PragueBuzz!

Author: Richard Havlik

I have about a half a dozen different beers lined up in my fridge all set for review. Now sometimes I just can’t comment on every beer. I just need to taste one, so I try to select my beer carefully, some for drinking while others for comment. So I reached in for a cold one and decided that here was a good time to drink Budvar, the cousin of the King of beers. Maybe my reviewing mind could kick in and so I set myself up, making sure everything was in order for the first sip of the day. Short of a frosted glass and a patio I was on the edge of paradise, when suddenly it all shattered and I came a tumbling off my cloud, hitting the pavement hard.

The beer was crap. I liked to give things a second chance and my taste buds could be forgiving at times, so I had another go. How bad could it really be? I shook off the first time jitters and plunged in. I couldn’t believe that the beer was difficult to drink. Many a morning I had woken up feeling pretty sick over a bad beer and I wondered if I would end up with a headache, but I had to finish. It’s a shame to have to pour it down the sink, or even worse leave a beer unfinished. And it did aid in digesting the greasy dinner I was having at the time, so I had another go. There was no point going further after having worked through the third sip. How much torture could one endure? I looked at the label. Is this really Budvar, with which I had an amazing experience in one of the pubs here? It had been on tap and I was eager to try and after the first sip I was all hands down, worshiping its amazing flavour. Then I am struck hard, like in a car accident and I have to take a few seconds to adjust what I saw. Aghast at my own foolishness, I discovered I was drinking an alcohol free Budvar. I had been hoodwinked, tricked, and let-down. Unbelievable! How did this beer find its way in to the beer section, and into my fridge of all places? It should have been in the pop and water area. I went to grab another beer. There was no way I could finish it once I discovered the awful truth, so down the sink it went.

One of the problems in buying beer in foreign countries is one often grabs a beer by how nice the label looks, or how big the bottle is, or how the name sounds in English. Like for example, ‘bublifuk’. Something you could drink, but you would be blowing bubbles soon after. That beer should have been named ‘bublifuk’. At least that was how I felt at the time. It’s all very risqué, but hey if you don’t take risks, you haven’t lived. Unfortunately some risks just aren’t worth taking. I am reminded of time in Vancouver, Canada, when I came across a couple of German tourists in the local grocery store. They were quite excited when they spotted a small stash of beer near the bottom of the shelf. I had chuckled to myself and the word ’suckers’ came to mind. I wanted to tell them they should go to a liquor store, but I decided that it would be funnier to imagine them finding out later, now it came back around and nipped me in the taste buds. I hate karma sometimes.

On my second time around I go in for another beer, take a swig in hope to drown the bad memory away and again, another bad beer. What are the chances? I must have been in the wrong section that day, or the stock boy was double dipping. I started to have a panic attack. I needed a beer like Homer needs a donut. Finally the third time out and I nailed it, my pallet picked up the fermented hops and the mind eased, but the aftertaste lingered in my review. It would not have been fair to review that beer. There are very few things in life than can top the first taste of a perfectly chilled beer. And that day was ruined. I will have to save the real Budvar for another time. But I suggest be careful when you just pick and choose at whim, there are consequences that sometimes are too difficult to go through.

Tags: prague, czech, beer, budvar

Song: “Jsi Muj Pan/To My Master” from the musical “Dracula.” This song is written by the most famous music composer, Svoboda, who committed suicide recently.

Singer: Lucie Bila, one of the most famous singers in the Czech Republic, in the same diva category as Celine Dion. Everybody knows if not her music then at least her name, including those who cares little about music.

I signed up for a membership at the National Library in Prague in order to use the free Internet service there and to borrow some English books, which apparently not many.

The National Library is located at Marianske Nam, together with the Library of Prague. It costs 110 CZK (National Library) for the annual fee. However, to have an account is even more difficult as opening a bank. You will need a passport and proof of a Czech address.

Ah, if you need internet that bad, you might as well go to the coffee shop or the British Council.

Czech is the most or one of the most atheist countries in the world. The majority of people I asked, including old women, who were usually religious, said flat out that they don’t believe in God or it was not important.

I think this rare atheistic phenomenon has to do with Jan Hus, Czech’s greatest man. He inspired the Protestant movement in Czech, protested vehemently against the Catholic Church and demanded reforms. Later, the Catholic Church burned him at the stake for refusing to recant.

For a couple of centuries, Czech became a Protestant country until was forced by their ruler, Austro-Hungarian empire, to convert back to Catholic. Also many German noblemen arrived in the Czech Republic to replace the Czech noblemen. The hatred toward unwelcome foreign occupators, once again, turned Czechs away from the very core of their enemy, the Catholic tradition.

Now if you look further east to Poland and Slovakia, two countries which most resemble Czech Republic in term of histories, cultures and languages, there are more religious Catholic in these countries. A logical explanation might be that before communism, Czech was more industrialized. Prague was, for a long time, the culture center of Europe’s Holy Roman Empire. So the developed Czech Republic seemed to affiliate less to religion than their more rural neighbors.

Despite that, many Catholic traditions are upheld in Czech, and the country has an impressive array of magnificent churches. Prague is known as the city of 100 spires