NA Confidential: Prague

Showing posts with label Prague. Show all posts

Saturday, August 08, 2020

World on A String.

My own personal acme of Neil Young appreciation probably occurred in 1979 with the release of Rust Never Sleeps, five years chronologically and light years emotionally after Tonight's the Night (above).

I was subsequently aroused from Neil-bernation in 1989 with Freedom, the album with the original recording of "Rockin' in the Free World."

This song later brought Young and Pearl Jam together, compellingly, hence their performance (sans Eddie Vedder) in Prague in 1995. I attended this show with Frank Thackeray. The last three songs were:

Cortez the Killer
Rockin' in the Free World
Down by the River (encore)

Young has remained relevant and prolific in the decades since, but it never got any better than that, at least for me, and I'm as yet flabbergasted by modernity in the sense of Googling this show and discovering that it can be viewed yet again.

But I haven't watched it, and probably won't. You had to be there, in a place and a time.

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Two deaths and a ghost, or three amazing stories -- at least to me.

Prague, 1997.

Two of these snippets pertain to recent deaths. The third describes an apparition.

To be honest, I had no idea who Gene Deitch was, and I'm grateful to my friend W for making me aware of his passing, but more importantly, about his life, especially as "the only free American living and working in Prague during 30 years of the Communist Party dictatorship"

Eugene Merril Deitch (August 8, 1924 – April 16, 2020) was an American illustrator, animator, comics artist, and film director. Based in Prague since 1959, Deitch was known for creating animated cartoons such as Munro, Tom Terrific, and Nudnik, as well as his work on the Popeye and Tom and Jerry series.

Several days after arriving in Prague in October 1959, Deitch met Zdenka Najmanová, the production manager at the studio Bratři v triku where he worked. They married in 1964. Deitch's memoir, For the Love of Prague, is based on his experience of being what he called "the only free American living and working in Prague during 30 years of the Communist Party dictatorship". According to Deitch, although he was followed by the StB and his phone was tapped, he was never aware of their presence and was never interrogated nor arrested.

Deitch died in Prague on April 16, 2020, at the age of 95. Shortly before his death, Deitch had noted intestinal problems.

I might have met Deitch on the street without knowing during one of those many days I spent in Prague. Back in America during COVID times, there was an incredible coincidence.

A 100-year-old WWII veteran died of Covid-19. His twin brother died 100 years earlier in the flu pandemic, by Giulia McDonnell (CNN)

A 100-year-old World War II veteran who died from Covid-19 lost a twin brother to the 1918 pandemic a century earlier, his grandson said.

Philip Kahn is the oldest veteran in Nassau County, New York, according to his family, and had been fearful of another pandemic happening in his lifetime, his grandson, Warren Zysman, told CNN.

"It was something he brought up quite frequently," Zysman said. "I would have conversations with him, he would say to me, 'I told you history repeats itself, 100 years is not that long of a period of time.'"

Kahn and his twin brother, Samuel, were born on December 5, 1919. His brother died weeks later, his grandson said.

I read elsewhere that when Kahn developed a cough, he knew exactly what it might signify, and told family members that our government could have acted sooner and more decisively with containment measures.

To conclude, not so much a death ... although Anwar Sadat's family might disagree.

The Ghost Airline That Has Linked Cairo and Tel Aviv for Decades, by Shira Telushkin (Atlas Obscura)

Air Sinai is shrouded in mystery. But why?

The unmarked plane belonged to Air Sinai, which only flies between Cairo and Tel Aviv. In 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a historic peace treaty, overseen by the United States, which inaugurated diplomatic relations between the two countries and made Egypt the first Arab nation to recognize the State of Israel. Air Sinai, founded in 1982, fulfills a term in the treaty that had to be implemented within three years of signing: the two countries must maintain active civilian aviation routes—meaning there always had to be a direct flight between Israel and Egypt.

It just didn’t have to be public.

Saturday, January 25, 2020

For any such place one might miss, there are dozens awaiting discovery.

Haarlem.

The cities profiled below, each of which has had issues with over-tourism, are Amsterdam, Barcelona, Florence and Prague. I've never been to Barcelona. It's been 14 years since my last visit to Prague, and 33 for Florence.

Amsterdam is an interesting case for me. We've been through Schiphol airport so many times I've lost count, but it's been at least 15 years since I've set foot in the city itself. The primary reason for this is the sheer serendipity of having friends in Haarlem, which is a lovely city of 232,000 people just 15 miles from Amsterdam.

Apart from the contents of certain famous museums, there's really nothing to be missed in Amsterdam by someone choosing to spend time instead in Haarlem. A day trip to Amsterdam to visit those museums can be facilitated by frequent and inexpensive public transportation. In addition, these trains and buses run the opposite direction to the North Sea beaches at Zandvoort.

I'll always adore Prague, but if an opportunity comes to return to Czech Republic, there are smaller cities I'd rather explore, like Brno or Olomouc. In recent years, we've enjoyed wonderful stays in Trieste and Catania (Sicily), Italian cities having nowhere the tourist traffic of Florence. Someday, Spain once more; however, having learned from our fine time in Porto (neighboring Portugal) rather than Lisbon, I doubt Barcelona would be on the itinerary.

For any such place one might miss, there are dozens awaiting discovery.

Overtourism in Europe's historic cities sparks backlash, by Jon Henley and Guardian correspondents

Angry protests from residents in popular areas force city hall officials to take action

Across Europe, historic cities are buckling. Mass tourism, encouraged by cash-hungry councils after the 2008 crash and fuelled by the explosion of cheap flights and online room rentals, has become a monster. The backlash, however, has begun ...

Sunday, May 13, 2018

THE BEER BEAT: U Fleků, home of "Bohemia’s definitive dark beer," really WAS founded in 1499.

I meant to attend U Fleků's 500th birthday party in 1999, but just couldn't pull it off. That's a big regret.

Jeff Alworth is a great beer writer. In this brief essay, he takes us to Prague for one of those "Holy Grail" bucket list beers, originally described by the beer writer Michael Jackson, all of which packed off my butt to Europe so very long ago.

U Fleků Flekovský Ležák 13˚: Bohemia’s Definitive Dark Beer, by Jeff Alworth (All About Beer)

When citing the year of their inception, many breweries—well, how to say this delicately?—polish the apple somewhat. The date you find on a bottle may refer to monks who brewed there once, or an unrelated brewery from centuries earlier, or some other abstruse connection to antiquity. That’s why it’s nice to be able to highlight truly historic breweries. And, when they happen to make the classic example of a beer style, they deserve special celebration and acclamation. Thus I give you the sprawling brewpub at the heart of Prague, U Fleků, founded—really!—in 1499 ...

... As far as the beer goes, U Fleků’s tmavé, called Flekovský Ležák, is unusual even by Czech standards. By tradition, breweries list their beer by strength, using the Plato system for measuring gravity. Lower-alcohol beers are brewed to 9˚-10˚, medium-strength to 11˚-12˚, and stronger beers up to 18˚. Many have no other designation beyond the number. Flekovský Ležák is a 13˚ lager, which would typically indicate strength, yet in fact it weighs in at just 5% ABV. That means a lot of sugar has been left behind, which gives it a luxurious mouthfeel, like a pint of cocoa. There aren’t many hops, so you might guess it would be a cloying beer. Yet while it is sweetish, the malts evoke dark chocolate and coffee, and the lagering gives it a smoothness that clips the heaviness. It’s a velvety beer engineered to please the palates of people sitting in the pub for hours on end.

I'd always assumed Flekovský Ležák 13˚ to be slightly stronger than the norm, but Alworth's explanation makes perfect sense. The absence of cloying sweetness in such a beer is testament to the brewer's skill.

Last year, I finally got around to documenting "Roger and Barrie in Prague, 1987." Here's an excerpt. Subsequently I visited U Fleků on several occasions, and frankly, the overall experience was up and down. In 2006, the beer was thin and slightly vinegary. Consequently, I'm delighted to learn that the quality is back, because at its best, it's unforgettable.

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30 years ago today: Our sports club beds, glorious Prague and beers at U Fleků.

At last, it was time for restorative beers and a square meal at the legendary brewery and restaurant called U Fleků. At the time, only one house beer was available, a rich black lager with more alcohol than most and a higher price tag.

In 1987, U Fleků had the faded ambiance of having seen better days, though the beer was solid -- not so much so in 2006, but seeing as the web site of today depicts a plush interior, let's hope beer and furnishings have been rectified.

30 years ago, U Fleků's higher prices remained a stunning bargain in American terms, but qualified the brewery as a tourist joint by local economic standards, and the waiters (mostly male) were both multi-lingual and comically theatrical in their snobby demeanor.

For instance, the food menu. If you didn't speak Czech, the offerings came down to three items: "Pork, beef, goulash."

Eight years later, revisiting U Fleků with one of my beer tour groups, it finally was revealed that a typical Czech restaurant menu had always been available. Tourists didn't know the system, and the waiters weren't about to reveal it, because it was easier for them to remember three words in a dozen languages than navigate choice.

In 1995, we watched in delight as a stubborn Frenchman refused the Holy Trinity and asked instead for a salad (in English, by the way).

He was exaggeratedly refused, but persisted. Finally he stood and guided his waiter to a menu posted on the wall, pointing to the words for his salad.

The waiter squinted, then dramatically pulled his reading glasses from the depths of a soiled apron. He stooped to read ... and shrugged.

The Frenchman got his salad.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

30 years today on THE BEER BEAT: The Automat Koruna, one of my favorite pubs (?) in the world.

Previously: 30 years ago today: Prague's Old Town Square, and why we didn't see it in 1987.

It has been 30 years since my first visit to Prague and Plzen in 1987, and as I’ve belatedly digitalized my old slide film, I’ve been writing about it.

Unsurprisingly, beer has dominated the Czech narrative. To understand what it was like for a beer drinker to be traveling in a place like Czechoslovakia in 1987, you must begin by forgetting almost everything you’ve learned during our contemporary "craft" beer era.

In 2017, there are at least 5,300 breweries in the Unites States. 30 years ago, there were approximately 150 in all of America. Roughly half of them had come into existence during the preceding decade.

That’s right. When I started college in 1978, there weren’t 100 breweries in the whole country.

In 1987, there were around 70 breweries in Czechoslovakia, a country of a mere 15,000,000 inhabitants, as opposed to 242,000,000 in America. The per capita rate of beer consumption was far higher in Czechoslovakia than in the USA, especially in the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, not as much in Slovakia.

Beer and brewing culture were omnipresent and pervasive in Czechoslovakia, although limiting in terms of stylistic diversity – except that in 1987, we’d yet to be conditioned to expect dozens of styles from which to choose when going out for a pint.

In Belgium, maybe, but in Czechoslovakia, one happily endured numerous hop-accented golden variations on a theme of Pilsner Urquell. Notably, no other Czechoslovak brand referred to itself as "Pilsner" – this honor and appellation was reserved for the Plzen-brewed original – and yet the majority were similar, brewed to varying strengths.

The British traveler and beer writer Ronald Pattinson explains a key point.

In 1988 many Czech breweries were almost unchanged from the 1930's. While productivity may have been low, there was no argument about the quality of the beers brewed. Open fermenters, long lagering times and absence of pasteurisation produced distinctive and flavoursome beers. No other country came even vaguely close to the general high standard of Czech lager. It was impossible to find bad beer.

The larger regional breweries - Staropramen, Gambrinus, Velké Popovice and, of course, Pilsner Urquell - had national distribution. Even in a town like Prague, where there were several large local breweries, there was a good choice of beer from the whole of Czechoslovakia.

There also were some dark lagers, which tended to be of lower gravity and exhibiting malty sweetness, as well as the occasional “black” lager of better balance and increased potency. Even an old-fashioned bottom-fermented porter might pop up out of nowhere to surprise you.

Still, drinking beer in Czechoslovakia in 1987 meant sampling the same basic style brewed by different breweries. The fun part was roaming cities like Prague in search of the pub on the back street that served one you hadn't seen previously.

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Barrie and I dropped into several of the more famous Prague taverns during our brief stay in 1987: U Dvou Koček, U Pinkasů and U Fleků among them. The latter was (and remains) a brewery, and in case you were wondering, it helps to know that in Czech, “U” means “at” and is incorporated as a pub name prefix.

Communism was all about investing in selected economic goals, and disinvesting in others. As Pattinson observes, this actually had the curious effect of helping to maintain overall beer quality in Czechoslovakia, in the sense that in the absence of abundant capital for modernization, the older and slower ways persisted. "Old school" wasn't a cliche. It was every day.

As economics pertained to taverns and watering holes, it was a mixed bag. Even the venerable beer shrines reflected the realities of their time, and some were in better repair than others. In most cases, there was lots of wood, plaster and cigarette smoke. The vibe tended to be relaxed and quiet, and inexpensive beer prices were somewhat uniform everywhere you went.

Granted, waiters were prone to padding checks with hidden cover charges, but the prices were so low you seldom noticed – and as noted above, the beer was unfailingly wonderful.

If I’m to be honest about our time in Prague in July, 1987, it’s highly doubtful we dropped into the drinking establishment that subsequently became a great personal favorite of mine, the Automat Koruna. After three weeks in Prague in 1989, the workers probably knew me by sight, if not by name.

In the off chance that Barrie and I enjoyed a beer or two at the Automat Koruna (1931 – 199_?), here is an overview.

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Prague’s famous Wenceslas Square (Václavské náměstí) was the city’s original horse market, and isn’t a square at all. It’s a boulevard, originating atop a gentle rise in front of the Czech National Museum, then descending to where the Old Town begins. At this intersection (Václavské náměstí 1), just a few feet from the subway stop, is a sizeable Art Nouveau building called the Koruna Palace, which opened in 1914.

Photo credit: Koruna Palace

Strictly speaking, an “automat” is a vending machine. The first such automat for food and drink was introduced in Berlin in 1895. From what I can tell, the Automat Koruna followed suit from its inception in 1931, though the Koruna Palace was such a large building that there were other food service businesses inside it. It's never been clear to me where originally one of them ended, and the next began.

Photo credit.

Whatever the ultimate disposition of the vending machines and the timing of the conversion, by the time I experienced the Automat Koruna (sometimes referred to as the Buffet Koruna), it was a high volume, self-service, cafeteria-style eatery with multiple counters, where customers could buy nibbles, full meals, sweets, coffee and the Koruna’s famous strawberry milkshakes.

I almost forgot: It had beer, too.

Photo credit.

You told the cashier what you wanted and paid, to be given a receipt, then waited in a customarily long line, handing the receipt to one of the white-smocked beer pourers. The reward was a cool half-liter (or more) of golden, pilsner-style Pražan beer, brewed a few miles away in Holešovice district of Prague.

You consumed your Pražan and also ate while standing at a stainless steel table. There may have been chairs at the Automat Koruna, but if so, I can’t remember them, at any rate, I didn’t ever sit. Crowds were a constant, and stand-up space sometimes at a premium.

Photo credit (and preceding).

The ambiance at Automat Koruna was urban, frenetic and often claustrophobic – but I loved it, and what a place to drink beer and people-watch during Prague’s latter communist years! The clientele reflected an indisputably egalitarian ideal, although for communism’s usual litany of wrong reasons.

Military men with medal-filled chests jostled for space with long-haired students. Backpacking tourists and pretty shop clerks stood side by side. Brown-suited functionaries left scraps on their plates, and scruffy street people scooped them up before the busser came to visit. It was ill-advised to step away from your beer, because they’d drain unguarded remnants in milliseconds.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that these perfectly presentable half-liter local draft beers were three to a dollar. Cheap beer hasn't ever been this good.

It's a wonder I lived through it.

Next: The long-awaited Pilsner Urquell pilgrimage.

Friday, July 14, 2017

30 years ago today: Prague's Old Town Square, and why we didn't see it in 1987.

Previously: 30 years ago today: Our sports club beds, glorious Prague and beers at U Fleků.

One vital piece of Prague is missing from the 1987 narrative. It's Staroměstské náměstí, or with fewer diacritical marks, the Old Town Square.

On many subsequent trips to the Czech capital (most recently in 2005) I've invariably found myself drawn to this square in spite of its recent gentrification after the fall of communism.

This bird's eye view of Staroměstské náměstí today helps explain why.

Photo credit.

Very few European capitals survived the 20th century with such an urban vista intact. In the case of Prague, Old Town Square isn't the only one -- and it may not even be the most impressive.

Probably my infatuation with this vicinity stems from this basic question:

"Roger, if Staroměstské náměstít is so special to you, why didn't you photograph it during your first visit to Prague in 1987?"

The short answer:

There wasn't anything to photograph.

This requires a lengthier explanation, and so following is an extract from a much longer essay* I wrote about a deceased rock music performer roughly my own age, with the key passage underlined, only lightly edited and updated for clarity.

And, note also that there'll be more to say about the fascinating Automat Koruna in a separate posting on THE BEER BEAT.

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In 1989, during my third Europhile’s pilgrimage, I was in Prague. It was my second visit to the Czech capital, which to all appearances at the time was irrevocably Communist.

To have suggested to anyone that a largely bloodless revolution would occur by the end of the year, as part of monolithic Soviet Bloc dominoes crashing to earth all along the non-Cuban international landscape, would have marked the speaker as an enemy of the state – both in Czechoslovakia, and also in America, where the military/industrial complex hummed merrily along at the behest of the Cold War mentality that I so desperately sought to at least balance by visiting places precisely like Prague.

I’d been to Prague before, but only briefly. My friend Barrie and I spent three days in Prague in 1987, fresh from the Soviet Union and Poland, and these hours were a whirlwind of beer consumption and subsequent forced marches to our assigned beds in an unfinished sports club seemingly halfway to Olomouc, leaving us little time to explore the city's subtleties.

However, it was a joyous introduction to the Czech capital, where vast tracts of the urban landscape still had the appearance of the 18th and 19th centuries, and where small, winding streets led to dank basement pubs populated by working men conducting conversations in low voices, their remarks spices by clinking half-liter mugs of traditional draft pilsner-style lagers.

Prague in 1987: A formerly grand storefront on Wenceslas Square, which almost anywhere else in the world would have been occupied by a trendy designer shop – and indeed again was after the Velvet Revolution – instead hosted the Automat Koruna, a stand-up eatery, dirty and dirt cheap, where half-liter mugs of local beer went four to a dollar, unless the money had been changed on the black market, which was dutifully manned by virtually every restaurant waiter in the city.

Then you got five, maybe even six.

Among my vague, alcohol-soaked recollections of 1987 is one in which Barrie and I were walking through a vast square with a large statue in the middle. Virtually every building in the square was cloaked entirely by impenetrable scaffolding, including at least two churches and the town hall.

Old Town Square was a reconstruction zone in 1987.

According to remarks on our tourist map, it was considered one of the most beautiful in Czechoslovakia, and perhaps in all of Europe, but it was impossible to make a sensible judgment of its merits given the area’s bandaged and mummified appearance.

Besides, owing to the sloth of Communism, the square probably had been under repair for decades, and would continue to be for decades to come. We forgot about it, and went off in search of another pub – perhaps the most beautiful in all Europe; who would know until it was visited?

More than once we came to the venerable Charles Bridge across the Vltava River, and all I could think about was the majestic "Vltava" section of Ma Vlast, the Czech national tone poem written by the beloved 19th-century composer Smetana, who is buried in the cemetery on the nearby Vyšehrad hilltop overlooking the river.

Barrie and I soon left town and resumed our journey westward. Time passed, and eventually I found myself in Europe for the third time.

Very little about Prague had changed when I returned in 1989; the city still seemed to be a time capsule in a myriad of senses, both good and bad, but when I returned to the Charles Bridge first thing and set my sights on the incomparable skyline of spires along the river, and the looming presence of the Prague Castle perched atop the opposite bank, the familiar soundtrack recording of Smetana’s "Vltava" refused to cue in my brain.

Instead of the expected soft rippling of orchestral strings imitating the flow of the river itself, I heard the slow tempo of a synthesized cadence, and the words and music of a slight pop ballad that might not have attracted my attention at all if not for the visual content of the accompanying video, which had played on MTV for months prior to my trip, compelling me to lecture innocent bystanders about the beauty of Prague.

“There, look!” I would drunkenly scream, pointing at the television while everyone else in the room melted away in search of phone books to read.

“It’s Prague!”

The song was “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS, the band’s only #1 hit in the United States.

The video had been filmed in Prague some time during 1988, and it featured the late vocalist Michael Hutchence and his band mates in dark and serious poses that were meant to convey at least part of the city’s very real, cloaked and nervous Cold War feeling, beginning on the Charles Bridge, then down the street from the Jewish Cemetery, and finally ending with the camera at the corner of the glockenspiel on the Old Town Hall for an incredible closing pan of the fully renovated and stunningly beautiful Old Town Square, with nary a scaffold in sight.

They'd finished the renovation, after all.

Viewing the video today, it strikes me in much the same way as my first passport photo: Youthful, pretentious, and innocent (at least in relative terms) in roughly equal measure.

There was no deeply philosophical significance to any of it, and yet I could not extricate the sound and the sight of INXS’s creation from my mind as I walked the streets of Prague in the summer of 1989 – and I haven’t been able to avoid thinking about it since, although now Smetana’s tone poem has returned to its rightful place in the canon, and can again be summoned on demand.

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Next: Pounding beers at the Automat Koruna, one of my favorite pubs (?) ever.

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* essay links here ...

REWIND: Not Enough Time, Part One.

REWIND: Not Enough Time, Part Two.

REWIND: Not Enough Time, Part Three.

30 years ago today: Our sports club beds, glorious Prague and beers at U Fleků.

Castle Hill. Was she aghast? Yawning? Signalling? KGB?

Previously: 30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: The finest restorative Pilsner Urquell ever, upon arrival in Prague.

Tuesday, July 14

I've already mentioned that when we arrived in Prague on Monday morning (July 13), the tourist office's only affordable lodging was located in a neighborhood that looked suspiciously like farmland with a village stuck in the middle. Outskirts is putting it mildly.

It was a suburban sports club facility, intended as something along the lines of a very small, localized YMCA (without the "Christian"), with a soccer team of its own and an emphasis on grassroots physical fitness in the absence of huge capital outlays.

Sportovní klub Dolní Měcholupy (Na Paloučku 223/11, 109 00 Praha-Dolní Měcholupy, Czechoslovakia) was allowed to host tourists, who slept in finished rooms amid a building that remained under construction. The vibe was rather like a hostel, which is the way the tourist office described it.

This exterior view of the unfinished Sportovní klub Dolní Měcholupy was taken on the final night of our stay in 1987. We'd just returned from Plzeň.

And 30 years later, via Google Map.

That's the place, all right, and it proved to be marvelous. The double room was brand new, and an amazing bargain at $7 per person, per night, with a few extra coins required for public transport both ways.

There's the rub, because it was quite distant, and first we had to find it.

Directions and a sparse map had been provided at the tourist office on Monday morning. The sports club was a lengthy commute from the city center, roughly 11 km (7 miles), and required riding a subway to the end of the line, then taking a bus to the final destination.

This valuable information duly was recorded and placed in my shirt pocket, to be examined eight hours later after a hot, taxing day of too little food, too much beer, and unexpectedly, a few glasses of Moravian wine.

In mid-afternoon, reeling from multiple Pilsner Urquells at U Dvou koček (At Two Cats), we encountered a bearded intellectual wearing a beret who had spotted us wandering the streets.

Both definitions of the word "Bohemian" aptly describe him.

1. a native or inhabitant of Bohemia.
2. a person who has informal and unconventional social habits, especially an artist or writer.

In gestures and very slight German, a deal was reached. In return for buying him glasses of Vltava Embankment in his favorite wine cellar, we could listen as he spoke quietly to us in several languages, none of which resembled English, discoursing about ... well, I've never really known, to be honest.

It was fascinating in an incomprehensible but atmospheric literary Prague sort of way -- and we emerged at street level far more intoxicated than before.

It was early evening, and we stumbled back to the train station to liberate our packs. The subway portion of the journey was manageable, and now we only needed to locate the bus stop.

At this point my faculties utterly deserted me. With bus route signs on every corner, written in a Slavic tongue I'd never encountered, all the while experiencing some semblance of fatigue-, hunger- or alcohol-induced delirium, or probably all three, my sanity plain left the building.

Barrie endured my frustrated temper tantrum, which included kicking an unattached garbage can. No doubt aware that we were foreign guests visiting a Cold War police state, he sighed and placed a hand on each of my shoulders, forcibly seating me on a nearby bench, and saying just one word:

"Stay."

I obeyed, watching as he strolled over to a sign that read "Taxi" (hmm, just imagine loanwords), approached the first car he saw parked near this sign -- it amazingly bore a corresponding "Taxi" inscription -- and pressed a five dollar American bill into the driver's palm along with the sports club's address.

The driver nodded. Barrie turned to me and spoke a second word:

"Come."

The driver probably would have taken us all the way to Brno for $5, but point humbly taken and an important lesson learned. Small wonder Barrie became a teacher. Minutes later, we were standing outside the sports club headquarters.

The man on duty was friendly and welcoming, and had inexpensive light snacks and beer for purchase at rock bottom prices. In the three decades since, Prague appears to have expanded outward to meet the facility, but at the time there were fields and a peaceful, easy feeling. I'm forever glad we booked it.

On Tuesday we found the bus stop, and henceforth experienced no problems in the least with taking a series of 25-cent bus and subway rides. First on the priority list was Castle Hill, featuring Prague Castle and sweeping view of the city.

Below, the American flag flies from the United States embassy. On the skyline can be seen the "rabbit hutches" (prefabricated housing blocks) of New Communist Prague, surrounding the historic city center like a wall.

The construction of St. Vitus Cathedral, which sits like a crown atop Castle Hill, began in 1344, but the church wasn't completely finished and consecrated until 1929. The juxtaposition between this symbol of Catholicism and the life of Jan Hus is instructive.

Early in his monastic career, Martin Luther, rummaging through the stacks of a library, happened upon a volume of sermons by John Hus, the Bohemian who had been condemned as a heretic. "I was overwhelmed with astonishment," Luther later wrote. "I could not understand for what cause they had burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill."

The Protestant Reformation wasn't simple in the lands comprising a modern Czech Republic, but the cathedral's gargoyle decor was mighty keen, and I had a zoom lens.

Eventually we descended Castle Hill and climbed one of the towers down by the Charles Bridge.

It's amazing how empty the bridge was then, compared with today.

At last, it was time for restorative beers and a square meal at the legendary brewery and restaurant called U Fleků. At the time, only one house beer was available, a rich black lager with more alcohol than most and a higher price tag.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: The finest restorative Pilsner Urquell ever, upon arrival in Prague.

Our Warsaw hotel room.

Previously: 30 years ago today: Both Auschwitz and Lanzmann's Shoah.

Sunday, July 12 and Monday, July 13

At some point in the evening on Saturday, a sweaty quartet of exhausted Krakow sidetrippers returned to the Hotel Nowa Praga in Warsaw, just in time for the official end-of-tour departure party. Only one indelible memory remains of this event.

Among us was a college-aged San Franciscan of Polish extraction, who'd devoted time during our absence in Krakow to exploring family connections. During the course of his wanderings, whether by design or happenstance, natives had undertaken to tell him the story of Jerzy Popiełuszko, whose grave he visited.

Jerzy Popiełuszko (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjɛʐɨ popʲɛˈwuʂkɔ]; 14 September 1947 – 19 October 1984) was a Polish Roman Catholic priest who became associated with the opposition Solidarity trade union in communist Poland. He was murdered in 1984 by three agents of Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), who were shortly thereafter tried and convicted of the murder.

I recall the two of us talking at length during the party about the deep and sudden impact of Popiełuszko's legacy on my fellow traveler, and what it meant in the context of Polish freedom. Combined with my own morose reaction to Auschwitz earlier in the day, it may have been the most sober drunken evening of them all.

On Sunday afternoon, most of the group departed by bus for the airport to return to Copenhagen. I hadn't arrived in Moscow with the group, and I wouldn't be leaving with it. Barrie and I had tickets for the overnight train to Prague, and a there were a few hours left to kill.

A few of our tour mates also remained on hand; like us, they had planned differing exits. Our Polish tour guide Bozena was around, too, and so the stage was set for a carefree late afternoon and early evening. One by one, goodbyes, farewells and amens were said, until only two Hoosiers remained.

Dazed by meal of spaghetti and inexpensive Bulgarian cabernet, amazed at having uncovered a few bottles of Austrian-brewed Kaiser Bier at the Hotel Forum’s foreign currency bar, and largely unfazed at the prospect of the long trip ahead, Barrie and I stood alone in the shadow of the monstrous Stalinist Gothic Palace of Culture in downtown Warsaw.

We bowed to the edifice, and walked to the central train station to hop the sole overnight non-express to Czechoslovakia.

These being the days of waning Communism, our jovial mood couldn’t have lasted very long. Although our essential documents – passports, Czechoslovak visas, train tickets and couchette reservations – were in order, we had neglected to pack food and drink for the journey.

It was Sunday night. All the stores were closed, and mini-marts were in short supply in Communist Poland in 1987. Oddly, convenience had yet to be written into the five-year plan.

My backpack and Barrie's duffel bag bulged with Soviet black market booty, and we strained to lug them along while desperately foraging for victuals in the vicinity of the rail station’s platforms. Even with handfuls of colorful złoty, there was nothing to purchase except grainy licensed Swiss chocolate and returnable bottles of imitation cola.

The final whistle blew. We boarded hungry, and did the best we could to sleep in the stifling summer heat.

Twelve hours later the marathon rail crawl finally ground to a halt, and we stumbled into Praha hlavní nádraží station looking like bedraggled refugees from a war zone. Stomachs audibly growling, poorly rested, filthy and quite thirsty, the sodas having long since been drained, we dragged our belongings to the baggage storage check and lightened the load.

Departing the station, we were treated to our first glimpses of Prague’s timeless majesty and the city’s then-current reality: Standing in front of the museum at the top of the long, gentle rise of Wenceslas Square, against a backdrop of the old city sparkling in a bright morning sun, a taxi driver sidled over and asked us if we’d like to change money.

Several minutes later, one of the three official room finding agencies placed us for three nights in an athletic club dormitory on the far outskirts of the city. It would be several hours before we could check into the room, and probably another hour to get there.

Starving and parched, we were cast into the mysterious, gorgeous, crumbling city to fend for ourselves.

Exhilaration temporarily overcame fatigue as we ventured into the winding streets, over cobbled roadways and through strange arches. Soon, to our growing excitement, we found that the city boasted more than spires, spies, stucco and scaffolding – beer was all around us, and at last, pubs were in abundance.

After two weeks in the Polish and Soviet lands, where vodka reigned supreme, we were in Bohemia, the Euphrates of European lager brewing tradition, and the home of the original Pilsner beer.

We resolved to walk a just bit more before finding a good place to enjoy a draft beer – preferably Pilsner Urquell or Staropramen, or another Prague brand if necessary.

Armed only with an inadequate tourist map, Barrie and I crossed the Vltava River on the famed Charles Bridge, ascended Castle Hill, wandered down the other side, crossed the river again at a second bridge, and finally were devoured by the twisting alleyways that we knew eventually led back to Wenceslas Square.

A garden variety sight during our walk.

At length, having paused briefly two hours earlier for sausages dispensed from a tiny streetside window, we glimpsed the familiar green script of Pilsner Urquell adorning the façade of a faded, orange-and-pink-painted building.

Fate at Two Cats.

The final steps were the hardest. We passed through the stout wooden doors of U Dvou koček (At Two Cats), where Pilsner Urquell indeed was the house beer, the daily beer, and in fact the only beer available.

Blissfully unaware of protocol, we slumped heavily into wooden benches in an interior hallway. Unconsciously drooling, our beleaguered senses slowly were revived by the cozy, smoky, conspiratorial warmth of the main room, where clusters of Czech workers, students, soldiers and officials sat conversing.

Huge platters of pork and dumplings sat before many of the customers, but to man, each and every patron cradled an indescribably lovely mug of beer – and make no mistake: They were glass mugs, not the more stylish half-liter glasses that supplanted them not long afterward. It seemed too good to be true … and almost was.

Alarmingly, the waiters completely ignored us.

I limped to the long, imposing counter where a brawny, mustachioed man stood next to a pair of matching taps, both pouring the exact same nectar, and with a wheeled cart filled with clean mugs. Mustering my courage, I flashed four fingers and muttered, “Pivo, prosim,” having miraculously recalled the proper words without stealing a glance at the guidebook buried somewhere in my day pack.

He looked at me quite seriously, then smiled and complied, relieving me of roughly $2.00 while pushing four half-liter drafts across the slick countertop.

The brilliant golden liquid was cool, not ice-cold; frozen beer only numbs the palate, and though appropriate for Pabst, it certainly isn’t necessary for anything as grand as Urquell.

The noble hop aroma was evident and enticing, fighting through the billowing white head to reach my nose even at arm’s length.

Everything about the beer itself and the venue in which it was about to be consumed spoke of quality, respect, tradition, and the sheer, unbridled joy that one feels to be an adult and to think, feel and understand what is good about life.

When Barrie saw me approach, he bolted from the wooden bench and fell to his knees in a spontaneous demonstration of faith and appreciation that I’ve seldom witnessed in any church – such was the genuine, heartfelt intensity prefacing his gesture of supplication.

Seconds later I spotted his eyes, wet with unrestrained tears, his cheeks flecked with beer foam, all visible through the thick base of an empty upturned mug.

Needless to say, my reaction was comparable. I’ll never forget this moment of triumph and revelation, of this sense of beer ecstasy that will never be understood or truly appreciated by anyone who defines beer by the number of calories it contains or the volume of advertising revenue it commands.

Ominously, the alcohol went straight to my head ... and we still had to find our lodgings.

Next: Our sports club beds, glorious Prague and beers at U Fleků.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Michael Hutchence died 18 years ago today, and as yet, there is "Not Enough Time."

Michael Hutchence died 18 years ago today.

In 2012, INXS finally had the good sense to give it a rest, and the convergence of the band's retirement with the anniversary of its singers's untimely death prompted a series of reflections. These are linked below.

This recurring fixation goes back to my salad days as a younger man in Europe during the 1980s, coinciding with the band's period of peak popularity. Simply stated, the older I get, the more I realize how much my inner life still incorporates the personally written mythology centering on my relationship with the city of Prague. The singer's band accidentally wrote the soundtrack, so now it's all been mashed together as one.

Here are the series links.