Alfons Mucha, The Green Fairy, and Fried Cheese Sandwiches

Down from Berlin into Prague, we passed the red-roofed farming villages. We passed the tiny yellow fishing boats atop a glassy lake and the public announcements full of "und, ein and strasse". In passing over a bridge, the dialect over the intercom became clipped and slavic. Just as we figured out how to pronouce it, we were spit out at Praha Hlavni Nadrazi and wandered out into the patina wonderland of Prague, Czech Republic. A quick jaunt along winding streets, past overlapping stands peddling bratwurst and fried cheese sandwiches, of which we made a mental note of for later, art nouveau chocolateries and cabaret and strip clubs, we wound up at Archibald City Design Hotel, a delightfully air conditioned pillar of rooms from which we got a Prague-wide vista. Packs off, it seemed like no time before we found ourselves bathed in the peachy dusk glow on Wenceslas Square. 

Armed with our street food, replete with the requisite spicy mustard flecked napkins and a beer that set us back thirty cents, it began to dawn on us that Prague was going to be more than just a porky stopover between Germany and Italy. 

Funny money: A Czech Krona

Searching out another Bourdain haunt, we went on the hunt for Pivovarsky Klub, a pub with over 200 bottled beers available as well as six regional draughts that you definitely will not find anywhere else. Best Hefeweizen I've ever had. EVER. 

We had taken in Czech street food but we wanted to get a sense of good Czech food. It feels similar to what seems to be available around it. Czech food is similar to Hungarian food, Ukranian food is similar to Russian food. People who were close together, tended to do food that was close together. Regional cuisine is fascinating. On one hand, French cuisine (which we have been fed intravenously for six months) is lush, flamboyant, full of cream and butter, cognac and laminated pastry. Eastern Europe seems to have a cuisine built on about four ingredients, in a variety of different manifestations. And that pig gets used up. There's knuckles, ears, jowls, tripe (which WHAT THE F do you want to eat that for?). In Czech's case, pork rolled in early and established its turf. And NOBODY disagreed. Czech cuisine is a study in what comes of, "This is all we've got to work with and I need you to be able to work until you fall down." Goulash. Goulash is the answer. Beef. With bacon dumplings. That's what I had for lunch. Me. 

Said Pork Knuckles.

'Sup Goulash. 

Moozh in his element.

That meal had more pork in it than I think I've ever eaten in my entire life combined. I don't have anything against pork per se. I had no formative experience of trauma in my youth regarding pigs, dead or alive. But I have been on a diet decidedly lean on animal protein of any kind for quite a while now. My digestive system isn't even really mad yet, just very confused. It's still looking at me, a week and a half later saying, "What do you want me to do with this?"

I somehow doubt the Slavic diet is any easier for a meat eater to process. Boil dough in water and that crud will keep you going for at least twelve hours while you chuck hay bales. Or drink a beer on a patio somewhere. 

Moozh had me try his pork knuckles, which came with a side of raw white onions and a pickled pepper -which makes for choice breath afterwards- so that he could have an audience while he pontificated on the virtues of whole animal butchery. The pork knuckle was very good actually, very tender. But then he started talking about it being tender because the collagen melted. Suddenly, I just wanted a big, bottomless beer and no more pork. 

Prauge, more than beer, and more than pork, held one thing for me. The Mucha Museum. My favourite style is Art Nouveau and in my opinion, Alphone Mucha is the unchallenged king of Art Nouveau. Gaudi is great, Beardsley is distinctive in his own way, Klimt just does his own thing, Horta designed some beautiful buildings but Mucha quite literally pioneered the style that is so instantly recognizable. He lived a pretty charmed life, too. None of this suffering for his art, crisis of calling nonsense. From an idyllic village in Bohemia, where he was born and eventually died, to a series of financial benefactors throughout his life that facilitated his every artistic desire paired with an almost instantaneous fan base that has far outlived him, he pretty much grabbed on to an uphill trajectory and never let go. He not only drew theatre posters, he designed jewelry, furniture, theatre sets, and produced what he called The Slav Epic, a set of twenty canvases that are easily fifteen feet square and chronicle Mucha's interpretation of significant events in Czech history. It is a truly massive work. He painted them all with the intention of donating the entire work "to the Czech people" with the mere proviso that they display it in a place where civilians could see it and appreciate it. 

No photos were allowed in the museum so we don't have a ton to show for our time there. The Mucha Museum had what felt like a poor value for the price. At ten krona per person, they carried a handful of Mucha's works as well as some of his sketches from personal sketchbooks. They also had a film of Mucha's life on a loop at the back of the room. But it was probably no bigger than a 7-11, with many of his most amazing pieces not represented. They are in partnership with the Franz Kafka museum which probably meant that their attentions were not truly focussed on the Art Nouveau genius that is Alphonse Mucha. I wish I had done my research a bit better but for the same price, we could have seen the exhibition of the Slav Epic in the Grand Hall at Veletrzni Palace. 

Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, the guy behind that insane Walt Disney Concert Hall and that limpid pool of serenity The Waterfall House, collaborated with Czech architect Vlado Milunic to design a building to fill an empty lot along the river that they affectionately nicknamed, Fred and Ginger. It has since been renamed The Dancing House but I personally like the original name better. 

Prague has a fascinating art installation culture. Whether it's an aged, mossy statue, decades old, or a new cue of yellow penguins along the riverside, you are never short of something to look at. 

The central squares, like all of Europe, are a marvel, chock a block of things to suspend and entertain you. The astronomical clock is a 600 year old clock, the oldest clock in the world still operational.  

Gothic figures rise from the gothic history of Prague, one full of creative, artistic people and a harsh history, one of hostile takeovers and subservience.

Jan Hus statue

Charles Bridge is an ornately decorated bridge that leads to Prague Castle. Over time, it has been continually added to. 

We realized here that every city we've been to post-Paris has their own version of the Love Bridge. We're okay with that.

Though he never actually stepped foot in the place, he did seem to provide the anthem to a young generation trying to get out from under the thumb of Communism. John Lennon has his very own wall in Prague. Aptly called 'The Lennon Wall', it is a ongoing project, to which anyone can contribute. 

Yeah you should!

Rails of grapevines and iron-work fences climb the mount that leads to Prague Castle, the largest castle complex in the world, as deemed by the Guinness Book of World Records. A UNESCO Heritage site, it sits high above the city, providing a view that you couldn't have conjured, a view dense with forests, glittering river currents and baroque building faces. 

We wanted to see it because it's of significant size and, you know, it's a Prague thing. But Mucha designed a stained glass window for St. Vitus' Cathedral, which is inside the complex. The stairs were a good antidote to our heavy-laden diets and we even got to see the changing of the guards by accident. 

Clad in pale blue uniforms that appeared to be made out of couch upholstery fabric, the guards put on the same stern face of those at Buckingham Palace, replete with the goony tourists trolling around in front of them trying to get them to crack a smile.

We picked up an absinthe beer along the way. Everybody else had a beer, we were beginning to feel left out. We even found an absintherie, where you can get absinthe mojitos and margaritas. 

Absinthe is first and fore mostly a Parisian thing. At one point, the Parisians alone were drinking about 3 million litres of the stuff. No wonder the government thought it must be a problem. But since the ban of Absinthe in the 19th Century, the stuff never really lost it's stigma. Even still, there are many places in the world where Absinthe production is still illegal (the good ol' US of A being one of them). The Czech Republic, with its Bohemian leniency, has cashed in on this in a way. The country currently produces the most Absinthe out of any country in the world and drinking absinthe has become a uniquely Czech thing to do while you're in Prague. There has been no definitive research to support the fact that absinthe messes you up in any way. The potentially-hallucinogenic property in Absinthe, thujone, comes from the herb wormwood. Most absinthes have about 10 mg/kg of thujone in them, which essentially means you'd be sloppily peeling yourself off the floor before you would have enough thujone in your system to accomplish anything. Stronger, "Artisan" absinthe contains 35 mg, which sounds exciting but would probably still only get you as buzzed as a cigarette. Some absinthes come with 35 mg in them but again it's such a minuscule amount that it probably wouldn't do much. The classic preparation of absinthe involves sugar and water added to taste. Some pour water over a sugar cubed balanced on an absinthe fork until the sugar cube melts. The "Czech way" is to dip a spoon in the absinthe and then in granulated sugar. The alcohol on the spoon is then set alight and the flame caramelizes the sugar, which drips into the absinthe. "Straight up" is harsh and apparently a dead give away that you're a tourist but absinthe is a fairly accessible flavour, similar to jaggermeister. I had mine straight up. What does that say about me? There's a popular cocktail called the Death in the Afternoon -invented by Ernest Hemingway actually- where absinthe is mixed with Champagne, named such for reasons I'm sure we can all deduce. 

Moozh and I had hunted down a local pub, over across the tracks, away from anything on a tourist map, that served what was voted the best pale lager in the Czech Republic. And Czech is the birthplace of the original pilsner, a tiny village called Plzni. Pilsner, just like Champagne, or Parma, is a place-specific word. It's not just a lager. It's a beer from Plzni. The region has soft water, and regional hops that all contribute to a unique flavour in the beer. The Nook Brewery's Koutska Dvanatska is a phenomenal beer. Light and therefore infinitely drinkable, but with a complexity that no pilsner across the Atlantic achieves. We tried some more of Nook's beer, which each had a different characteristic to them, floral, spicy, toasty. Moozh got some headcheese and I met the first cheese I didn't like. 

Prague held this uncommon beauty about it. The dense forests and pristine mountain vistas of Central Germany, with the clippy, Slavic tongue and sensibility of neighbouring former-Soviet bloc countries. Like Germany, they managed to preserve facets to what it means to be Czech, eat Czech, feel Czech on the other side of Soviet occupation. 

Things I learned in Prague: 

Fried cheese sandwich = win. Cheese that tastes like sweat = no thanks. Prague has both. 

Where language is concerned, Czech and Russian are not the same. And you get a funny look when you act as if they are. 

Quote from Prague: 

Moozh: Now THAT's a mother f'ing sausage.