We spent our last three days of Lenka’s birthday extravaganza in her home town of Plzen (birthplace of pilsner beer) at her parent’s house. Lenka’s sister Pavlina graciously gave over her room and the whole upstairs of the house for us to crash in. Her parents were immensely welcoming; her dad picked our bags up from the train station and her mom already had goulash and potato soup ready for supper, followed by two kinds of delicious homemade cake (the recipes were demanded immediately). There is an abandoned brick factory behind the Zikmund household and I think their home used to be a part of it, but they’ve done so much work to it over the years so you’d never guess. Our upstairs was bright and full of skylights, but the most interesting feature of the lot were the pigeon houses.

Pigeon apartments more like: three big sheds housing somewhere between 150-200 pigeons for Lenka’s dad’s hobby of pigeon racing. He has been buying and breeding them for years much to his wife’s displeasure. We saw the babies in their nests, teenage birds duking it out for the best perch, new birds acclimatizing in a closed cage, and of course the champions. There was a race on Saturday and it went like this: the ten fastest, brightest birds were equipped with trackers and shipped to Belgium the day before. At 8am they were released where they flew way up, got their bearings by the earth’s magnetic field, then headed straight for home at an average speed of 70kph. Around 3pm the first ones arrived and their trackers triggered as they entered the yard. Lenka’s dad said sometimes they’ll land on the chimmney in the brick yard instead while he yells furiously at them to come down within range of the detector.

Lenka’s dad took us out for beers the first night, but we were still pretty trashed from the night in Český Krumlov so we had to pack it in early. The next day we went for a tour at the Pilsner Urquell brewery, obviously a much beloved icon in the town of Plsen. The highlight of the tour was the 9km of cellars beneath the compound where they used to ferment beer in barrels. They do it aboveground now in air conditioned tanks, but back in the day it was ice blocks and wooden barrels. They still do a few barrels a month this way just for the tourists, and we had a few glasses of it which was the best beer we’d tasted since BC. It’s the same hopped malt that turns into (imo pretty tasteless) bottled Pilsner Urquell beer, but before the filtering and pasteurizing process takes all the yummy hoppiness and depth from it. We found out they also serve it in a single pub beside the Pilsner Urquell museum, but that’s it. In Czech we mainly drank Gambrinus and Pilsner Urquell, and a lot of it. Not very interesting for my tastebuds so I kept being difficult and ordering mead or wine cocktails, but I could drink that unfiltered Urquell every night for the next month and be happy.

That day was Lenka’s birthday so dinner was a big party with her family and all her old friends from school. Four of us shared – you can probably guess at this point – a huge plate of meat. It included a big slab of fat back which frightened me but Colin later quoted it as the best thing he’d eaten in Czech. I should mention Lenka is a vegetarian, I don’t know how she put up with us and our carnivorous ways. I drank korma which was beer and mead combined, and better than it sounds. Then her parents took Charlie and Chelsea (who had to leave early the next morning) and Colin home, and the rest of us went out on the town. It was a special religious occasion and all of the churches in Plzen were fully open to visitors including their catacombs. We visited one where somebody was playing random notes on a gigantic organ; most visitors were young people on their way to the bars but surprisingly nobody seemed to mind. The club we went to was nothing special, we felt pretty old and the DJ played OPP (yeah you know…). It was attached to a cafe which was more our style and of course since there are no open container laws in the Czech Republic we could just take our drinks outside.

We took it easy the next day. We hadn’t stayed out late, but I think the busy week was finally taking its toll and we just needed some downtime. We did some shopping at the Tesco while Matt and Colin went for one more unfiltered beer, then we walked around some and snacked at a cafe built into the old town wall. Lenka’s mom once again outdid herself and baked us strudel and gingerbread for breakfast then an amazing dinner. She is one remarkable lady, and to our delight she speaks English very well and has a wonderful sense of humor. We ate out in their yard and followed dinner with a bottle of wine, then another, then another, then some plum vodka… Lenka’s dad obviously enjoyed entertaining us as he topped up our glasses and we celebrated the straggler pigeons returning on their long journey from Belgium.

Today Kim, Lia, Jeff, Colin and I embarked on our own journey by train. Lenka’s mom made us all fried egg sandwiches for the trip and I spent the last of my Czech crowns on exotic chocolate bars. Our train from Prague to Vienna has – get this – tables and power outlets. I’m having a pretty blissful time here sitting by the window with my laptop, developing photos and watching for the Czech-Austrian border to go by.

Ciao Czech Republic, next up: Italy!

Okay so, from here things get a little hazy. We took a day trip to the Bone Church in Kutna Hora. It was this little nothing church until some famous religious guy threw special dirt on the floor, then it suddenly became the hottest place for miles to have your grannie buried. Everybody wanted in, and after a few plagues and a thousand or so years, this tiny church had 30,000 bodies and no space to put them. They’d leave the bodies in the ground for awhile then have to dig up the bones and make room for fresh corpses. First they just stacked the bones outside, then some nutball monk started getting creative. He arranged them in huge cubes, pyramids, in the shape of crosses and spelling out words, and in a spectacular chandelier. The oddest was a coat of arms that used lots of the smaller bones for all the details. For most of it he only used the best bits (femurs and skulls) because he had so damn many to work with. I believe I finally had my fill of dead people on this outing.

That night we experienced The Pub (Pilsner Unique Bar). It’s a chain of bar/restaurants with beer taps in the center of each table. You compete on a huge scoreboard to see who can drink the most each night against people in other bars and cities. I’m happy to say we were tops in our bar and third in the country by the end, though it helped having 9 people at our table. The food was surprisingly good too, except for the nachos which Colin ordered against everyone’s advice. He’s been craving Mexican food since we left BC but here sometimes ‘nachos’ means Doritos with watery tomato sauce dip.

Next day we left Prague for good and headed to the cutest little town in Czech: Český Krumlov. It’s adorable, adorable adorable. There’s a huge church all painted up with trompe l’oeil and sundials, there’s a bear moat (with bears!) and a big wall all built into bare rock. The big river in Prague also runs through here and is dotted with restaurants and cafes and people raft on it. It’s touristy but in a very chill way with lots of local artisans and cute cafes, no obnoxious touts or trinket shops.

We went for dinner at the Two Marys, and here is where things got seriously fuzzy for me. We shared another big meat plate, but the portions were surprisingly small for Czech and we didn’t end up stuffed full as usual. Which meant more room for beer and delicious hot mead. Lots of room. We ate outside beside the river, it starting to rain lightly but still warm and we were under cover. We met some German guys in their 70s who were bicycling across the country and stayed for another round. And another.

Then we came back to the hotel – oh I should describe it too because it’s worth recommending – the Traveler’s Hostel is run by very nice people and the apartment that we shared with Charlie and Chelsea was like a ski lodge, one three story high room with a kitchenette and view of the castle. We all spent most of the next morning in there because of what happened after we got back from dinner. We ended up in the Hostel bar drinking beers, wine and soda, and you could tell the exact moment things got out of control: tequila shots.

So some things happened, I think there was a dog and foosball, a scruffy Australian guy, a lenghthy Christopher Walkin impression and an excessive amount of Alanis Morisette. Cut to most of us waking up still in our clothes and with terrifying hangovers. Colin seemed to have the worst of it, but if I remember clearly I think the tequila was his suggestion. The day after was a bit of a writeoff, but we spent most of it on the train to Plzen anyway. We all squeezed into a train compartment together and I nodded off for some of it.

If I had dreamed it might have been about some of the Czech stuff I’ve forgotten to mention so far:
– Zachodova Baba (Bathroom Grandma), our name for the ladies who take your 5 crowns in pay toilets
– Potato Pancakes soaked in pork knuckle fat
– Jeff holding whole conversations in Czech after just learning it, such amazing linguistic talent!
– Křdžhřk (Crojar) and his even more mentally deranged younger brother Aggro Bucket Man
– Hot Cherry Brandy and cold Raspberry pop
– Sharing a train compartment with a surly twentysomething nerd in a black dragon t-shirt
– Creepy VW Bug-sized metal babies climbing up the side of a communism era tower
– Heisel Humr (Toilet Lobster), the product of some sleep deprived minds on the train
– Rabbit and Quail and Venison oh my
– Lenka ordering for us in Czech at every restaurant and buying all our train and tour tickets, what a wonderful guide she has been!
– Evil train station lunch ladies
– Glowing fetuses on the sides of buildings
– Stinky smelly pickled beer cheese
– The magician pulling a hankerchief from Lenka’s rear end

I feel like I’m not doing these days in Czech justice so far. Probably it’s because it was like four days ago and there was so much happening (and a lot of beer) that now it seems like a blur. Let me stress that we were A) super happy to be with our friends, B) very impressed with Czech food, and C) in love with the peace and beauty of Prague.

On our third day we visited the Walshtein gardens. We had seen it from afar and noticed a grey wall that looked from a distance like it was built of howling faces. Up close it was more like random patterns in lava, but every here and there were indeed hidden faces. There were peacocks, then we took a furnicular up to a tower that looked sort of like the eiffel tower. It was a long way up it, and Colin hopped the entire way. He certainly earned his beer that day, wheuf.

It started out as a beautiful sunny day, and I wore my little dress from southwestern Turkey and my new leather strap sandals. I just developed about five pictures of myself, so vain. But after we came back down from the tower, the clouds finally came together over us and the sky broke open. It poured! We scurried for cover in a mirror maze and took hilarious pictures of ourselves as three foot tall gnomes with cone heads and beasts with long dangling gorilla arms. We also saw the Cimrman museum in the tower basement. Cimrman was a fictional person, a pseudnom for political artists around the time of the revolution. In the museum we witnessed his made up life as an inventor of such devices as the gentleman’s travelling chamber-pot and a clip that secured your glasses to your hat so neither would fly off.

The rain only got worse as dinner approached so we eventually had to make a run for it. Out of the park, down the furnicular, across to the metro and back to the castle we ran from cover to cover. Nobody was expecting rain and only Colin had a waterproof jacket with a hood. By the time we made it across the bridge to the restaurant we were soaked through. Poor Jeff was starving and looked like a wet cat. We wrung out our clothes, hung the outer layers up to dry and started with a round of hot grog. Colin and I shared goulash in a bread bowl and for once we weren’t too stuffed for desert.

We hit up the brewpub (pivovar) Fleku next door where they only had one type of beer. Servers wandered table to table with platters of the dark and tasty brew and shot glasses of bitter yellow liquid. An old guy with an accordion and a wide smile played Long Way to Tipereli and Yellow Submarine and everyone sang along. It was touristy but we didn’t care; we were dry and warm and the rain had stopped outside. Good beer and friends: all was right with the world.

Even though after the pork knuckles the night before I swore I’d never need to eat again, I was happy to take a second bowl of granola at the complimentary breakfast on our second day. Colin was even happier; he really hated those white-bread-and-bad-olives pension breakfasts in Turkey. We gathered ourselves and explored the area around the old castle. Some things were closed but we saw part of the palace, and a neat chapel with people buried in the floor and a creepy green skeleton statue. We watched japanese tourists getting their pictures taken with the stoic palace guards.

For lunch we went to a brew pub in a monestary and I had a terrific IPA. Well I think it was terrific, but to tell the truth it had been awhile and my beer tastebuds may be going. I had a reasonably light meal of crispy fried trout. In the afternoon we met up with some of Lenka’s friends at a beer garden in the park. Tonight was the night of some important Czech hockey game and the place was filling up in anticipation. You should all know how hopelessly ignorant Colin and I are of hockey events so it won’t surprise you that I don’t even know what game it was, but it was clearly important. After a few drinks, the Czech strangers at the end of our table surprised all of us by pulling out a deck of Bang cards. They needed a couple more players to have a game, so Charlie and Colin obliged. The cards were in Czech, but Charlie had most of the cards memorized by their art after two years of playing Bang at Three Rings at lunch. No kidding – what a coincidence that they’d pull out this game in front of him! I believe Charlie and one of the Czechs had a joint win.

We left just as the hockey game was about to start, and people looked about ready to fight eachother over our table which had a good view of the big screens. We had a dinner reservation at a bar that was also showing the game, so we got to watch and cheer along with everyone in the bar. We had another meal of epic proportions, starting with beef tartare served with raw egg, paprika, onion and other spices that you mix all together and spread on fried bread rubbed with raw garlic. Serious yum. Then some excellent cabbage soup, and for a main I had a very traditional Slovak dish (Lenka said Andrea would be proud!) which I thought was like a very rich mac and cheese with spicy sausage bits. I could have lived on the stuff when I was in university but was so full I could only manage about a third of it. Czech Republic won the game against Russia. We were expecting honking car horns etc (you should have seen how excited Istnabullers got over football) but the streets were silent except for the occasional yells from a bar here or there.

Colin and I arrived in Prague in the evening, just minutes after Charlie and Chelsea’s flight landed. Our travel time was a little shorter than theirs… by about 20 hours. We were driven to the hotel by an expat from San Francisco who gave us a bit of foreigner insight to the city, pointing out communist era apartment blocks that had been recently painted in an array of pastel colors in an attempt to cheer them up. The buildings changed dramatically as we got closer to the heart of the old city where we were staying at the Castle Steps. The streets in that area are cobbled but very wide, the buildings old and decorated with statues of cherubs and gargoyles. Over the doors each has some sort of iconic image of a scene or an animal, which were used to identify them, eg “deliver this to the Two Suns building, a couple doors down from the Rooster building by the old nunnery”.

We’d been eagerly awaiting seeing all of our friends in Czech for Lenka’s birthday (Lenkapalooza), especially after the solitude of the Bond House. Due to a British Airways strike and some schedule changes, the rest of them had gotten in much earlier in the day and were hanging out on their terace and drinking, trying (some unsuccessfully) to stay awake through the day. We celebrated our reunion with more beer and some fresh baklava, then made our way up the cobbled streets to the Seven Cockroaches “medieval style” restaurant. They sat us downstairs at a long wooden table with huge lance hanging over it. The walls were decorated with hops, boar hides and tapestries and around the corner was a dungeon scene complete with skeletons.

We sat down just as they were starting their nightly show, beginning with a dancer dressed as a saucy maid who pulled Colin up to sweep around her (then up her leg) as she danced. She got a bunch of us up and taught us a short barn dance kind of routine where each couple had to pass through the other’s arms. Then we had just enough time for our first beer before The Magic started: an eccentric magician with a tiny ponytail in his beard did some slight of hand tricks. Colin was unimpressed with the slight of hand but loved his patter. Our favorite was when he closed his left hand around a hankerchief, then described in detail how the hankercheif was travelling up the veins in his arms to his chest (Lenka translating and providing misdirection) then back down his left arm where it reappeared in the same hand it had started from.

We feasted on pickled cheese, pork knuckles and lard spread on large slices of bread, more food than we could possibly eat. The dancer came back in a belly dancing outfit, climbed up on the table beside us, spread broken glass onto it and danced barefoot in it while we all winced. The magician reappeared with baby rabbit sponges that magically multiplied in our closed fists. There was some fire dancing, but no snakes.

After dinner, we rolled our pork knuckle filled selves outside and went for a walk over the old bridge to admire the castle area at night. I blissed out at how silent and wide the rods were after the crazy streets of Istanbul. No cars on the sidewalk, no delivery trucks that just barely fit threatening to run you over around every bend. Old Prague is peaceful and beautiful and old. It survived both world wars virtually intact and hardly any earthquakes or fires or other major disasters have bothered it in the last thousand years. I should probably look that up to be sure (I know there have been some bad floods), but the number of perfectly preserved old buildings was amazing.

Sarah <3 Prague!