The long-promised Prague post

About a month ago, I met some of my very good friends in Prague for a long weekend of sightseeing, catching up, and loads of silliness. We fought our way through throngs of tourists, went to the opera (I like Wagner's music, but The Flying Dutchman is not as colorful or lively a production as most of the operas I have seen), took a boat cruise, and generally enjoyed hanging out together.

I was the last person to arrive Friday evening (Rippe arrived several hours later than planned, but everyone made it all of their belongings). We met at our fabulous apartment (the name Riverview was accurate!) and hit the town. Melissa had studied abroad in Prague several years ago and we were hopeful that her memory would serve as a tour guide to the hot spots (and that they would still be hot).

We headed for a place Melissa remembered frequenting, Nebe. It was standing room only, good music, and interesting cocktails. We started with gin and tonics that were served with a cucumber spear. Not a lemon, or lime, as would be traditional but a cucumber spear. To me the smell of cucumber was stronger than the taste, but I found it, well, not as good as citrus.

Soon we discovered that Nebe had changed in the years since our girl was a student, and the newest trend was giant buckets o'cocktail. Your choice... gin and tonic (um, not with cucmbers thanks), Long Island iced tea, screwdriver, and some more exotic choices... of course we decided to try a bucket of Mojito.

No joke, right? And delicious. So we have a few. As in four. Five of us drink FOUR. Of these.

As you can imagine, we got a late start on Saturday. We headed straight for lunch, and opted for a casual Czech-cuisine place near our apartment. The food was so-so, the service was less than stellar, but the bill more than made up for it:
Let's review, shall we? The waiter, who spilled coke on 2 of the 3 Facklers, decided to emphasize the fact that his gratuity was not included. Bold, yes, but not unheard of. Look at the right half of the picture. Ostensibly to make things easier on us, he decided to break it down. He suggests 10% (in Europe, tipping is not viewed the same way as in the US, servers are generally paid wages that are in line with, you know, living a normal life- in many countries, patrons round the bill up a bit or leave change as a token of appreciation). So, I may not be a mathematical expert, but something looks off to me here:

1039.00 x 10%= 103 So far so good, but what do we do now?

1039.00+ 103= 1042 Really? So do you want 10%, or should we go along with your new math and give you the 1042?

After a lot of giggling, and photographing the gaffe, we left him the 10%. It was worth it.

That night, we went to this amazing vegetarian restaurant. It was hip and delicious and even thought the guys complained about the prospects of a meat-free meal, we all enjoyed it. Sunday, the Fackler clan headed out of Prague to visit a family friend, so Rippe and I were on our own. I made him go with me to get bagels. I was pretty excited, but Bohemia Bagel has nothing on Goldberg's. I had a bagel with lox, and a side of civic duty:

Democrats Abroad had organized a voter registration campaign (we actually encountered this group more than once). I was excited, but in the end they just pointed me to a computer... I thought they would at least mail the forms in, but no.

We also toured the Staropramen Brewery. It is a small place in town (for Pilsner Urquell we would have had to leave the city and give up most of a day). It was interesting, I had never toured a brewery before. Our tour guide had no sense of humor, and even less fashion sense. Apparently, compared to other breweries, the tour here was short and they were stingy with the samples (by all accounts the Boulevard tour is a winner). One thing they weren't short on? Rules.
If you have ideas about what some of these mean, please leave a comment. I am very curious...

I was totally impressed with the beauty of Prague, how well preserved the Old Town is, and how many tourists there were. Even on a Monday in September the streets were totally overrun with Americans, Europeans, Asians, all creeds and colors of tourists with big cameras, little cameras, cell phone cameras.... I would love to go again and to see more of the Czech Republic. Especially with good friends.

Phonetic Fun with Feces

Serbian is a Slavic language, more specifically a South Slavic language. It is a cousin of Russian and Ukrainian generally coming from the same mother language. Exciting, right?

Anyway, there are many words that these languages share. Sometimes the definitions are the same, sometimes they differ. And amusing example is the word "ponos". In Russian and Ukrainian, ponos is diarrhea. In Serbian (and other South Slavic languages), ponos = pride. Can you see where this is going? Russian and Ukrainian speakers visiting Yugoslavia were often amused by signs reading "Tito je nas ponos", which to a Serbian speaker reads "Tito is our pride". Now, to the tourist from the East, this of course read "Tito is our diarrhea". Hilarity often ensued.

Fast forward a couple of decades. I was recently in Kyiv with colleagues from Macedonia, Bosnia, and other countries in which I work (see previous post). They had never been to Ukraine before and found time to enjoy the delights that Kyiv has to offer even with our intensive training schedule. Once we decided to visit the supermarket near our hotel. We split up into groups and made our purchases (I was delighted to find instant oatmeal and my favorite Ukrainian beer, others were loading up on sweets and vodka). Some of us were waiting for others to exit the store and when they finally did they were crying and laughing and doing the pee-pee dance. In the store, they happened upon this:

Let me explain what you are looking at. The brand of this canned fish is "Proliv". Which just happens to mean diarrhea in Serbian, etc. In Ukrainian/Russian it means flood (which isn't that much more assuring in canned fish if you ask me). Even better? This particular product is called "Veliki" meaning "big uns". Doesn't that sound tasty? I wish I had known what a gem this was when I used to have a funny can display in my apartment in Odesa... including this and this.

An item that is only related tenuously... there is yet another festival in Serbia that would be fascinating to attend- the World Testicle Cooking Festival (say that five fast) held each May. Can't make it? No worries, you can just pick yourself up a copy of Cooking With Balls.