Praha, Pivo, Prosim

MUSIC

In a bit irony…. as I was briskly walking to the bathroom in a mall the other day I noticed that the theme song to Chariots of Fire was playing. It seems like you can never really walk fast ENOUGH when you really have to take care of business.

ADAPTATION

In other news, I can report that my American English is now adapting to the use of British English. I’ll provide some examples: college –> university, bathroom –> WC, basement –> cellar, vacation –> holiday, line –> queue

Yes, I am become Euro-fied.

FOOD

In other news I am currently making a delicious American-style breakfast. It’s 1pm but I want it! I found a nice ’slab’ of English bacon yesterday so I had to buy it. The ‘regular’ English bacon here is sliced but it’s in squares. The slab I bought has to be sliced by yours truly but I can slice nice thick strips if I so choose. I so chose. I was all set to take snapshots of my delicious creation but since the bacon finished first, I could not resist eating said bacon. It was just there all pretty and greasy and glistening on the plate. Plus, cold bacon ain’t so good. Therefore, there will be no photo of my breakfast. The hash browns are cooking right now and I’ll make some cheesy scrambled eggs after. Ah yes…..BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!

And on a note of personal preference, those of you who prefer crispy bacon…well, you are doing a disservice to the bacon. If it crumbles, it’s not good! Greasy, floppy bacon is the only way to go. I feel very strongly about this.

PICTURES

I promise I’ll get new pictures here soon. The Sedlec Ossuary and a day trip to Kutna Hora await your eyes!

Wine. It’s good for you.

It’s made from fruit.

Saturday September 19

Wine has quite a history throughout the world and here in the C.R., it’s no different. Every year in the late summer/early fall there are harvest festivals. These festivals are for a specific kind of wine called burcak. It’s young wine that is also fermented. It doesn’t taste like any wine you’ve had before. It’s available in both the red and white varieties.

2pm

So, cut to last weekend I went out with a bunch of people to the local burcak festival (there were actually several all over town that weekend) at Havlickovy Sady (a city park). The even at the park was really quite cool. Aside from tons of people, there was a big main stage as well as various tents/vendors for drinks, food & miscellaneous knick-knacks. The theme of the festival was some kind of 19thC. thing. I don’t know how to describe it other than saying many people were wearing period costume. There was also even the old-fashioned giant bikes; you know the ones with the huge front wheel and the teeny back wheel. To the side of the main stage was also a performance area (we happened to be sitting to the immediate right of it) where several Cirque du Soleil-type acrobatic performers did cool stuff throughout the day.

8 or 9pm

After the events at Havlickovy Sady, we headed over to Jiriho z Podebrad. There were yet more tents with more alcohol as well as several bands playing.

10 or 11pm

Off to Riegrovy Sady beer garden. Oy, the events get hazy at this point. Good times. I can report that some random drunk passed out guy was sitting across from me and the new TEFL kids decided to fuck with him so I snapped all kinds of hilarity.

1 or 2am

Next stop a bar in Vinohrady. Wow, I’m too old to do this power drinking. Yikes. I need to go home. But not until I finish my requisite pivo!

230am

After midnight the metro stops running and the trams change routes, numbers and times. I walked home. Most excellent. It’s good for circulation. That’s what I kept telling myself……’it’s for health….it’s for health!’

The verdict?Burcak is mighty tasty stuff.

*Burcak is sold in various quantities: ,33l ,5l 1.5l or 2lAlthough it looks a bit ghetto to be carrying around a 1.5 or 2l plastic container of wine, everyone does it. It’s in the pictures. You shall see.

Friday September 25

Another Friday night at Riegrovy Sady beer garden. It was rather chilly that night at not many people were out drinking. But perhaps that’s because it’s a three day weekend. I write this at 830 on Monday morning when I would normally be getting ready for work. Woo hoo for holidays! Nobody knows what the holiday actually IS today but we don’t care; it just gives us all another day off.

After Riegrovy we went to Akropolis. This is some random club/restaurant/bar in Zizkov. I’m normally opposed to paying a cover charge but this place was a paltry 30Kc. Oh well. I bit the bullet and did it. From what I saw the place wasn’t that fantastic. Although it looked quite large and also looked to be another one of those ‘how-many-rooms-in-the-basement-of-this-building-are-there’ kind of places. We ended up there with a friend of Sean Hardy’s who is hardcore French and introduces himself as (seriously), ‘Hello I am Freddy and I am ready.’ With the super thick Frenchie accent it’s even more hilarious than it reads.

Saturday September 26

I got a text message from Natalie and Jack saying they were going to Karlstejn Castle that day. Sweet! I hadn’t been there yet so I was game.

The Round-trip train ticket is only 109Kc so why not, right? We got on the 12:41 and headed out.

Tons of people got off at the same stop and we just figured that they all had the same idea as we did for a Saturday afternoon. Karlstejn is probably the closest castle to Prague that isn’t IN Prague so it’s quite a popular day-trip. Anyway, we soon realized that all these people were going to Karlstejn because of the annual burcak festival!! Sweet! I love this fucking country. We hadn’t planned on this extra bonus event! We were stoked.

Karlstejn is a really cute little town just W/SW of the city. It’s a good 2mi. trek up the castle but it’s right up the main street of the town so it’s by no means a difficult walk. Along the sides of the road were of course burcak vendors as well as lots of local trinkets, etc. Additionally, there was this big medieval theme going on, too. The castle was built in 1348 so there were tons of people dressed in period costume, etc. From the program information we read that at 230pm there was to be the ‘royal procession’ to the castle gates and then after there would be various performances inside the castle. Oh excellent!!! We made it up the hill to the gate and waited for the procession. I’d say there were a good 150-200 people involved in the procession. There did not mess around. Once inside the castle there was music, bellydancers & faqir as well as a court jeser/juggler/comic who the kids loved. Pretty cool stuff!

Along the way we guzzled a few beers and purchased a nice huge 1.5l of red burcak. The previous week I only had the white burcak and my personal rating of the red is higher than the white. I was told burcak tastes like cider or juice and I didn’t think the white tasted like either. Both versions have an obvious smell of fermentation and both are bubbly. (Actually, bottles of the stuff can explode from the bubbles. I nearly had the remaining red I have explode all over my yellow walls last night. I avoided disaster with my ninja-like skills.) The red burcak actually DOES taste more like ‘juice’ than anything and I can understand why it’s so easy to drink massive amounts of the stuff. Danger Will Robinson, danger!

We got on the 636pm train back to Prague and I was home by 8pm. All in all a fantastic start to a three-day weekend!

Sunday September 27

Since the day before we did a spontaneous trip to Karlstejn I was feeling the urge to do more. I consulted some online resources and travel books and waffled back and forth between Melnik, Krivoklat Castle, Kutna Hora & maybe Tabor. In the end, I decided on Tabor. Tabor is a town in Southern Bohemia. I had some friends go the day before and I got the thumbs up that it was a good trip so I went by myself.

I made it to the train station at noon and bought my ticket for 241Kc. The train departed on time (as everything does in this country) and I was off. The train was a (not really) nice old Communist-era clunker. It was old and rusty and had plenty of graffiti.

Arrival in Tabor was at about 2 and I made my way into the ‘old town’ area. Although I had no map, I’m usually quite good with directions (despite my possession of a vagina) and can make my way around places fairly easily. Along the way, I made the correct judgment calls and I found the old square with no problems. The main square of Tabor is really cute. I know centuries old cities shouldn’t be referred to as ‘cute’ but I’m a female, so it fits. Around the square are cool old buildings as well as a clock tower and an old church with an even bigger tower. I hiked up the church tower for 25Kc and it has a freaking fantastic view of the town. The walk up the tower is interesting. Up old stone steps and then to rickety wooden stairs that are quite steep. The rope ‘railing’ looks questionable but it seems to work. Additionally, I’ll note that you have to bend way down and walk UNDER the giant church bell to continue to the top. Ha ha nice! My Nikon was happy once I got to the top.

Back down in town I continued to walk around for a few hours and have a few beers. I even managed to get a Wi-Fi signal at a restaurant so I started Facebooking. A girl has gotta have her priorities. For those interested, I had garlic soup (oh yeah, good stuff) and roast pork knee on toast with cheese (also yummy). The main beverage in town is Budvar (where American Budweiser gets the name) but this is the ‘original’ stuff and people get pissed if one assumes the Czech and American versions are the same. Budvar is made in Ceske Budejovice which is a bit more south than Tabor. Ask the Google.

I decided to get on the 7pm train back to Prague and I was home by 9pm. Another good day!

Monday September 28

The last day of my long weekend. Did I stay in? Nope. BBQ, baby. It was the ‘Goodbye to Summer’ BBQ so there were many men grilling the meat while we woman foraged for berries and tend the fire. Ha, no not really. But something like that.

A GREAT WEEKEND!I’m going to post a bunch of photos to Facebook rather than here. Photos can only be loaded individually here and they also need to be resized. I want to share a lot of them so it would take a lot of time on my end to do these things. A mass upload on FB is in order. Stay tuned.

I love the SAPA market I really do.

It’s horribly cliche to say a place is alive, to say that it has a pulse. But I swear SAPA has a heartbeat. Granted, it’s a heartbeat spoken in a different tongue but alas, it’s there.

The workers are constantly unpacking huge boxes of wares and organizing their little shops. Some of the people listen to music while others play cards. Others even play some kind of game where money is exchanged and even yet another strange table game that looks to be a cross of chinese checkers, chess and dominos. They drink their tea and they laugh and conduct their business and go upon their merry way. Meanwhile I walk about with mouth gaped like the out-of-place ‘tourist’ who is amazed at it all. I’ve been to SAPA enough times now so that I know the little alleyways and where the hidden spots are located. But, that doesn’t keep me from cruising them all. The SAPA market is a city within a city. It’s a community with lawyers and schools and even an insurance agency. I love it!

I made an unplanned trip to SAPA this morning because it was still early and I was in that part of town so off I went. It was a quick trip today as I didn’t do much browsing but I certainly wanted a steaming bowl of Pho. I know I’ve blogged about this before but I’ll recap….. With relative confidence I can say Pho is the Vietnamese national dish. In short, it’s a big bowl of piping hot broth with noodles. No, it doesn’t sound very interesting but trust me when I say it’s freaking delicious. The broth is super flavorful and that alone would be good enough for me. But then there’s all the extra fabulous stuff they throw in the mix. Aside from the broth, noodles & meat there is a combination of onions & misc. fresh ‘greenery’ that is added last minute so as to retain it’s bright color and freshness. Additionally, it’s up to the consumer of said bowl of goodies as to what extras he or she would like to add. I usually opt for them all: freshly cut lemon, fresh sliced red chilies, sliced garlic, chili/garlic paste & of course Sriacha. Sriacha is a fiery red sauce that while being fairly ‘hot’ on the scale of heat, it’s not so hot that you can’t taste any other ingredients in what you are eating. I seem to be able to handle hotter foods than I think I can therefore I always end up gradually adding more Sriacha. The stuff will make you sweat a bit but sweat in a good way. I found myself blowing my nose this morning and it’s August. A bowl of chicken & pork Pho with a .5L of Pilsner Urquell - 110Kc. All in all, a most excellent price. Now go eat your Pho!

Update on yesterday’s post: I’m recording the voiceover for this documentary tomorrow. The demo/audition/whatever was super brief this a.m. I met a guy at 10am at a recording studio and I read 2 bits of script while he recorded. One take–nice & easy. I’m not even sure how much of a script I’m scheduled to do but it pays well and will be an interesting experience. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for a short documentary on scuba diving & photography in Mauritius!! Hmm, wonder if I can bag an entry on IMDB out of this. Something to chew on.

Per Jayne’s request I’m posting something today.

In my defense I do usually try & post weekly but I’ve had some extra stuff going on in the last few weeks. And also I should note that nothing hugely exciting has occurred therefore no interesting post. I have extra work as of late so that’s tied up my schedule a bit more. TEFL power!

As for what I’m doing right now well, I’ll spare you the details of my early morning laundry duties as somehow I seem to be washing clothes every Saturday morning. It’s kind of pathetic and nerdy but since I’m up anyway, I figure I might as well take advantage of the washing machine availability. Ah yes, the priorities of adulthood.

Last Sunday a bunch of people headed to Zlute Lazne Sorry, the page cannot be rolled over to English. But I’ll try & explain… ZL is an artificial beach on the Vltava that has sand volleyball courts, a sauna/spa area & of course the requisite klobasa and beer stands. Let me explain the photos I’ve posted.

1. While at ZL I should tell all of you that there were plenty of dudes (usually older) parading around in their Euro thongs. As an American, seeing this is very funny. Yes, it is. Anyway, there was also a man (probably 70 years old or so) who clearly LOVES the sun. This cat lives outside, I am convinced of this fact. He is about the color of a grilled klobasa. To further explain for anyone unfamiliar with what said food item looks like, imagine a walking, talking, breathing ‘burnt sienna’ Crayola crayon. It’s a very unnatural color to say the least. We decided to name him Sausage Man. I really don’t even think this picture captures his truly burnt sienna essence. It was kind of horrifying.

2. Naked Euro baby was running around for a good 20 minutes or so with his little plastic toy.

3. It’s not really a ‘beach’ as there is minimal sand but alas, people sun themselves here and generally have a jolly good time. I’ll also say people will swim in the Vltava which frankly sounds like a questionable move on their part. No, it’s not the Ganges and I wouldn’t expect to see the rotting corpses of recently deceased lepers bobbing downstream but there’s probably a fair amount of chemical runoff from somewhere. Not so sure I’d go for a swim in the mighty Vltava.

4. You’d think I asked this dude to pose this way.

5. On the way home from ZL…. There are plenty of occasions of ‘old meeting new’ in this town so here is just one of them.

Random I… what am I listening to right now? I’ll tell you. Since I’m about 5-7 minutes from Old Town Square, there’s still a fair amount of ‘tourists’ in my small neighborhood. In OTS you can hire someone to tote you around via horse and carriage. The streets here are cobblestone so whenever the horses come around I can hear the rhythmic ‘clopping’ of the hooves as they walk down the street. I like that. It’s pretty cool to be able to sit in front of an open double door in Old Town Prague and hear the horses going by.

Random II… something interesting I’m doing tomorrow. Testing for a voiceover for a documentary–a documentary about Mauritius. It’s really random how this kind of fell into my lap but the short story is that the voice of the person they hired apparently didn’t match the male voice therefore they need someone new. We’ll see how it goes. It really doesn’t even seem like it’s an audition so it might already be a done deal. Cha-ching! This would be a great little add-on to my resume. My speaking voice is usually pretty decent and/or pleasant so hopefully they’ll like me.

Random III…Dobra Mama is a brand of yogurt. It’s delicious. I found a few new flavors last week so like the nerd I am I Googled the company. There isn’t an English version of the page but there IS an official yogurt ‘family’ complete with a son and daughter. There are videos of said family that include the following scenarios….

1. Family meditation– and rather than chanting OMMMM they channel all their energy into chanting YOOOOGUURRRRRT

2. The family playing some kind of ‘memory’ game with yogurt containers

3. At some point the Dad gets pissed at the teenage daughter and calls her a stupid bitch. (Ha kidding–I don’t speak Czech so therefore I was projecting that last bit. ‘I am your father and you are a whore. By the way, eat your yogurt!’)

4. Little brother broke his arm. Boo. It’s in a sling. But nice older sister feeds him. Cue violins.

If you navigate to their site you’ll get a freebie two-fer of bad acting and Czech audio.

)

I’m a ‘use what you have’ kind of cook. Like everyone else today, a budget has to be considered. Although I usually buy staple items, I can come up with new variations all the time. Being creative makes it more interesting. Use what you have and make what you like!

I put together some homemade Thai curry the other night and one of the main ingredients is coconut milk. If you’ve never had anything with coconut milk, go buy some today. Delicious. Anyway, I had some coconut milk left in the refrigerator.

Last night I decided I wanted to make some French toast. I had just bought a crusty baguette and I knew I had the other stuff to make it how I wanted. The only thing I didn’t have was syrup so that led me to be even more creative. When I went on the hunt for syrup last night, I noticed the organic variety for about 10$…no way. The ‘regular’ variety was also 10$. People don’t use syrup here so therefore it’s ridiculously priced. There’s that pesky budget thing creeping in so I didn’t buy any.

For the batter I used 3 eggs, regular milk, cinnamon and coconut milk. Not having cooked with coconut milk this way before, I was hesitant to use too much as the sugar content is high and I didn’t want a blackened and charred breakfast. The baguette was sliced on the bias (more surface area for your delicious eggy mixture to soak in and cling to). In went the bread to the batter and I soaked it for 15-20 minutes. I didn’t clock it as I was having coffee, half a grapefruit and reading stupid crap on the web. While your bread is soaking and you are catching up on new Reddit posts, heat up a saute pan–medium-ish heat will work fine.

Put a nice hunk of butter in the pan then add your bread. Don’t overcrowd the pan–it will be harder to flip the pieces. Check periodically and flip when it’s as brown and ‘done’ as you like. When finished, keep warm in the oven if necessary.Since I had some bananas and a can of pineapple that’s been collecting dust, I decided to use those for a topping. The canned pineapple was cut into rather small-ish pieces so I quartered and chopped the banana to ‘match.’ I mixed them in a bowl with a bit of the canned syrup. (Actually, I have to thank a fellow Redditor for the idea of using pineapple on FT. I posted a food thread last week about ‘what to make for breakfast’ and someone suggested a kind of pineapple syrup. I thought it was a most excellent idea!)

Assembly: stack your bread–food tends to look ‘prettier’ when it’s built up. Of course, add butter to your FT. I also have something called Nugeta here in my flat. (Think Nutella but made with peanuts.) I wasn’t sure how sweet the FT would be and since I wasn’t using regular syrup, I thought this would be a good touch. So, on it went. Next was the banana/pineapple mix and finally a bit more cinnamon for garnish. Voila!

All in all, it was pretty delicious and I’ll make it again (as I have leftovers!) but I’d add more coconut milk as I didn’t find the bread to burn ‘more’ than say just using a traditional batter mix. I’d also maybe use more of the canned syrup for more sweetness.

COMMIES

I don’t have a television. I don’t have a radio. Well ok, I do have these things but they are packed away in a storage unit that is 4k miles away. As such, I get all my information from this here lovely interwebs. So……

One class (that happens to be in what I’m convinced is a former Communist Doctor’s office) has a radio. Because the class isn’t in an office building that requires a special security pass, I usually arrive early and pre-board any necessary text for a lesson. Since I’m always early, I turn on the radio and get my fill of weekly Czech radio. Of course I cannot understand what the DJs say when they are speaking. I still listen. However, English language music (like all forms of popular culture) has infiltrated the radio waves. Peppered between Czech songs are the ones I can understand. There are of course songs I don’t know and this just isn’t because I’m tragically unhip. It’s the Euro tunage. A few months back I heard a song I liked. I’m a writer of lyrics. But this is not for some deep and soulful purpose; this is only for the task of locating a particular song to download later. Anyway, I came home and downloaded this song. Ha, it is a Romanian pop group. Nice.

Cut to this week….most recently (as in Tuesday of this week) I heard another song I liked. I presume my ear noticed it because the band sounds quite a lot like Depeche Mode*. Camouflage is a German synthpop band from the 80s. I admit it, I’m a sucker for shitty synthpop. Go ahead & rag on it, I deserve the ridicule. It’s just damn catchy music. If you like bad 80s synth, check out these lyrics.

Or here’s the video if you so choose. Does anyone else thing the band has a Matt Damon-faced singer? How does Jason Bourne have time to program his Moog when determining his own identity?

*As an aside…… I found out about this place while reading an article on something else this week. It’s in Estonian but it’s real. Yes, a DM-themed bar. I’m a DM fan but I won’t be making a special trip to Tallinn for this.

LUNCH

There’s a great vegetarian Indian place about 2 blocks from here. (Check the menu for Dhaba Tynska) I’m pretty far from vegetarian on the food scale but Indian food is so tasty that meat really isn’t necessary. This place is literally in the shadows of Tyn Cathedral and insanely cheap. It’s in a courtyard of a sidestreet and unless you knew it was there, you’d walk right by. I love those hidden little gems. Beas offers a rather small menu but the ‘big menu’ is a mere 100KC. Score!

I also tried my first Kombucha. Kombucha is fermented tea. I can confirm that it does not taste like tea but does indeed taste fermented. The taste is really quite odd and off-putting. To be more specific, it rather tastes like something rotting; like something you should have thrown away 2 days ago but were too lazy and hungover. Like many similar foods that taste funky and gross, Kombucha is supposed to have some curative and beneficial qualities thus the reason for ingesting the stuff. If you haven’t heard of Kombucha, it’s not a fancy Euro-fied beverage. I had heard of the stuff in the US and my friend John used to buy it. Just look around in any health food or organic store and they’ll probably have it in their inventory.

Prior to having the stuff though I do recall Tina Fey on Letterman talking about her recent addiction to the dubious beverage. Go to 4:15 to hear her talk about it. She’s pretty spot on in her assessment and commentary.

On the note of Tina Fey, oh how I miss 30 Rock. Too bad I can’t get Hulu over here. Season 3 episodes are damn hard to locate online. Sadness.

CHEESE

If I said pickled cheese, the reaction of any normal person would be one of the following: ick, eew, gross, fuck that, nasty, hell no, etc. However, contrary to these thoughts, pickled cheese is freaking delicious. Pickled Hermelin is a staple bar food here in the C.R.. I was hesitant to try it for the very reason any normal person would hesitate to try the stuff. But I can report with great glee that pickled hermelin is the bomb. It’s not pickled in the traditional sense of being pickled. I usually associate tart, tangy, sour and vinegary with pickled foods. The hermelin is packed in a jar with various herbs, spices and other goodies such as garlic, peppers, juniper berries, capers, black pepper, onion, and oil. Basically you just let the stuff sit and work it’s magic in a jar. That easy. When the stuff is ready, you smear it all over some hearty Czech bread (Sumava is suggested) and you have a wonderful treat. I loved the stuff so much that I went to Tesco and bought a big plastic jar of the stuff. By no means is a 60Kc purchase of cheese going to be the world’s finest but it will surely satisfy my new cheese obsession.

Voila!

WORK

Here’s an example of the boring stuff I was researching last week to do a lesson at Kaufland. It’s at their logistics center in the Czech countryside. The place is huge and cumbersome and you can see the facility from kilometers away. It’s kind of one of those, ‘Oh shit, what the hell IS that over there,’ moments.

You can imagine the riveting buckets of information one can locate about grocery stores and related vocabulary. It’s rather boring and uninteresting material to do for 90 minutes.

NEWS

While surfing around on links from Reddit (my new go-to source aggregator), I saw the words penis and laser so naturally I did a little tap of my track pad and off I went. But what struck me as more tragic and interesting than the actual article was the sidebar. Yes, those are all associated news blurbs related to penis trauma this week. So this makes me query, ‘Does some dude behind a monitor aggregate articles on genitalia?’ Interesting gig. Is this a WTF moment? Or perhaps even a FTW? You decide.

ADVERTISING

What? Where’s Tom Cruise when you need him? How many level II Thetans approve of this message?

RANDOM PICS OF THE WEEK

Letna Park and an invader

Find the pivo!

Church at Strahov Monastery

Reminder: I live here

Just a quick blog so I can post a picture for Jayne. While on Skype tonight she requested I photograph the dinner I was making at the time. I did. Here it is.

Cheap Euro Shopper brand pasta + olive oil + milk & 2 kinds of cheese cheese to make a ghetto alfredo sauce + garlic + tomato + oregano & basil + salt/pepper + a wee spot of thyme & rosemary = dinner! I also added a scrambled egg to the mix. You can’t tell it’s there. And because I am my Mother’s daughter, I had to add extra garnish for the purposes of the photo. Note fancy Czech street backdrop.

When I opened the fridge I lost an egg. Sadness.

As I’ve mentioned, the weather has been crazy here (read shitty) lately but it cleared up nicely today so I took the camera & tripod to the nearest bridge (less than 400yards) and snapped away. This is what I got. Enjoy. Happy desktopping!

Here’s a deserted alley in the Jewish Quarter. Pretty cool, eh? I love that all this stuff is so close to where I sleep. Awesome. I just took these an hour ago.

12:34 56s 7/8/9A bottle of Becherovka, shots & a one second party under the horse’s ass of the King Wenceslas statue at Vaclavske Namesti. Check. Done.

More Becherovka. This time add Wii, shake & stir. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. James Lipton & Lou Gossett Jr. play baseball.

Workshops, Visas, & Zivnostensky lists OH MY! *Note: it was ’suggested’ that I present some kind of timeline for getting a work permit/zivno/visa. I tried to explain that’s nearly impossible due to the government bureaucracy but alas, they think I’m an idiot and just making this more complicated. They’ll realize soon enough that it’s a nebulous process and there is no speedy and painless route. You’re welcome in advance before you even realize it. Just be thankful you didn’t have to deal with R.J. on this one. It’s neither easy nor cheap. Remember I told you this.

Rain rain go away, why won’t you bring summer weather with you to this fine city?

1) Awake at 7:30am on a Sunday morning. 2) Laundry done by 9. 3) Hang laundry out window to dry. 4) Grocery shopping by 9:30. 5) Wait, WTF to #3?

I like public holidays although I don’t get paid. Good or bad. I can’t decide. Both?

Chili cookoff round 2. I’m the only competitor. I win & so does my stomach. Close race. Ahh. All mine!

I broke my quasi-good headphones last week. I stepped on them. The cheap replacement is such an inferior piece of shit. I miss the old ones.

FOOD and FOOD

I enjoy cooking. No mistake about this; I blog about it often. Anyway, I’m a ‘cook what you have’ kind of person. What do I mean by that? Well firstly, I do follow recipes. However, I don’t follow recipes all the time. I think the idea of a recipe is to have a base. If you know how to make some basic things, you can riff off the tenets of what to do and ingredients and various quantities. If you cook for yourself, you know what you like. So, if you think something will ‘go’ together in a dish, fuck it, throw it in. In other words, if it’s in the kitchen, for God’s sake use it! You aren’t a restaurant critic, you can always toss it and start anew.

1) Budget shopping. As much as it sucks, it must be done. I’m on a shoestring budget here and I’ve learned what to buy and what is cheap. Certain staples are key. Potatoes and onions are always on the cheap. Loaves of bread are usually a good deal. Eggs are fairly inexpensive too.

2) Unless you are boring and just love bland and flavorless food, you need to buy some herbs/seasonings. Fresh herbs are a bit harder to find here but there’s a fair amount of individually portioned/bagged dried herbs & seasonings readily available. They’re a good deal, too. Well-flavored food can make an otherwise lifeless meal a bit more interesting.

3) Fresh fruits & vegetables… the selection isn’t what it is in the U.S. but generally speaking, carrots, cabbage and occasionally tomatoes are on the less expensive side.

I love breakfast food. Always have. This will not change. Lately, I’ve been making larger ‘American style’ breakfasts on the weekends.

Why did I just mention all this stuff? So I can share with you my most recent morning treats! Keeping in mind the points I just covered, here’s what I made last week:roasted potatoes & onions with misc. herbs, omelette with ham, cheese & tomatoes, and some nice hearty thick-sliced Czech bread.Vitamins!

Today’s meal: toast, roasted potatoes & red pepper with thyme, oregano, basil, paprika, salt/pepper, olive oil, three cheese omelette (Hermelin, bleu cheese cream cheese & Moravian cheese–similar to Parm), a nice sliced fresh tomato…. sprinkle more fresh cheese atop and voila! I wouldn’t normally use those kinds of cheese in an omelette but it follows my ‘use what you have’ mentality. Cheese, eggs, potatoes, bread & butter are some of my favorite things!

Some random images from iPhoto!

a) Fine wine of the week. A well-spent 49Kc at Albert. b) I spilled Ranch on the floor. In a land where it’s unavailable, this pretty much went down as the following–Oh shit! Man down! c)Let’s call this the slicer of death. I was at a party at a colleague’s flat in Zizkov a few nights ago and this rusty old Eastern Bloc instrument of torture is about 3 feet from the front door and in plain view of anyone in the kitchen. I inquired about said death tool. It looks like an antiquated meat slicer; you know the kind that the guys in the deli would use. No, this is a bread slicer. Or so I was told. According to my colleague (flatmate of the proprietor of said device), this was affixed to the counter in this spot so when slicing bread, the crumbs will just fall into the sink. Our query, ‘Who the fuck slices bread like this?’ Buy a knife, dude.

Well, it’s been a while since I blogged so this one is going to be peppered with randomness…

1. Usually, when using the metro, I stand. This isn’t because the seats are gross and dirty, this is because many times it’s just easier to get off the metro if you are in front of the door. That said, the other day I was seated just minding my own business. Then, to my left and at perfect eye level there stood a man. While this man was facing away from me, therein lies the heart of my story. Uh well, rather perhaps I should say therein lies the ’seat’ of my story.

The man in question was reading a book or a magazine (I can’t remember and it isn’t important) and perhaps he was unaware of an apparently chronic problem. You see, this man has an unfortunate condition; for the sake of definition, this is something that I’ll call ‘twitching ass syndrome.’ Due to lack of medical acumen, I could not nor cannot ascertain what said condition is actually labelled therefore and for the sake of this writing, it is TAS for short.

This guy’s ass was twitching at full speed. Both cheeks were fully engaged in said twitching activity. The alternate flexing and relaxing of the cheeks was a most interesting visual. Perhaps some could consider such movements to be a kind of silent ass symphony.

I’m not even quite sure what the expression ‘full throttle’ means but I’m going to use it when discussing the separate entity that is/was this dude’s twitching proclivity. This display of gluteal twitches went on for about 5 metro stops and that’s only because I got off the metro and went on my merry way.

All of this brings me to a series of queries…..Does this guy’s ass really twitch uncontrollably for hours at a time? Is this a real and diagnosed condition? What (if any) medical treatment can be sought in connection with such a chronic issue? Has the medical field carelessly disregarded conditions like this for the more ‘glammed up’ research of say, warts, necrotizing fasciitis and seasonal affective disorder?

One last note….before you go Googling this condition (and I already have), there is a serious lack of written material on the subject. Funny thing, I actually knew someone years ago who also had a twitching ass (yes really). However, his gluteal twitches are associated with Tourette’s. His Tourette’s manifested in strange and frequent coughing fits quickly followed by a body shake and ass twitch. Metro man was exhibiting no other obvious Tourette’s-like tics so who’s to say what was happening.

2. The closest grocery store to my flat is the Albert at Namesty Republiky. I mention this store often not because it’s absolutely amazing (it isn’t) but because I’m there too much. There are certainly better Albert branches in Prague; I just happen to live near one of the shitty ones. But, the close proximity and frequent sales are a plus so it’s all good by me.

A frequently appearing word here in Czech is AKCE. Directly translated, I’m not sure what it means but it refers to either a sale or a discount. AKCE is in big capital letters all over Albert. Albert’s sales are pretty killer.

Exhibit A…… it was one of the big AKCE promotions that Branik beer was so insanely cheap a few weeks ago. Refresher: cheap as in 3.90Kc/each. Add in an extra 3Kc for the bottle return and you have a beer for between 25 and 50 US cents. NICE!

Exhibit B……….There was also a big sale of Milka chocolate bars a few weeks ago. Czechs go batty over chocolate (and so do I), so these candy bars were snatched up in no time. Also, I’ll mention that the chocolate bars here are not the standard US size. I’m not sure how many grams each bar weighs but I’ll guess and say these babies might be 8-10 ounces. In other words, they are quite substantial. To provide some kind of reference as to how MUCH Czechs love their sweets, there was a per person/per bar limit on the Milka sale. One afternoon, I was behind a family (that although purchased separately) that bought about 60 freaking Milka bars. Um yeah, that’s a lot of chocolate.

Exhibit C………On my morning run to Albert today, I was in the bakery area and took advantage of the AKCE on some kind of breakfast pastry. I didn’t bother to read the name but I jumped at the 4.90Kc price. Anyway, I’m a sucker for beer/alcohol/wine on sale especially when it’s ‘foreign’ to my palate. All this sale stuff I buy could be complete shit but frankly, it’s ‘exotic’ to me so what the hell.

Hmmm, what’s that inside? Oh silly me, it’s chocolate. Ok, I’ll eat it. Poof! Magic! All gone!

I’m posting this pic because these little bastards are delicious. Not much more needs to be said when you have pecans in the mix. I don’t know what it’s called but I’m pretty sure there’s crack inside. *The pic looks oddly like a stock photo; it’s not. The white plate underneath just gives the illusion that this image is for an in-store demo.

Exhibit D………What else have I bought on sale, you ask? Well of course, I’ll tell you….. some locally produced wine! I’ve purchases cheap wine before, I’m not above doing so. I’m pretty far distances from being an oenophile, so I’m insulting nobody buy making poor choices in the vino department. This week the big AKCE was on wine labeled from Prague 4. F.Y.I., Prague 4 is pretty much in the heart of the city so it’s rather laughable that a bottled product is coming from somewhere in Nusle. While Tesco (and even Albert) have super SUPER cheap boxed wine for the homeless guys, this stuff was only about a half notch above that. I dropped a whopping 27Kc on a bottle of this stuff. Eh, it was fine but at least it was in a bottle.

Dramatic posing of said wine.

3. So as I type this it’s Saturday morning at 945. I’ve been up for two hours (boo!) and if I was a normal person, I’d go back to bed. Alas, this will not happen just yet. I should be in bed because I was out much later than usual last night. It’s always the nights that you don’t PLAN to stay out late that shit happens and you just do.

My friend Dita wanted to go for a beer. Cool by me; I’m always up for a good pivo. We went to Chapeau Rouge which is a bar/club here in Old Town/Prague 1. I’d heard of this place and a bunch of friends had been before, but last night I popped my Chapeau cherry. The vibe of the place is pretty cool. There’s tons of random stuff around and it’s kitschy and a bit funky. We sat at a table in the front and there is a hilarious display in the front window.

I’ll do my best at describing it…..Imagine if you will a ceramic Mary. Yeah, Mary as in, ‘I’m having a baby Joe, take my ass to Bethlehem,’ Mary. Mary is holding a tiny CD, she’s positioned in a bowl of plastic grapes which are flanked by wooden fish. Said bowl is underneath a small spinning disco ball. The bowl is situation on a turn table so yes, Mary is a turnin’. As she does her never-ending cycle of spins, it’s then you notice the plastic guns that surround the whole piece. The symbolism is quite obvious and I love it. Now of course to the Christian fundies this is all obviously very offensive and sacrelege. To the rest of us normal fucks, it’s just plain awesome.

So anyway, back to my story…. when we arrived at Chapeau, it was about 8:30. A fairly early evening out even for American standards. But, we arrived at a good time as we were able to commandeer a table and hold it all night. The place filled up relatively quickly but we had our seats. Most excellent.

Dita & I met some interesting folks during the night. First off I’ll say that Dita is Czech and since I don’t know shit about this language, we were speaking English all night. I’m not sure if it’s because people heard us speaking English but they found us more interesting and wanted to talk and practice their own English. One guy we met is a local camerman and he told us some interesting tales of his travels including one of his buddy who had a vital organ removed (no, not the normal hospital variety excision) when he was kidnapped in Peru. Yikes! This guy was nice enough and we got a free beer out of it. Free beer is my favorite kind.

Camerman dude left and then we met the interesting ones… Again, I think because they heard us speaking English is why they asked if they could roll a joint at our table. (Yes, people DO smoke in public here!) This was a trio consisting of 2 Czech guys and a Slovak girl. One of the Czech dudes (Ladislav!) lives in Ronkonkoma (Long Island) and has a Slovak stripper girlfriend. Yes, live the American dream, buddy! The other two were a couple oh and by the way, they were wearing latex. Yeah, latex. Chapeau Rouge isn’t a fetish bar. But this couple you could just TELL is really into some kinky shit. Anyway, George (latex man) was telling me how his latex is the most comfortable and breatheable (my word, not his) item of clothing he owns. That is, until the dancing and fucking happens (this time his words, not mine). So, this statement gave me the visual of him & his latex girlfriend going at it screaming dirty Czech words to each other while they bite and slap and kick their way out of sex harness/swing. Yikes.

All that said, this trio was pretty nice and friendly and the two guys spoke rather decent English. We split two joints with them and chatted away. (’Why yes, so nice of you to offer, I think I will have a toke!’) During this toke toke pass ritual, George then started telling me about some monthly ‘parties’ in Palmovka. (**Sidenote: I wrote about Palmovka in a blog a few months ago. This is an area of town that I referred to a Communist wasteland. Palmovka is NOT the pretty Prague. ) These ‘parties’ while I’m not exactly sure what goes on at these parties have regular ‘underground’ body modification sessions. George then went into detail about what kinds of body mods they do: piercings (um ok, fine sure yeah, whatever), burnings (WTF), scarrification (again WTF)…… I do not get the hardcore body mods at all. I’ve heard of scarrification but burnings? Who does that shit? But the best part? George gave me his e-mail so I can get on the ‘list’ to these parties. Check and done. Really.

4. Even though I live thousands of miles from ‘home,’ I still like to know what’s happening there. Occasionally, I’ll check the local paper and look at local party pics. I came across these while looking through pics from Taste of the Bluegrass.

Other than say The Joker, has anyone seen a grin like this before? It’s like infinity.

Seriously, WTF is up with her dress. A stupid ribbon/bow that goes right across the middle? I don’t know shit about fashion but I am positive this is shit. The guys from Project Runway would vomit cashmere over this.

And now she’s dancing. And what’s with the expression on the face of the woman in the middle. You just know the that the normal and cute friend regretted going out with those two that night. Too many bad photo ops!

5. It’s Saturday. It’s June. The sky is clear. I don’t have to work today. What am I going to do? I think it’s Brevnov Monastery this afternoon. And I’m bringing the tripod. Hotness.

And here’s a random image of my plush quarters here at Chez Andrea.

Note: this is where the magic is NOT happening

Yes, my desk is boring but this is where I spend most of my time. Imagine me sitting there now typing this.

Funny sidenote…. ok, the lowest window at the bottom behind the right door… there isn’t much visible. A while back I popped right up out of bed at 3am one night. I was wide awake. Of course I opened up my Mac and said hello the these here interwebs. Becuase my table/desk is situation just so, I can clearly see the windows of the flats across the street. In the aforementioned window I noticed a light on. And then I saw movement. I had a glimmer of hope that perhaps I could have been a bit of a voyeur that night and seen people having sex. Nope. Instead I saw something different. First, the normally closed curtains were wide open. There was a light on inside. At this point I’ll also mention that my street is one-way so it’s quite narrow and the buildings are closer than average. So, just inside the window and sitting in a chair was a man. A hot, sexy, strapping man, you ask? Ha, no. This was an old man. An old naked man. The chair was turned outward towards the street. This guy wasn’t doing anything sexual he was just sitting naked in his chair. Maybe he was smoking cigarettes or reading Newsweek. I don’t know how long he had been sitting there nor how long he continued to sit there but the curtains are now closed and the show is over.

As much as it sucks to have one, living on a budget is a bitch. If I could afford steak & crab legs & whiskey every night, believe me, I’d live it up big time. But, the pesky thing called reality bites us all in the ass and provides an anchor for which the budget-minded are required to subsist. That said, I thought I’d share some of my budget meals with my fellow budget-conscious cyber friends.

Everyone that knows me knows that I like to cook. For some the process of shopping, preparation, and the actual cooking is a tortuous concept. They just hate it. Hate everything about it. I’m not one of those people. Going to new and fancy grocery stores is something I like doing. I enjoy slowly cruising the aisles for good little edible treats. I enjoy mincing garlic and chopping onions and all that other stuff even if these things make my hands stinky or make me cry. I enjoy sauteeing random things in a pan and making sauces. It’s just fun. For me, it’s a good time.

Breakfast

A month or so ago I was craving some good American-style breakfast goodies. Other than Bohemia Bagel, it’s rather difficult (if not impossible) to find a place that serves hash browns, bacon (American style–and yes, there is a difference), bagels with cream cheese, omelettes, pancakes, etc. you get my point.

First, I love bacon. Yes, love it. There are really two camps when it comes to bacon: those from the school of ‘burn it’ and those from the school of ‘I’ll take it floppy and greasy, please.’ I am from the latter. Crispy burnt bacon, in my opinion, is a disservice to the bacon. Respect the meat. If it can disintegrate when picking it up, what’ the freaking point of that? The glorious streaks of fat in the bacon are what make it so damn good. Fat = flavor. Go ahead & deny it but it’s the truth. Any butcher will agree.

So, I really wanted some bacon on this particular day… I decided to go full out and make other stuff because I figure that if I want just one thing specifically and am required to go to the store to get it, why not go ahead and make all the other delicious breakfast accoutrements. Bread? Gotta have it. Carbs = life. I toasted up some fresh baked goodness and slapped cream cheese all over that bad boy. Huevos? Gotta have those, too. Scrambled with cheese. Check. Potatoes & onions? Ok, sounds good. Oh wait, let’s add some cherry tomatoes, too!

Lunch

I made some egg salad last week. I don’t eat egg salad regularly but I have to confess I think it’s great. Sometimes I’m pretty easy to please and egg salad is just one of those comfort food items that makes me a happy person. I don’t know about you but egg salad makes me think of picnics and the summer. You know what else makes me think of picnicking? Potato salad. Not being one who usually likes the cold side dishes associated with picnics, I felt a wild rash of potato love this morning and made some potato salad. This is an item that I had never made before but I quickly Googled a recipe and threw some things together. It actually worked and is quite tasty. It also helps that the potatoes were on sale at Albert. One kilo for 7.90Kc is pretty damn reasonable. When it’s on sale, you fucking buy it. It’s an unspoken rule to me.

Since I didn’t want to eat the potato salad by itself, I also made a grilled cheese for the side. Well ok, I’ll be fancy and call this a croque monsieur because I piled some ham on this baby. There is no cheddar in this country. Actually, all the cheeses I’ve seen have been of the light yellow variety. They love their Edam here. It’s everywhere. But, I sprung for some kind of local bleu cheese so my grilled cheese was a variant on the traditional.

Dinner

Unless you live under a rock or a terrorist regime, you’ve probably had a roast chicken in your life. Roast chicken is certainly one of my favorite foods to eat and prepare. Why? Roasting a chicken is super easy and almost impossible to destroy. Whole birds are usually reasonably priced as it requires YOU the purchaser to do the work of skinning and boning the meat.

So, how does one prepare a roast chicken? Here’s what I do and I’m basing this on using a whole chicken…

Preheat your oven to 350 or 375F

Wash your bird and pat dry

Make a delicious compound butter–I typically like minced garlic, salt & pepper, butter, lemon juice, lemon zest, thyme
(You’ll be putting the compound butter underneath and on the skin so make sure you are using an adequate quantity)

Rub the butter all over the bird and separate the skin from the meat using your fingers–this is easy to do but be careful not to pierce the skin as the mixture will of course melt and run out from under the skin

Put the bird in a roasting pan and just let that baby go!

60-75 minutes is usually ample time for the bird to cook through

How to test if a chicken is done? Pierce the meat around the leg and if the juices run clear, you’re good…. also if the legs wiggle freely, that’s a good indicator that the meat is cooked

Of course this can be done with smaller portions of meat (breast, thigh, etc.) but your cooking time will be quite a bit less as your quantity has been reduced

Another tip is to cook the meat on a bed of potatoes, onions, etc. (of course your choice) Depending on how much chicken you are using, you might want to alter when you put in the vegetables as they won’t all necessarily require the same cooking times

The vegetables will also absorb the delicious juices/butter mixture that slowly drips from the chicken so essentially, you will have a pan of damn good eats. Crack open a beer or a bottle of wine and enjoy your meal!

p.s. Good girls like me make leftovers!

Voila!