czechs don't merely cook their piggies. They get medieval on their knees.

Photo by Gabriela Sarževská

I've had several friends ask me for the code when they were about to visit Prague for the first time. It usually went something like this: 'Where can I get that piggy-thingamajig on a piece of wood?' To which I replied, 'Oh, you mean the large, greasy piece of roasted swine that you pick up by the bone and use to club uppity vegans into submission? That would be the koleno. And you are in luck, my carnivorous friend: you can get that almost EVERYWHERE in Prague (or at least everywhere vegans fear to tread).

You might be thinking, 'Why would I want that? I'm happy with fast food chains and safe food options.' I'll tell you why. Remember the Medieval World scene from The Cable Guy? Piles of meat on the plates, scraps and bones on the floor. And jousting. And a disenfranchised chick saying 'I'm your serving wench, Julie.' You know you'd pork that.

Der Schweinenhammer

Bohemian and Bavarian cuisine (if you can call a diet based largely on beer and pork 'cuisine.' It is also known as Muslimsbane) are similar. In Bavaria (Munich und freunds) they call my dear Pork Mallet Schweinshaxe, also badly translated as 'pork knuckle.' Who the fuck puts knuckles on pigs? Anywho, I prefer the more barbaric word der schweinenhammer, or pork hammer. Don't worry. You won't have to remember that one because it's not on the menu. I just made that shit up because it sounds cool. That's what we wordsmiths do. We hammer words until they squeal. Sometimes we kneecap the bitches, and occasionally, but only rarely, we get medieval on their asses.

But whether we call it koleno or haxe, they both have the same effect on you. After you eat it you will feel like you've been pounded in the stomach by the red hot hammer of a medieval blacksmith. This feeling is what your humble culinary servant WBJ calls The Hammer of the Gods. It hurts. It hurts so good.

Baskets of Bread and Other Useless Shit

The Pig Cudgel usually comes with mustard, sauerkraut, horseradish and a huge basket of bread. Don't fill up on the bread. Trust me (think: stomach hammer). This beast is 1 kilo of meat, fat, grease and bone. Use the bread sparingly, just to absorb the greasy blow of the swine club, use the mustard and horseradish as an antiseptic balm for the roast beast, and tip the server. He/she just might know the Heimlich maneuver.

You can find koleno in most tradtional Czech hospodas (pubs) or restaurace (guess). Make sure it's served on the board with the knife. You will feel like either a viking warrior or a klingon. Unless you're a vegan. Then you'll feel about as useless as an asshole on an elbow. Or a knee. Or a knuckle...

The Czech Beer Revolution

Did They Really Need One?

For the Czech Republic, beer is king. They are the number one beer drinkers per capita in the world. Per capita is a fancy-shmancy term where they take the amount of beer sold in a year and divide it by the entire population. It's easy math wherein even babies drink. Per capita is the only way to get a decent head count, because some countries are bigger than others, and because some people can drink 10 times more beer than a baby. So it goes. You probably thought Germany would be the largest beer consumers, what with the lederhosen and that Oktoberfest thing. Well, they were. But Oktoberfest is more than half foreigners, so that shit doesn't count. That and Czechoslovakia split in half and the Czechs dropped their wine-swilling Slovak cousins into the dust while listening to Bohemian Rhapsody. When a city map is redrawn into specific districts in order to favor one political party, this is called gerrymandering. With beer consumption and countries, it is called beerymandering.

Photo by Gabriela Sarževská

Back in The Day (the day I first arrived in Prague, a fine day in 1997 to be exact), every Czech pub was pretty much the same: smokey, wall-to-wall wood paneling, small tv high on a corner shelf, and full of young and old drinkers from opening to closing. There were slight variations of course. The most notable was the type of beer offered. You could walk down a single street in working-class, punk rock, gypsy Žižkov and see at least a dozen different beer signs from an equal number of Czech towns. They had 3 things in common:

1. they were all good
2. they were all cheap
3. one day a week topless bar babes served you the beer.

The reason the beer was (and still is) cheap is simple. Czechs would overturn the government if they levied a beer tax and/or raised the price of beer too much. So beer was classified as 'liquid bread' so as to be taxed as a basic foodstuff, a necessity, a staple, and a mainstay of Czech existence. Clever bastards. Topless beermaids.

DIVERSITY

So many beers back in The Day, so little sobriety. There were pubs every 50 feet and a different beer sign sticking out of each one. It was like staring down a row of colored squares on a life-sized Beer Monopoly board. There was Pilsener Place, Gambrinus Gardens, Kozel Avenue, Samson Street and Budwalk. I saw it as a challenge to try them all. At about a quarter per pint (back in The Day, nowadays about a buck fiddy), the only challenge was not to get too wasted before noon. I never used to be a daytime drinker before I lived in Prague. But you can't pay double for a soft drink. It's bad beer math. One thing hasn't changed: Czech beer is cheaper than water. And who the hell would pay 50 cents for a small glass of warm, flat Coke with no ice when you can get a tall, cold beer for a quarter? Only a MADMAN, I tell ya.

BEER WARS AND THE END OF CHOICE

Prague survived all the major world wars intact by just giving up and being annexed by whatever bastard sons of bitches were in power at the time. This saved all the old precious buildings and even more precious breweries from being leveled. But Czech beer was in true jeopardy when all of the breweries were being bought up by foreign beverage distributors. UK's Bass company held sway for awhile, then sold off the Czech breweries it had owned to the Japanese. ABMiller bought up many of the major Czech labels, and as is always the case with corporate conglomeration, something gets diluted in favor of profit. Globalization equals Bud/Coors/Miller. Anhauser-Busch, the purveyor of the worst and most popular bilge water beer known as Budweiser, takes the And How's Your Douche Prize for stupidest legal move. They tried to sue Czech Budvar, the original Budweiser (from České Budějovice, aka Budweis in German) for use of the name Bud. Oh yeah, that went over really well. Hey, Douchebags! Czechs invented Budweiser in 1785, a hundred fuckin' years before your piss even passed the first Bowery bum's bladder. All they managed to win in the suit was the right to keep American beer fucking close to water. Again. Budvar beer is renamed 'Czechvar' when imported to the States. Wouldn't want to confuse the rednecks with actual beer.

So just like in the Monopoly game, that previously-colorful Žižkov pub street became one massive Pilsener Place, with every sign becoming Pilsener Urquell and Gambrinus (owned and brewed by Pilsener). Every pub started serving the same beer. Even the topless beermaids started to look a little tired and droopy. Pubs started closing (or worse, being sold and turned into biddie bistros where squared headed, burgundy-haired, middle-aged women met over cheap wine and squealed about how they got the house and car in the divorce).

BEERENAISSANCE

I left the Czech Republic and lived in Berlin for 6 years. They have more breweries, and many of them are run by monks. Especially in Bavaria. Ohhhh, mighty monk beer.... A nice German guy told me the best (and probably only) German joke: 'How are sex in a canoe and American beer the same? Both are fucking close to water.' Damn right. So I dove into the monk beer and was baptized in the rheinheitsgebot (German beer purity law of 1516).

On several return visits to Prague for photo jobs, I started to notice a change. On one particular visit to my favorite pub district of Žižkov, there was a new phenomenon brewing: the Czech craft beer. One pub I stumbled into had not only the usual 3 Czech beers, but a whole line of 9 taps serving beers I had never even heard (or dreamed) of. There were even a few microbrewery mainstays like IPA, the once-staple strong ale of microbrewery fame. There were porters, stouts, ales, bitters and blondes, all foaming at the mouth and screaming for my attention. It was about. Fucking. Time. Apparently the peasants revolted. Didn't want the same 3 beers. Hated the corporate oligarchy. Missed the days of old.

Since that glorious day, I've seen a host of microbreweries, craft beer pubs and guest beer tap lists sprouting and hopping up around Prague—even in the outlying areas. My latest cheap-ass apartment in the run-down, industrial district of Praha-Libeň houses several such fine and dandy beer bases. You can sip a strong stout in the cellar bar Napalmĕ at Palmovka Metro (or sit ouside in sunny weather), or you can even go to the Kolčavka pub just up the road, where they are raking steaming malt and hops out of steel cauldrons right in front of you while you sip your ale. It's like a 3D film for the beer enthusiast. With smell-o-vision. Something fondles my nostalgia when I smell beer being brewed. It's like Mom's Malt-O-Meal or oatmeal on the stove mingled with the smell of burning coffee. If I were to ever get rich and famous and be in need of my own fragrance line, that would be it.

Today I went to the Pivovar Kolčavka brewpub up the road. As it was lunchtime and I have no compunction whatsoever about daytime drinking, I sampled 3 different beers. I also had fried smoked cheese to wash the beer down with. Cuz I am all about the smazhak. The first (and best) beer was the Summer Ale, 13 degree. Czech beers are sold by degree: 10 (most common), 11, 12 and... you get the pic. The degree is something about specific gravity or something hoppy or jumpy—I don't care about the geeky bits. I just drink the stuff. But the higher the degree, the stronger, which is all a beer mathematician needs to know. The 10 degree is about 4% alcohol, and it goes up about a point per degree. All of the beers I sampled had that fresh micro brew taste. I can't describe it without getting all nostalgic about Malt-O-Meal again, but that flavor is exactly the same in Sacramento or Praha-Libeň. Except Czech beer is 5x better. Add to that the various types of hops and malts offered in each type of beer and you get beer perfection. I also had something called Best Bitte, which I thought was German, but it was in fact a bitter beer. They also had a hořka, which is Czech for bitter. Then there was the IPA, famous for hoppy bitterness. Apparently you can't be bitter enough. There was also one called Mrtvy Kostelnik, translated something like 'dead friar.' It was the strongest beer on offer. As tempting as that was, I had to pass, as fried cheese, french fries and 3 strong ales is already enough to kill a bull moose.

I oozed home along a winding path by a creek and I stopped to listen to the water burbling off the stones. I thought about how a small country won against imperialist brewers and purveyors of cheap swill to the growing global economy. Half of the major Czech breweries and most of the minor ones are still owned by Czechs in spite of the best efforts of Big Beer. But in a country that has been brewing beer since about the year 800, that makes all the sense in the world.

Smažený Sýr!

One Wide Man's Comfort Food

Fried Cheese. It's the stuff of life. Or at least the stuff of my life in the Czech Republic. Everyone needs to find their vice, their relief from the pain and suffering of being mortal. Some choose heroin, meth, crack, hoes, or heroin-addicted, methed-up crack hoes. I do not judge. For me, my vices are The Beer and The Sýr. I guess I would call fried cheese my comfort food. But that's not saying enough. It doesn't 'comfort' me in the way that macaroni and cheese comforts a white trash stoner. My smažený sýr (pronounced smazheny seer) experience is more like trying to stuff a slab of greasy cheese into a hollowed out knitting needle and jam that bitch into my tongue. I'm almost ready to seek help.

Tourists and travelers alike want to know what Real Czech Food is. Yeah, you can have gulash, but the Hungrarians already had that, and sure, you can score some chunks of roasted meat and sauerkraut, but the Germans probably invented that shit as well. If you want something so real, so tasty and so gawdamn decadent that Czechs themselves swear it's the FIRST thing they eat after returning from abroad—it's the fried cheese.

Photo by Gabriela Sarževská

'But we already have that,' a skeptical American friend said. 'Au contrare, mon frer,' I corrected, you have your mozzarella sticks. In Czechia, they take 2 fuckin' SLABS of cheese, batter the beJAYzus out of 'em, then chuck 'em in the deep fryer right next to your order of fries, then throw it all on a plate with tartar sauce. Occasionally there are small strips of sad sauerkraut or shredded parsley on the side as a garnish. You can safely ignore that shit and dive right on into your hunka hunka burnin' cheese.

Fried cheese is like sex: the worst fried cheese I have EVER had...wasn't bad. It was served in a train station, lukewarm, rigid, rushed and served with no enthusiasm by an old woman who clearly hated her job. And then there was the fried cheese...

The Smažený Sýr Zine

Back before weblogs became blogs, feckless writers who couldn't be published in magazines wrote zines. These poorly crafted tomes were oftentimes the alternative mini manifestos of whatever subcultures were popular before the iphones made zombies of our chilluns. I wrote one of those things, hand printed in pen and ink, to be released in Prague in the late 90s in the height of the (sticking fingers in air in ridiculous quote signs) Prague Literati (unfingerquote). There was just a metric fuckton of American wannabe writers (and Brits as well) living in Prague, sucking up the fried cheese, cheap beer and doe-eyed babes like a whale sucks brine through baleen.

My Smažený Sýr Zine was subtitled 'A Toxic By-product of the Prague Literati.' At the time, too many poetry readings were being given by thin, twitching vegans under the banner of Beefstew. When I first arrived in Prague in '97 with 400 bux in my pocket, I was also a misguided vegetarian. My last girlfriend in the States had warped my brain and stomach into a new diet without meat. Since then I have discovered that the vegetarian diet doesn't work for large men. All the tofu in the world won't fill the protein void. And kale? Gofuckyerself.

I chose cheese. It was in a restaurant near Karlovo namesti where my cheese cherry was first heated, stretched, and broken. The joint was full of smoke and beer and just the kind of apathy that made me comfortable in my own skin. I took the unintelligible Czech menu from the unintelligible Czech waiter and pointed to the plate of the man at the next table The man was cutting into a fried, breaded pillow of something which oozed onto a pile of french fries. 'Is that vegetarian?' I asked. 'It's cheese,' he replied. Then he brought me one.

And with that, Craig Robinson was in love.

I needed to tell the people. They needed to know my love. I wanted to start cults of fried cheeseheads which would put the Green Bay Packers fans to shame. And I wanted to smear the sýr all over the local newspapers and shout cheesy yelps of joy from the rooftops.

The Smažený Sýr Zine project withered in the udder. I had hand printed one—all 4 pages of it (double sided A4, folded in half) and all I needed was the money for a copy machine. I would print HUNDREDS of these cheesy little bastards, change the global diet, and jam my middle finger up the collective noses of all those wannabe 'Prague Writers.' Maybe the project died because a good friend of mine read it and called me a fucking idiot. Or maybe it died because the world wasn't ready to embrace a radical deep fried cheese diet, one which would throw the Earth off its axis from our sheer heavy human MASS. Or maybe I didn't have fifty bux to print the damn thing. You and I will never know. Oh, the bullet we dodged.

In the meantime, I attend cheese church religiously, looking for my sacred cow. Many times I have thought about writing reviews about where to get the best fried cheese in Prague, but the lack of culinary consistency in this country makes me think the cooks are on a rotating prison work furlough. You can get a perfect fried cheese in a pub one day, and the next—total fucking hockey puck. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason.

Cheese Spotting

As mentioned before, bad fried cheese and bad sex are still better than a sharp stick in the eye, so fried cheese reviews might seem pointless with such a non-gourmet food. But after a few thousand pounds of cheesy goodness washed down with cheap, delicious Czech beer, I can offer the following fried cheese guidelines with absolute authority.

1. The cheese must be at least 40% fat in order to melt well. Otherwise you are eating a rubber hockey puck. You can often get 3 or 4 diffferent types of fried cheese: the basic eidam, the snooty camembert, and the risky blue cheese. My staple is the eidam (eidamer in Deutsch).
   
   
2. The fries must be cut thick and fresh on the premises and fried to a golden perfection. Anything less is just frozen fast food fries. The better joints even let you choose the style of your fries: traditional, 'American' (wedges) or boiled potatoes. But don't order the latter unless you are a starving Russian author just released from prison.
   
   
3. The tartar sauce must come in a mini gravy boat with lots of little green herbal chunks. If they try to fob off a package of tartar sauce, you can feel free to deduct that shit from the tip. Cheap-ass-bitch tax, I call it.
   
   
   
4. If a menu has fried cheese and french fries on it, but doesn't include the tartar sauce in the price, keep walking. These cheap ass Czech fucks like to charge for condiments. Hell, they even charge 50 cents for each ketchup packet in McDonald's or any other American fast food joint. The nerve.
   
   
5. Hit the lunch menus between 11am and 2pm. It's a few bucks cheaper. Some of the more enlightened restaurants extend those golden, cheesy hours to 3 or 4pm, knowing that some of us don't get up at 5am, work in factories, and eat lunch at 11am.
   
   
6. After all I've said, you still might be tempted to get one of the meat dishes from the lunch menu. Don't do it, I'm telling you. Unless you like eating three tiny, outdated, discount market chunks of stringy, fatty, grisly, dried out meat served in a sea of universal brown sauce and a metric fuckton of dried out dumpling paperweights. Trust me, life is too short for that shit.

The blogger is chock full of fried cheese as he posts this. But he still needs to ask you:

Where did you have your best fried cheese in Prague? 
Where can I find that tasty shit?

Photo by Gabriela Sarževská