There’s only one thing to do on a hot summer day in Prague. Yes, you guessed it; a day like today is made for sitting in a beer garden on an untrafficed street, well-situated to watch passers-by, ordering a tall, cool pivo, and opening up the ol’ laptop to get some work done. How much work I manage we shall have to wait and see; Prague on a warm day makes for some mighty fine people-wataching. Long women in short dresses; uptight businessmen refreshing their cologne; people with packs and guitar cases strapped to their backs; stroller pushers and shopping cart pullers; inept parallel parkers: guys with purses: a woman whose hair matches her magenta dress and makes it all look good; an old man with his glass of dark beer drifting past, his knobby white legs dangling out beneath his shorts — all these people and more have passed by in the time it took me to write that sentence.
I can see the Cheap Beer Place across the corner of the square from here, and the beer is definitely more expensive here, but the shade is better and there are far fewer cars on this street. It’s much more peaceful.
Until, as I wrote that, two things happened. The old electronic song from the seventies, “Popcorn with Butter” (I think it was called) came on the radio. This is a tune the ex had stuck in her head for the first two years I knew her. Dangerous stuff. Fortunately(?) the song has been completely drowned out by the arrival here on the patio of two more guests, one of whom is American and while not particularly loud is particularly annoying.
To be fair, most (but not all) of the things his is saying are not obnoxious at all, but my ability to turn off the conversations around me has atrophied in the time I’ve been here, since I can’t understand most of the things said around me anyway. Up to now I think most of the other patrons have been German. So now I have to dive in deep, maximum concentration, or put in the earphones. I really don’t want to lose the singing birds and snatches of czech conversation floating by, however.
And now, several minutes later, one of the other patrons has started whistling snatches of “Popcorn with Butter”. Učet, prosím!
