Tag Archives: bars

Pit stop

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I spent a long time at the Little Café Near Home today, and as I result I am more than just a little wired on caffeine. Even at one tea per hour, you stack up enough hours and things get a bit on the twitchy side. It seemed like a beer was called for, but I was done with that place. I bought some water and some wine to go and turned my toes toward home.

I didn’t get far. One street up from Little Café Near Home is the Budvar bar even closer to home. On Tuesdays all the staff wear shirts, so I figured conditions would be tolerable. (“Conditions”, in this case, meaning air, and “tolerable” meaning breathable.) I stopped in and grabbed myself a desitku.

It seems that Tuesday night is card night. There are a couple of games going, and fortunately for me people are too busy playing cards to smoke. There are however, several very, very drunk people here. Walking is a dicey proposition for some of these folks, which means the delay the stroll to the relief station as long as possible. I have now witnessed two distressed marches across the room, picking up speed as they go, the pilgrim leaning progressively farther forward and hoping his feet will somehow stay underneath. It is a terrible race, feet handicapped, bladder insistent, and there can be no true winner.

On the TV there is a documentary of some sort. It’s about a festival, and large women in peasant garb have formed a disassembly line to render chickens into chicken parts. Cleavers are flying and you do not want to reach for the wrong bird.

The chemicals, it’s the chemicals. I forgot to post this when I got home. Here it is, (marginally) better late than never.

Thanks!

It’s an episode… about nothing.

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19

Sorry for the lack of episodes lately. It’s just that life has carried on in its terribly ordinary way, the wheels of time and space turning on well-oiled axes with nary a squeak.

Of note, perhaps, is that my pants are falling down. Either they have stretched or I have shrunk. While I don’t feel any healthier, and can see no diffference in the mirror, is seems unlikely that all my pants got larger at the same time.

One reason I’ve not had much to say is that I spent more time than I should have in the last week playing a computer game. This is the sort of brain-eating activity that leaves one without an original thought to call one’s own. I finished the game today, and I have no plan to order any of the sequels. Not because it wasn’t fun, mind you, quite the opposite.

Now I am in the Little Cafe, and there is a birthday party goinf on. Birthday girl is very pretty, adn is dancing on the bar as I type this.(pardon the typos, but for authenticity, i will leave this as I firty tuyped iu while watching her dance.) She is particularly happy because her ex-boyfriend showed up for the party, and they are not ex anymore. I am happy because she is very, very, good at shaking her moneymaker. Perhaps they were reconciled before tonight, but I don’t think so. The breathlessly hopeful look on her face when he arrived, the careful way they acted until they fell into their old familiar habits, the disappointment of the other males present, all spoke of this being a birthday she will long remember. For me, in my corner, part of the universe has gone back to being the way it belongs.

And so the world moves on, quietly, calmly (with the exception of the dancing on the bar), and there is little for this correspondent to report.

Thanks!

A night of beautiful stuff

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It is five minutes until five, Central European time. The sky is still dark, and the streets are quiet. I’ve been walking for the last hour or so, making my way home from a bar called Tulip. I’m not sure how much of the story I will tell, not because of any salacious or embarrassing details, but because it’s the same story all over again.

… and that’s as far as I got writing the episode before I called it a night last night.

Anyway, Little John invited me to join him at his favorite haunt last night, and I accepted because it had been a while since I left the domicile. A friend of his was singing and playing at Tulip, and they serve a particularly good flavor of beer, so it was a promising evening. I arrived to find Little John there with some of his friends, and we were joined as well by fuego and MaK. By the time Mad Dog (he will not be a regular character here, and how he earned his nickname is Little John’s story and not mine, but by Mad Dog he shall always be known here) joined us, I had already built one minor stack. In marked contrast to the last time I was stacking objects in a bar, this time those at the table were fully supportive. When I started wedging coasters into notches in the salt and pepper caddy, the others at the table began to collect items for me to use. I got a couple of interesting stacks, but nothing spectacular. fuego has pics of my early-evening efforts, so maybe I’ll be able to put one up here.

The music was good, the beer was good, and all was well with the world. Singing along was not just tolerated but encouraged (at least by Little John), and I did some of that as well. Later on a rather astonishingly beautiful woman joined us from the next table over, and cuddled up with one of Little John’s friends. It turns out she’s American, and has moved here to teach at an international school. She’s been here a week. She was very happy with her sparkly shoes, and she wants to be a writer. We talked for quite a while. Somewhere along the way a different musician took over, and his mellower style fit with the advancing hour.

And that, really, is it. Rather sad to think that is the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in the last few days, but any evening that includes stacking things with no resulting disasters and talking to a pretty girl is right up there on the “pleasant evening” scale.

Thanks!

Quite a day here at the bowling alley

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I was instructed by the benefactor mentioned in the previous post to spend his largesse on beer. This is a mandate I take seriously, and, since if I spent the whole lump on beer I’d be besotted indeed, I decided that some of the lovely lucre could go for pizza and I’d still be within the spirit of his request. There’ll still be some left over, even so.

To Bowle & Bowling, then! It is quiet in my neighborhood, and the short walk was a pleasant one. I entered the bowling alley and the first thing I thought was, “wow! there are a lot of pretty women here today!” And there were. I made my way inside and the next thing I thought was, “wow! It’s loud in here today!” down below on the lanes there is a horde of kids, forty or more on the six lanes, roiling in noisy confusion, bowling occasionally. It is a party. One of the big tables up where I am has a spread of food and a birthday cake, and the women are chatting with one another, sipping cokes, and occasionally looking down to determine whose kid it is shouting this time.

This place is, I realize, ideally suited for this sort of party. There is bowling, there is pizza, and parents can watch the kids discretely while staying literally above the fray.

It’s not so good for writing, however. I could handle any two of the noise, the hivelike activity below, and the milling of the pretty women, but all three is just too much. And now, a beeper is beeping. An alarm of some sort, with that shrill icepick-in-the-brain tone. Nobody seems to notice. It is time, I think, for the Budvar bar. Most likely I’ll be the only one in there on a Sunday evening.

Thanks!

Looks like I’ve got me a date!

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I’m not used to getting hit on. Sometimes, after a conversation that in retrospect seemed flirtatious, I’ve spoken with friends and asked, “So was she…?” only to be smacked upside the head. “Yes, you moron, she was interested in you.” These conversations occur, of course, long after the fact.

So tonight I was in the Little Café Near Home, and I had an interesting conversation with another patron whom I had met once before. We talked about all kinds of stuff. It was when he paid for my drinks and waited for me to saddle up and leave that the alarm bells went off. I reviewed our previous conversation. Plenty of things that could be misinterpreted. For instance, while we were talking I got a message about a possible gathering on Thursday. I mentioned it, and he asked if he could come along. “Sure, sure, the more the merrier,” I said.

“We’ll have to think of a story for me, to explain why I’m there,” he said. Now, sitting here, it’s obvious, although maybe tomorrow it won’t be again. I did not stop to think why he would want a cover story. A friend joining me at a gathering seemed perfectly natural. I didn’t think past that, I thought it would be fun to invent a completely fictitious background for him. It was a creative writing exercise. I ran with it. My story involved prison.

There were other questions he asked, mildly personal ones, that had I caught on I could have answered with equally innocuous but meaningful answers.

So now I’m contemplating what to tell him and how. It’s my own fault; if I had a clue I would have read the signs long before and not allowed this situation to develop. On the plus side there is the fact that I carry around me an aura of remoteness carefully crafted keep people from getting too close. It should work on anyone, I figure, as long as I remember to use it. But I am classically clueless, unable to recognize even the most obvious of come-ons. Mostly I think it’s because I can’t imagine why anyone would hit on me in the first place.

Note to all and everyone. Hints don’t work on me. I can sit in the corner and watch the subtle nuances of a conversation and tell you things the participants themselves don’t know, but make me part of the interaction and whatever observational or analytical skills I have vanish in a haze of self-delusion.

* * *

Time has passed, and now I find myself in the Budvar Bar, the closest drinkery to my house. Hockey is on, Czech Republic hosting Finland, and it’s Thursday, so the waitress has no shirt on. Old men are playing cards for money, and one of them has no nose. Generally I avoid this place on Thursdays, but, well, I know that no one will talk to me here, and right now I don’t want to talk to anyone. I have a lot of work to do. I am conspicuously the one of these things that is not like the others.

I have mentioned in the past that it is a peculiar Czech talent to turn a woman serving beer with no shirt on into an oddly unsexy event. Tonight, however, if you will allow my Y-chromosome to speak for a moment, we have the exception that proves the rule. The difference: her smile. Rare enough among waitresses throughout the land, waitresses without shirts wrap themselves instead in a wall of studied disinterest, boredom, and downright disdain. I can’t blame them. Tonight, however, the waitress has a pretty smile, and that makes all the difference. (“You’re the best”, I just heard from the table next to mine. “Thank you,” she said, blushing a little, proving it. She is much more comfortable with the arrangement than I am.)

It still bothers me when she stands in front of the hockey game, though. I haven’t seen hockey for quite some time. (Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen breasts either, but somehow boobs seem subordinate to hockey in August.) And now a little more time has passed, The Czechs beat the Fins in a shootout, the crowd (and the smoke) is thinning, the Partial People (one with no nose, one with no larynx) are playing cards, and the only topless woman who has ever tweaked my imagination has gone home early. Obviously, I did not have the same affect on her. But…

It was a good night.

Thanks!

Bar 149 is a good one

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I wasn’t in the mood to experiment today. I spent the last two days coding and I just wanted to sit in a cool, familiar place, and get some work done. U Kormidla is just the ticket for that. It is a quiet place, not smoky, and cool on a hot summer day. I pointed my feet down the hill, already planning what I would order. Alas, on the door was a sign with the new hours — hours which did not include the one I was standing in. U Slamu was right next door, but was hot and smoky. There were a couple other places open, but they didn’t serve food. I was thwarted. Lost, adrift, I wandered the neighborhood, looking for the right place to sit and work.

It’s just too damn bright outside to work today, even in the shade my screen just can’t compete. I did a big loop of the neighborhood to no avail, so I decided to head for another neighborhood.

To be honest, I’m not sure what it was that stopped me from getting on the metro. I went down into the station, the train came and left and I didn’t get on. I resurfaced and decided to walk through the park across from the metro station, venturing into unexplored territory. I wandered the paths, my quest temporarily on hold as I surveyed the local scuptures — rocks standing on end. There was nothing handy to balance on them, which was a pity. At the far corner was a small hill, I stood there for a bit, and as I was turning to go back the way I had come I spied a Staropramen banner half a block farther on. What the heck.

Right next to the Staropramen bar is the one in which I now sit. It is right nice. The Guinness sign caught my eye first, then the food specials posted outside. Even so, I almost didn’t come in. Finally I gave myself a little push and in I came.

If U Kormidla (The Helm) has a nautical theme, this place turns it up to 11. Everything is dark wood, and a cieling fan turns lazily, casting shadows in the low light. There is an impressive aquarium embedded in the wall behind my head, and a hodgepodge of kitch in a generally nautical theme. Out of place but welcome is the large electric fan by the door. The only other patron in this room just spent a moment dancing in front of it.

The waitress/bartender is pretty, with an easy smile, and she brings me beer and food. It’s the perfect relationship (although even as I typed that she said “Ahoj” (rhymes with Ahoy) and left). Still, if any place can pull my brain from the land of logic and into the vast uncharted waters of creativity, this is it.

Thanks!

Be’er, now.

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As I write this I am sitting under a large umbrella, listening to the rain patter against the fabric. We are in a park; from where I sit I see only trees and slightly dilapidated picnic tables. It’s not raining hard — at least not yet — and it’s nice out here. If the deluge comes, we will move into the big tent. There is a pretty girl whose job it is to bring me beers.

This is summer in Prague. It is the way life should be, they way it is in longing stories of exotic places. The palapa on the deserted beach in Baja California, the tree house bar in the jungle. Beer is always just a little more civilized when consumed outdoors. This is why I want a transequatorial lifestyle, so that wherever the beers are served with a side order of fresh air, borne to me by pretty girls in miniskirts, that’s where I’ll be.

True to a theme we’ve explored here recently, I am already shuddering as I think of the coming Prague winter. I just want to stay right here, just like this. But even if I stayed still, the world would continue to move, leaving me behind, floating in space on the Sirius side of the sun. Overall, not a good solution.

Thanks!

Note to self

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A crowded nightclub at 4am after a few hours of beers is neither the place nor the time to be stacking things.

2

Thanks!

It’s not the heat, it’s… well actually it is the heat

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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!

Thanks!

The Train in Spain

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I’m sitting now as the sky gradually brightens, watching the landscape slip past my window. Barcelona is apporaching, another big city, but we’re not staying the night there. Tonight we will be on a boat, splashing around in the Mediterranean.

This has been a most pleasant train ride — smooth and quiet, augmented by the chicken and Russian beer Cassius scored as we waited to depart. Mmm… chicken. While on the train of course we had to go visit the club car (bar number 120), where we paid too much for beer but both agreed that there was some special charm in sitting in a bar and all the while getting somewhere. We hatched a couple of hare-brained ideas to exploit this good feeling — but those belong in the Get-Poor-Quick category, which has been languishing of late.

Not an eventful journey, but certainly a pleasant one.

Thanks!

Viva Zapata!

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Last night I went to a place I really, really, liked. It’s not going to translate to the written word completely, but allow me to introduce you to one of the pinnacles of human society, the tapas bar.

In most parts of the world, one goes to a restaurant and orders a meal, or one goes to a bar and (perhaps) has snacks. The Spanish, however, don’t want to rush, they don’t want to be presented with a big pile of food, wolf it down, and then leave. Oh, no. Down here, not being in a hurry has been raised to an art form. If you’re going to spend a pleasant few hours in a place, perhaps chat with friends, perhaps read a book, you will drink slowly but steadily, and you will eat the same way.

Many bars here will have on display a limited variety of tasty little dishes that you can order for a reasonable price. It’s not always obvious what those dishes are, but there is generally food that fits any level of adventurousness. You can order several things at once, or you can periodically have another dish.

Zapata is somewhat unusual; many of the delicacies on display were uncooked, and prepared on order. Also unusual was that their menu actually reflected what they had, and they had some good, stuff, let me tell you. The Monteditas (little sandwiches) were a good value and really, really, tasty, especially the Zapata (pork, cheese, and stuff) and the salmon with roquefort.

We stayed quite a while, enjoying the atmosphere, some good wine, and nibbling on a wide variety of tapas. It doesn’t get much better than that. So if you find yourself wandering the streets of Cadíz and come across the place, do yourself a favor and pop in.

Thanks!

Lazy day in Vejer

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Street in vejer It’s an indication of just how good my life is that I can sit in a congenial tapas bar in a beautiful village in southern Spain (map), nibble good food, nurse beers out over a long stretch, watch the old men goof around, and call it work. I’m taking a brief break from writing, but I’ll be getting back to it in just a moment, after I decide what to nibble next. Electricity may be the limiting factor on my work day; I came out without a full charge, and outlets are few and far between. Still, I’ll nurse things along as far as I can, and I can always resort to writing things by hand. Crazy, I know, but if the cavemen could write on paper, so can I.

One thing I’ve noticed — in these little places, empty chairs at the tables along the wall are turned out into the room, rather than facing the table. It’s a subtle thing, and I doubt people here give it much thought at all, but the message is clear to me: even at the edges, you are encouraged to face into the room and be a part of all that is going on.

I hope, wherever you are, that your day is going as well as mine.

Thanks!

Hockey night at the Little Café

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A year ago I sat here at the Little Café Near Home to watch the Czechs skate against Canada for the world championship. All the tables were reserved last year, but there was room for me and my guests at the bar.

A year has passed, and the puck will drop in fifteen more minutes as the Czechs defend their title against the Swedes. The Café is surprisingly empty tonight; there are a couple more options in the neighborhood now, but more important is that the NHL was on strike last year. Last year the rosters for the various nations reflected the best those countries had to offer (with a couple of notable exceptions); it was like several dream teams playing against one another.

Even the czech regular season was something special last year, as the best of the local boys got to play for their home towns rather than for some city across the Atlantic. (On a side note, the NHL would do well to play more games earlier in the day; there are a lot of people over here jonesing for a chance to see their local heroes play, but when games start at 3 am, the audience is limited.)

This year the NHL playoffs are still going, so the talent available for the IIHF championship is diluted, but there is still something special about this tournament in the hearts of every Czech.

***

The first period is over and the Little Café is pretty full now; the only empty table is the one directly under the television. Alas, the Czechs gave up two goals in the first twenty minutes, and Sweden is very hard to play catch-up against. The good guys had their chances, but never put the puck in the net.

***

Oh, the second period. Oh, the horror. The Swedes owned the Czechs at both ends of the ice. The Czech passing in particular was poor — it seemed like the Swedes knew where the Czechs were going to send the puck before they did. As the period progressed the Swedes got more and more uneven chances. In the period the Czechs had four shots on goal, all from the outside.

There was one point where the crowd here got excited. The cameras found the Czech Prime Minister in the crowd, and the entire bar started jeering. Something about politicians using their positions to enrich their friends. Good thing that could never happen in the US.

***

There’s still quite a bit of time on the clock, but the game is over. The Swedes are playing protect the puck, while the Czechs are playing miss the opportunity. (I was typing while watching the game and looked down to see that I had written pooprtunity. I almost left it in.) It looks like the Swedes will add a world championship to their Olympic gold. Oh, well. There’s no denying that they brought the better team to the game tonight.

Thanks!

Bar 100

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A hundred bars in four countries over the course of a year and a half is hardly an astonishing accomplishment; I’m sure there are those who have dwarfed that figure without even trying. I’m not terribly motivated to inflate the number; there are times when weeks have elapsed without me undergoing the grand adventure of breaking in a new place. I have my principles, and I have places I belong.

For the record, this was not the first time I’d been to the beer garden at Letná (rhymes with met yah), but it was the first time since the Bars of the World Tour officially started.

Letná is a park on the hilltop on the steep side of the river. It is in full bloom right now, as the plants jump into summer with gusto. It is not just the vegetation that responds this way, the population of the city comes out in force on those first few beautiful days that tell you that summer is here, and mother nature isn’t just fooling you this time. As this is the Czech Republic, an important part of enjoying any day is having a nice beer.

The line at the beer window moves quickly, and even on crowded days there is room among the hundred-plus picnic tables arrayed along the hilltop, sheltered by flowering trees. The breeze brought with it a slight chill, and there was constant danger of flower petals falling in one’s beer, but those are the hazards one must overcome to survive in a place like this.

There are dogs everywhere, running and playing among the picnic tables, chasing one another and yapping happily. The number of cigarette butts on the ground around the tables is surprising, even for this city.

The view from up there is one of the best in Prague. (The best view is from the TV tower, because it is the only view that doesn’t have the TV tower in it. Remember the giant Iron babies?) The oldest part of the city lies below you, just across the Vltava, and you can see why this town is nicknamed the city of a hundred spires.

On the pathways people stream past: punk kids on skateboards; elderly couples with their little dogs; and long, graceful rollerbladers weaving between them. Many of those who stroll past are carrying beers, and that is no crime here. (Some of them would be surprised to learn it is a crime anywhere.)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a story that takes place on one of these benches. When I wrote the story it had been more than two years since I had been up there, but it was (almost) exactly as I remembered it. (I had forgotten about the plastic cups. There is another beer window in another hilltop park, where you leave a deposit and get to drink beer in a more civilized fashion. The story starts strong and builds an interesting character, but ends schmaltzy, as so many slice-of-life type stories do.

I did no writing while I was there; I write this from the Little Café Near Home, days after the fact. At the time, I did not think about the milestone that bar represented.

Unless an unlikely acting job materializes, I will be traveling soon to other countries to meet up with people who like going to bars. That is likely to inflate the numbers substantially.

Thanks!

Sometimes, you see things.

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I am sitting in a bar, watching a woman with no shirt serving beer to a man with no nose. Actually, I have seen that before, in this very bar. What I had not seen before was the event that drove me here.

First, a small detour. I was sitting in the Little Café Near Home when the call came in. I will be getting up absurdly early tomorrow morning. My last word from Athena had been costumes on Monday, shooting on Wednesday and Thursday. I got increasingly neurotic as I received no further word about costumes, and I sent Athena a couple of messages. No response. Tonight, while wrapping up my celebration of successful bumness, my phone rang. I am expected to be at a certain Metro station at 6 am. The good news: starting that early, overtime is a distinct possibility. The bad news: starting that early, I will be getting up even earlier.

But that’s not why I am here, now.

After the hokej (rhymes with hockey) game, Little Café Near Home cleared out. It was just me and Bechovins (rhymes with Bevins, only in Czech). Then another guy came in and started scooting furniture around in a nonsensical way. After some muddling he unplugged the now-quiet television and plugged in…

Guess. Go ahead and try. You won’t get it right, but if you guess something completely crazy and then read the next sentence, which will be more whacked-out than what you came up with, that will make the revelation all the choicer. Have you guessed? All right then.

…a hair clipper. Bechovins was getting a haircut. In a place that serves food. Faced with a choice between drinking in a bar where the only other guy was getting a haircut, drinking in a bar where women with no shirts serve men with no noses, and not drinking at all, I chose “B”.

The man with no nose is much more difficult not to stare at than the woman with no shirt. She is quite pretty, and if everyone here in the bar had a nose, she would be drawing my eye. Sadly for all, that is not the case. He has a piece of gauze taped with a big X over his face, and there is no bulge beneath. It has been this way long enough that I wonder why he has not come up with a better gauze holder, something more comfortable than tape. I don’t know how he lost his nose; there must be a story there. I hope that eventually he gets a new one. In the meantime, what bothers me most is the tape. But, like him, I am getting used to it.

Thanks!