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.
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