(Or a wet weekend in Prague)
After Harold’s startling display of his ability to transform himself at will (see “Harold: Prince of Darkness”, BEM March 2001), Prague seemed the perfect place for a long weekend, with its Kafkaesque connotations. I was somewhat apprehensive at the idea of waking up in bed with a giant beetle, but luckily the metamorphosis did not take place, and all I woke up with was a giant hangover after a late night out.
Prague is stuffed with bars, restaurants, cafes and lovely shops. It makes Kraków look quite poor by comparison. After checking into our rather smart hotel near the Embassy (the “Zlate Studne”) we headed off in the direction of Charles Bridge, stopping en route to sample the local beverage. Czech beer is infinitely suppable – hardly fizzy at all, a lovely amber colour and with a definite beery, hoppy taste, unlike most of today’s bland lagers. It’s fairly low in alcohol too, compared to Polish beer, so you can drink away throughout the afternoon without spoiling your appetite, as Harold intended to prove. As it turned out, the weather was appalling – freezing cold and either snowing or raining most of the time, so we ended up doing rather more sampling than planned, in the shelter of cozy dry ale-houses. Prague Spring certainly left something to be desired this year.
Charles Bridge was packed with tourists, mostly German and British, but quite a few Spanish, for some reason (“Juan or two,” quipped Harold). We shuffled up Karlova in the crowd, window-shopping for garnet jewellery and chandeliers en route, but got carried away with naughty T-shirts, painted Easter eggs and puppets. You don’t need to ask, of course Harold did his Thunderbirds impression, followed by a rendition of “The Lonely Goatherd”. He was so entertaining that people started throwing coins and one lady asked if she could book him for a children’s party the following week. I dragged him away hurriedly, and as a result we lost our way completely in the winding backstreets, and ended up on Wenceslas Square. From there we shuffled down past Marks & Spencer and found ourselves in front of the most gorgeous building. Obecni Dum is a riot of art deco, with a divine looking restaurant where I pictured myself in a cloche hat, sitting smoking black Sobranies through a long cigarette holder, like something out of The House of Elliott.
From there we wandered aimlessly through the old town until a familiar name loomed before us: “Tesco”. We couldn’t resist poking our noses in, but found it bore no resemblance to anything back home – it was a rather sad old Eastern European department store. To while away an hour we took a ride on the Prague metro. It has 3 intersecting lines, which makes it a bit complicated after Warsaw. The trains are identical to Warsaw metro trains, and a 3-day ticket costs about £3, and can be used on buses, trams and the metro.
For dinner we went to Malostranska Beseda on the Malostranske Namesti Where I had the Jewish duck (“Quack, shmack!” quoth Harold. Oy veh!) and the Major had the “gulaś”. Both came with variations on dumplings – mind had fried slices of potato dumpling which looked like sauteed potatoes but tasted like bread, and Harold’s gulaś came with slices of big white fluffy dumplings which you dunk in the sauce. The fairly local style restaurant had no French wines, so with some trepidation we sampled a local Moravian red, called inexplicably Portugal Modry. To our great surprise, it was quite pleasant – light and fruity, in the style of a chianti. It wouldn’t win any prizes, but was quite good enough to accompany a meal. The service was a little erratic, but the bill came to about £20, which was most reasonable. While waiting for our bill we were entertained by some young American gels who were complaining loudly about the size of their bill and the quality of the dishes they had been served. We smiled indulgently with the forbearance only those who live in Poland can summon up. Anyone over 15 who drinks Coca-Cola with their food deserves to be treated badly, in my opinion.
The Museum of Contemporary Art at the Veletrzni Palac starts off with some very nice 19th century neo-classical and romantic pictures, as well as exhibits of furniture and decorative items. The style gets progressively more modern, culminating in the permanent exhibition of French impressionists. There is an excellent collection of Picassos, one Van Gogh, one Toulouse-Lautrec, a smattering of Pissarros and Courbets and a very famous Douanier Rousseau. Then you get to the floor of very contemporary stuff, which is where things all go a bit Tate Modern – piles of bricks, a broken chair, that sort of thing. I’m sure I heard Harold mutter “get a flippin’ job” several times.
In the evening we headed a little off the beaten track to the oldest beer hall in Prague, U Fleku. It was, predictably, full of elderly and loudly singing Germans so we repaired to a small anonymous bar on the same street for a few pleasant glasses of Pilsner Urquell before ducking into the old town. We found a lovely restaurant called the “Mucha” which also houses a gift shop selling cards and calendars of Mucha prints. The food was good, if a tad heavy on the dumplings – I tried the gulas this time, and Harold went for duck with apples (God, he’s so predictable) - we felt really brave so sampled a bottle of Frankuvka, a Moravian red, at £5 a bottle. It was perfectly drinkable. The service was rushed, however, and we were in and out in no time, so to get out of the rain ducked into the U Stare Pani (the old lady) jazz club, where a local jazz-rock fusion band kept us happily warm and dry for a couple of hours.
By Sunday evening, the thought of more dumplings was no longer appealing, so we toiled up the very steep Nerudova Street to the Bazaar Mediterranee. This is a complex establishment, made up of various “spaces” – café, terrace, bar, restaurant, shop, etc. The restaurant is very romantic – in a cellar, with flickering candles on the tables. The menu was written on brown paper, and was impossible to read until our waiter had brought more candles. You also get a serviette nicely tied up with string, and a pencil! I asked our waiter (a genial Bolivian sumo-wrestler called Jorge) what the pencil was for, and he replied in a matter-of-fact way, “In case you want to draw on the tablecloth, or write something”. I peered around, wondering if the place was frequented by budding Muchas or Kafkas, and finally gave in to temptation, and signed the (paper) tablecloth. Well, I was a visiting writer, after all. It happened to be our waiter’s birthday, and service was interrupted briefly while his colleagues burst out of the kitchens waving sparklers, whooping and blowing whistles, to the loud accompaniment of Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday”. When people weren’t having birthday celebrations (fortunately there was only one other that evening), we were serenaded by a young woman who sang pre-war cabaret songs in several languages – some Piaf and Dietrich favourites beautifully performed – and wandered around the tables unobtrusively with a radio microphone. This was a little disconcerting, as her voice was coming out of the speakers at the front, when I turned around and found her leaning on the back of my chair crooning “Follink in loff again”. The food was delicious and – a word of warning – very copious. The menu is on a Mediterranean theme, so lots of olive oil and even couscous! I went for the spinach and bacon salad with croutons, which was enormous. Harold’s carpaccio was delicious, followed by a huge main course (can’t remember what he ordered – read on and you’ll understand why). I followed the salad with a lamb kofta served with a ragout of vegetables. The sauce was a little more Slavic than Mediterranean, but it was still delicious. This was our most expensive meal in Prague – it came to £55 for two, with all the wine and Harold’s cognac. We were so carried away with the chanteuse that we threw caution to the winds and imbibed two bottles of Frankuvka (£10 a bottle here, but it was a 1994). When it was time for dessert, Jorge marched up with a huge rubber stamp and theatrically stamped the dessert menu onto a piece of blank paper. However, we were stuffed to the gills by this time, so we declared for two courses. As we departed, I saw Jorge reading my inscription on the tablecloth and looking suitably impressed. My fame has obviously spread beyond Poland’s borders! I hope he had the presence of mind to save it – it might be worth money in years to come!
The great thing about Bazaar Mediterranee is, you don’t have to go looking for after-dinner enterainment. We simply moved through to the bar, where a bartop-dancing family (mum, dad and at a rough guess six-year-old son!) were taking it in turns to entertain the punters by doing some rather unimaginative dance steps. Mum had at least made an effort to dress the part, in vintage 1970 hot pants and platform boots, whereas dad seemed to have come straight from football training. We drank quite a lot more before staggering off downhill around midnight, leaving the little lad sitting looking tired and unhappy as dad gyrated on the bar in his tracksuit and mum chatted up the customers. Harold made some unflattering comparisons with a place called Arena, where the costumes are apparently more impressive. I must ask him to take me one day.
Needless to say, on Easter Monday morning I felt a bit like a giant beetle myself, and the church bells were ringing much too loudly. We wanted to visit the Castle but couldn’t face dragging ourselves up Nerudova in that state, so went on the 22 tram which takes you right to the castle gates. Inside the Castle, we shuffled round with the half a million other tourists, attaching ourselves to various groups following orange flags, Easter palms, umbrellas and other totem poles. I must say, I thought the tour guide holding a pole with a little red devil on top was taking his life in his hands to wave it around inside the church. St Vitus’ cathedral has all the usual bits of baroque one has come to expect in this part of the world, including a smaller version of the gold altar in Kraków and the remains of Good King Wenceslas (no prizes for guessing what Harold was whistling), but it also has the most sumptuous art deco stained glass windows, including one by Alfons Mucha which is exquisite. Behind the cathedral, “Golden Alley” was so crowded that we couldn’t get in and it looked as though no-one else could get out, so we decided to call it a day, and tagged on behind a Polish flag to find the exit.
The afternoon was still cold and wet, so we boarded one of the tour boats by Charles Bridge and went for a ride up the river. It was a fairly short and uneventful ride and before we knew it we were decanted out onto the quayside and searching once again for a warm corner to hide in. Restaurace “U Bila Kamieni” (the White Stove) is tucked away in a sidestreet under the Mala Strana end of the Charles Bridge. It’s not much to look at, but the food is excellent, and most attractively presented. I had roast chicken with almond stuffing, and Harold had a slice of venison in a red wine sauce. As we were still recovering from the night before, we didn’t indulge in any wine, but Harold had a couple of Pilsners and we got away for a most reasonable £13.
With the exception of the hotel and the Sunday night out, Prague is good value for money. You can eat extremely well in most places for £10 a head or under. The cheapest beer we found was about 30p a pint, but some places (especially around Wenceslas Square) were charging about £1.20. Service is generally friendly, although sometimes slow. But there is no shortage of places to eat, drink and be merry in Prague, and three days was far too short a time to visit more than a few of them. Most importantly, Harold managed to get through the weekend without turning into a beetle. So we will certainly go back again (I made sure of that by touching the gold bit on that statue on Charles Bridge – it works like the Trevi Fountain, only it’s free). But we’ll make sure it’s in high summer next time.
After Harold’s startling display of his ability to transform himself at will (see “Harold: Prince of Darkness”, BEM March 2001), Prague seemed the perfect place for a long weekend, with its Kafkaesque connotations. I was somewhat apprehensive at the idea of waking up in bed with a giant beetle, but luckily the metamorphosis did not take place, and all I woke up with was a giant hangover after a late night out.
Prague is stuffed with bars, restaurants, cafes and lovely shops. It makes Kraków look quite poor by comparison. After checking into our rather smart hotel near the Embassy (the “Zlate Studne”) we headed off in the direction of Charles Bridge, stopping en route to sample the local beverage. Czech beer is infinitely suppable – hardly fizzy at all, a lovely amber colour and with a definite beery, hoppy taste, unlike most of today’s bland lagers. It’s fairly low in alcohol too, compared to Polish beer, so you can drink away throughout the afternoon without spoiling your appetite, as Harold intended to prove. As it turned out, the weather was appalling – freezing cold and either snowing or raining most of the time, so we ended up doing rather more sampling than planned, in the shelter of cozy dry ale-houses. Prague Spring certainly left something to be desired this year.
Charles Bridge was packed with tourists, mostly German and British, but quite a few Spanish, for some reason (“Juan or two,” quipped Harold). We shuffled up Karlova in the crowd, window-shopping for garnet jewellery and chandeliers en route, but got carried away with naughty T-shirts, painted Easter eggs and puppets. You don’t need to ask, of course Harold did his Thunderbirds impression, followed by a rendition of “The Lonely Goatherd”. He was so entertaining that people started throwing coins and one lady asked if she could book him for a children’s party the following week. I dragged him away hurriedly, and as a result we lost our way completely in the winding backstreets, and ended up on Wenceslas Square. From there we shuffled down past Marks & Spencer and found ourselves in front of the most gorgeous building. Obecni Dum is a riot of art deco, with a divine looking restaurant where I pictured myself in a cloche hat, sitting smoking black Sobranies through a long cigarette holder, like something out of The House of Elliott.
From there we wandered aimlessly through the old town until a familiar name loomed before us: “Tesco”. We couldn’t resist poking our noses in, but found it bore no resemblance to anything back home – it was a rather sad old Eastern European department store. To while away an hour we took a ride on the Prague metro. It has 3 intersecting lines, which makes it a bit complicated after Warsaw. The trains are identical to Warsaw metro trains, and a 3-day ticket costs about £3, and can be used on buses, trams and the metro.
For dinner we went to Malostranska Beseda on the Malostranske Namesti Where I had the Jewish duck (“Quack, shmack!” quoth Harold. Oy veh!) and the Major had the “gulaś”. Both came with variations on dumplings – mind had fried slices of potato dumpling which looked like sauteed potatoes but tasted like bread, and Harold’s gulaś came with slices of big white fluffy dumplings which you dunk in the sauce. The fairly local style restaurant had no French wines, so with some trepidation we sampled a local Moravian red, called inexplicably Portugal Modry. To our great surprise, it was quite pleasant – light and fruity, in the style of a chianti. It wouldn’t win any prizes, but was quite good enough to accompany a meal. The service was a little erratic, but the bill came to about £20, which was most reasonable. While waiting for our bill we were entertained by some young American gels who were complaining loudly about the size of their bill and the quality of the dishes they had been served. We smiled indulgently with the forbearance only those who live in Poland can summon up. Anyone over 15 who drinks Coca-Cola with their food deserves to be treated badly, in my opinion.
The Museum of Contemporary Art at the Veletrzni Palac starts off with some very nice 19th century neo-classical and romantic pictures, as well as exhibits of furniture and decorative items. The style gets progressively more modern, culminating in the permanent exhibition of French impressionists. There is an excellent collection of Picassos, one Van Gogh, one Toulouse-Lautrec, a smattering of Pissarros and Courbets and a very famous Douanier Rousseau. Then you get to the floor of very contemporary stuff, which is where things all go a bit Tate Modern – piles of bricks, a broken chair, that sort of thing. I’m sure I heard Harold mutter “get a flippin’ job” several times.
In the evening we headed a little off the beaten track to the oldest beer hall in Prague, U Fleku. It was, predictably, full of elderly and loudly singing Germans so we repaired to a small anonymous bar on the same street for a few pleasant glasses of Pilsner Urquell before ducking into the old town. We found a lovely restaurant called the “Mucha” which also houses a gift shop selling cards and calendars of Mucha prints. The food was good, if a tad heavy on the dumplings – I tried the gulas this time, and Harold went for duck with apples (God, he’s so predictable) - we felt really brave so sampled a bottle of Frankuvka, a Moravian red, at £5 a bottle. It was perfectly drinkable. The service was rushed, however, and we were in and out in no time, so to get out of the rain ducked into the U Stare Pani (the old lady) jazz club, where a local jazz-rock fusion band kept us happily warm and dry for a couple of hours.
By Sunday evening, the thought of more dumplings was no longer appealing, so we toiled up the very steep Nerudova Street to the Bazaar Mediterranee. This is a complex establishment, made up of various “spaces” – café, terrace, bar, restaurant, shop, etc. The restaurant is very romantic – in a cellar, with flickering candles on the tables. The menu was written on brown paper, and was impossible to read until our waiter had brought more candles. You also get a serviette nicely tied up with string, and a pencil! I asked our waiter (a genial Bolivian sumo-wrestler called Jorge) what the pencil was for, and he replied in a matter-of-fact way, “In case you want to draw on the tablecloth, or write something”. I peered around, wondering if the place was frequented by budding Muchas or Kafkas, and finally gave in to temptation, and signed the (paper) tablecloth. Well, I was a visiting writer, after all. It happened to be our waiter’s birthday, and service was interrupted briefly while his colleagues burst out of the kitchens waving sparklers, whooping and blowing whistles, to the loud accompaniment of Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday”. When people weren’t having birthday celebrations (fortunately there was only one other that evening), we were serenaded by a young woman who sang pre-war cabaret songs in several languages – some Piaf and Dietrich favourites beautifully performed – and wandered around the tables unobtrusively with a radio microphone. This was a little disconcerting, as her voice was coming out of the speakers at the front, when I turned around and found her leaning on the back of my chair crooning “Follink in loff again”. The food was delicious and – a word of warning – very copious. The menu is on a Mediterranean theme, so lots of olive oil and even couscous! I went for the spinach and bacon salad with croutons, which was enormous. Harold’s carpaccio was delicious, followed by a huge main course (can’t remember what he ordered – read on and you’ll understand why). I followed the salad with a lamb kofta served with a ragout of vegetables. The sauce was a little more Slavic than Mediterranean, but it was still delicious. This was our most expensive meal in Prague – it came to £55 for two, with all the wine and Harold’s cognac. We were so carried away with the chanteuse that we threw caution to the winds and imbibed two bottles of Frankuvka (£10 a bottle here, but it was a 1994). When it was time for dessert, Jorge marched up with a huge rubber stamp and theatrically stamped the dessert menu onto a piece of blank paper. However, we were stuffed to the gills by this time, so we declared for two courses. As we departed, I saw Jorge reading my inscription on the tablecloth and looking suitably impressed. My fame has obviously spread beyond Poland’s borders! I hope he had the presence of mind to save it – it might be worth money in years to come!
The great thing about Bazaar Mediterranee is, you don’t have to go looking for after-dinner enterainment. We simply moved through to the bar, where a bartop-dancing family (mum, dad and at a rough guess six-year-old son!) were taking it in turns to entertain the punters by doing some rather unimaginative dance steps. Mum had at least made an effort to dress the part, in vintage 1970 hot pants and platform boots, whereas dad seemed to have come straight from football training. We drank quite a lot more before staggering off downhill around midnight, leaving the little lad sitting looking tired and unhappy as dad gyrated on the bar in his tracksuit and mum chatted up the customers. Harold made some unflattering comparisons with a place called Arena, where the costumes are apparently more impressive. I must ask him to take me one day.
Needless to say, on Easter Monday morning I felt a bit like a giant beetle myself, and the church bells were ringing much too loudly. We wanted to visit the Castle but couldn’t face dragging ourselves up Nerudova in that state, so went on the 22 tram which takes you right to the castle gates. Inside the Castle, we shuffled round with the half a million other tourists, attaching ourselves to various groups following orange flags, Easter palms, umbrellas and other totem poles. I must say, I thought the tour guide holding a pole with a little red devil on top was taking his life in his hands to wave it around inside the church. St Vitus’ cathedral has all the usual bits of baroque one has come to expect in this part of the world, including a smaller version of the gold altar in Kraków and the remains of Good King Wenceslas (no prizes for guessing what Harold was whistling), but it also has the most sumptuous art deco stained glass windows, including one by Alfons Mucha which is exquisite. Behind the cathedral, “Golden Alley” was so crowded that we couldn’t get in and it looked as though no-one else could get out, so we decided to call it a day, and tagged on behind a Polish flag to find the exit.
The afternoon was still cold and wet, so we boarded one of the tour boats by Charles Bridge and went for a ride up the river. It was a fairly short and uneventful ride and before we knew it we were decanted out onto the quayside and searching once again for a warm corner to hide in. Restaurace “U Bila Kamieni” (the White Stove) is tucked away in a sidestreet under the Mala Strana end of the Charles Bridge. It’s not much to look at, but the food is excellent, and most attractively presented. I had roast chicken with almond stuffing, and Harold had a slice of venison in a red wine sauce. As we were still recovering from the night before, we didn’t indulge in any wine, but Harold had a couple of Pilsners and we got away for a most reasonable £13.
With the exception of the hotel and the Sunday night out, Prague is good value for money. You can eat extremely well in most places for £10 a head or under. The cheapest beer we found was about 30p a pint, but some places (especially around Wenceslas Square) were charging about £1.20. Service is generally friendly, although sometimes slow. But there is no shortage of places to eat, drink and be merry in Prague, and three days was far too short a time to visit more than a few of them. Most importantly, Harold managed to get through the weekend without turning into a beetle. So we will certainly go back again (I made sure of that by touching the gold bit on that statue on Charles Bridge – it works like the Trevi Fountain, only it’s free). But we’ll make sure it’s in high summer next time.
