Canteens: learn your vocabularly first

Foreigners must classically meet their demise at the Czech canteen. This home-cooked, fast-food eating facility offers cheap, filling meals, and a menu unintelligible to the layman's eye. Attendants don't speak English, (as if! imagine the withering look)and only some of the food can be seen steaming from beneath sterling silver buffet trays. The lunch-hour mood is busy and terse, with an impatient clientele not thrilled about indecisive anglos ahead of them in line.

I found myself in one such situation the other day, though I was doggedly ready to take the punches and succeed. Or so I thought.
First upset: they were out of chicken (kuřecí).
Second upset: I didn't understand anything else on the menu but rice and potatoes.
Third upset: I ordered rice and játra, thinking the brown gravy and meat chunks was a strange, but possibly palatable goulash.
Third upset continued: játra, it turns out, is liver. And this was pork liver, big healthy chunks of it. After one mouthful of the dense, rich-like-blood morsel, I felt ill.

Above is a picture of my friend Jen, eating her innocuous plate of risotto. You can see my plate too. Needless to say, I felt jealous of her at that moment.

The Czech Out Aisle number 5

When I lived with my Slovak friend Zita this summer, she introduced me to many culinary delites (creamy pork and pasta for one). Sleďový závitky was another surprise: pickled carrots, cabbage and peas wrapped in an equally pickled herring, packed below a solid, you-gotta-work-for-the-calories gelatin top.



Though not as ghastly fishy tasting as I had anticipated, the rolled fish snack tasted most strongly of vinegar. Zita wanted me to go back for more: "Don't worry, there's so much of it. Have some!" she said. I feigned being full. And then my camera caught Zita looking none too sure about the situation either.

Tuesday at 5pm

Central Europe switches to daylight savings time

Bogusha making Snitzel

Photo Natalie Conn

My story about the Polish Deli is up again, along with a portrait of the chain smoking whirl-wind Bogusha herself. Natalie Conn and Peter Smith run a must see sound/story site out of Portland, Maine. Check it out at: The Sunday Best.

The Tall Lady of Poverty

Near Old Town Square, Prague.

Michal's Grandparents

Marie cooks constantly. Vaclav has Parkinsons disease, but he also speaks German and a little bit of English. "Welcome," he says gesturing with a wobbly hand to their home. "Oh, yes." Marie serves us pork steaks, vegetables and rice, followed by apples, kolac, chocolate. Their dog, Bara, is fat as a tick after too much blood sucking. Marie reports that Bara has eaten three whole chickens over the course of two weeks.
Vaclav tells us about traveling to China with Prague's orchestra in the 1950's. He played the bassoon. "It was terrible, being married to a musician," Marie says. "He was a good looking man, and there were too many women around." Vaclav chuckles happily. "Oh, yes."

This is Karlovy Vary in October

Český Krumlov and Chateau Hluboká nad Vltavou

Last weekend was a castle weekend, and in Český Krumlov, a tiny cobblestoned town in the elbow of the Vltava river in Southern Bohemia, real bears live in the castle moat. They look sort of overweight and bored, and everyone clamors to put their head through the bars to look at them, only everyone comes to the same conclusion. They're sad.
Other pictures include Michal, the Amphibian Man who is rumored to live at the bottom of ponds and who steals young girls' souls, and the Chateau Hluboká, a very polished and austere castle not too far from the bear castle.

Waiting for the Pope, Prague

We saw him, we really did. My step-brother Jake was visiting with his friend Herbert last weekend, and we stumbled into Pope Benedict coming out of his private quarters in Prague. I'm pretty short, so I saw about three seconds of his face. Had to rely on Herbert's paparazzi photos for a proper view. The last shot here is of the snipers on the roof.