Three doors down the road from my new home in Stará Oleška, is Bar-Restaurace U Soni. It has been a real find and an absolute godsend since moving here. But if you go online, you will be hard-pushed to find any reference to it at all. It doesn’t have its own website. The building does not appear as a bar-restaurant on any online map.
The one reference I could find, gave the address incorrectly as Stará Oleška 76 when it it should be Stará Oleška 86. Putting the incorrect address into an online map will send you to the completely wrong location. To find the correct location, click on this link.
This blog post is therefore my small attempt to rectify the lack of information about Bar-Restaurace U Soni and give it a bit of publicity that it so richly deserves!
Let’s start with the beer. The one in the photograph on the left is the first on the list below – for my UK readers that is £0.74 for 0.5l, which is very slightly less than a pint. Even the most expensive offering is still less than £1.00 a pint!
As for the food – the photograph below was taken on either our first or second visit, a few days after arriving in the village, and shows both our meals. Total cost CZK 310 – £10.00. As you can see, each dish comes decorated with raw vegetables and fruit, a far healthier offering than in most Czech restaurants 🙂 And the portions are copious!
As my cooking facilities in the house are quite limited, until I get the kitchen refitted which will hopefully happen in July, I have become a regular at U Soni. As a reward for my patronage, I have recently twice been presented with a free dessert. Below is the second of these from two nights ago.
I am very aware that in July and August, I only managed to publish three posts here on my blog. And I also note that today, half of September will have passed without anything being published either. My two excuses are the very hot weather that we experienced during nearly all of both summer months, together with my hospitalisation at the beginning of August and having to attend umpteen subsequent medical appointments.
This post is the beginning of my attempt to start writing and publishing regularly once again. I hope my readers will forgive its slightly more frivolous nature – I do also have planned some more serious subjects to blog about in due course.
‘Only in the Czech Republic’, is the usual comment Sybille and I make, when we see something that is so typically Czech, yet would cause shock and surprise in most other cultures. The sights I describe in this post, all fall into this category and were all observed during the recent very hot and sticky weather in August.
One Saturday morning, we made our regular weekly visit to the Farmer’s Market at Vítezné námestí. Because of the exceptionally hot weather, the Prague 6 authorities, as well as providing a water supply to the stalls needing one, had also set up a rotating fountain on the grassy area behind the stalls. That Saturday morning, there were numerous children ranging in age from approximately three to nine, thoroughly enjoying themselves by running in and out of the water being sprayed. And they were all, without exception, not wearing a single item of clothing. Judging by their skin colour and lack of tan lines, it is what they had been doing all summer.
Their parents were, no doubt, amongst those adults sitting under the nearby trees. But there were no irrational fears of paedophiles taking photographs or abducting a child. Children were being allowed to be children – totally unselfconsciously enjoying themselves.
I have frequently commented in this blog and in conversation, on how well so many Czech women hold their age. When seeing three generations out together, with the new mother pushing the buggy/stroller and her mother alongside, it is frequently difficult to believe that there is actually a generation between the two ladies.
However, on that same Saturday morning at the Farmer’s Market, there was a lady who I’m convinced was, like me, the wrong side of sixty. Yet she was wearing a sun dress held up by two straps no wider than shoes laces, revealing bare arms and shoulders and with a hemline that finished somewhere above mid-thigh. Whilst the weather was very hot and sticky, it still was an ‘only in the Czech Republic’ sight.
One very positive aspect of the Czech relaxed attitude to the human body, is that women can freely breastfeed, without anyone batting an eyelid. One evening during August, Sybille and I were sitting in the beer garden of Bar-Restaurace U Pramene, when two couples came in and sat at a nearby table. One couple, without children, sat on one side, whilst the other couple with a young child and a baby, sat on the other side.
As all the adults were enjoying their beers and the young child her soft drink, the baby started making a noise. So the mother just unbuttoned the top of her dress, got her breast out, lifted the baby from its buggy/stroller, and began to breastfeed him/her. But whilst doing so, she also happily continued drinking her beer! A most interesting way to give the baby an introduction to what Czech people call tekutý chléb / liquid bread 🙂
As I wrote in my most famous blog post, ‘How to be Czech in 10 easy steps‘ under point three, one aspect of ‘dressing Czech’ for ladies, is showing a rather large amount of cleavage. As I wrote there, this is look not just reserved for a romantic evening with your husband or boyfriend, but can often be seen being worn in situations which can seem a little inappropriate.
Our host Ceskobratrská církve evangelické / Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren congregation at Kostel sv Klimenta / St Clement’s Church, have a practice of a leading lay person, (I presume, an elected elder), being up front with the Pastor, helping to lead worship each Sunday. At the end of their service, this person always stands with the Pastor at the back of the Church, shaking hands and talking to the congregation as they leave. It is while this is happening that I, along with my helpers, slip into the building to start setting up for our service.
On the last Sunday in August, the lay leader was a lady, probably in her mid forties. She was wearing a summer dress which was quite long by normal Czech standards, the hemline finishing a little below her knees. But in total contrast, the neckline of her dress plunged at the centre, displaying a considerable amount of cleavage! Nice to wear when sunning oneself on the banks of the Vltava, but up front in Church, helping lead worship? Only in the Czech Republic!
Ten months ago, I published a blog post entitled ‘How to be Czech in 10 easy steps‘, based on my experience at that time, of having lived as a cizinec / foreigner in the Czech Republic for nearly four and a half years. To my utter amazement, this post almost immediately went viral. It resulted in the blog getting 2040 visits on 20th February 2013, the day after it was published, and 1034 visits the following day. It took another three weeks before the daily visitor numbers returned to the more normal figure of around fifty.
I found the main reason for this sudden upsurge of visitor numbers in the social media buttons at the end of the post. The number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ on Facebook rapidly rose from zero, to nearly one thousand, together with numerous ‘tweets’ on Twitter, and ‘shares’ on Google+. The post also got highly rated for some time, on the social news and entertainment website, ‘reddit‘.
Since visitor numbers to my blog returned to more normal levels in mid-March, ‘How to be Czech in 10 easy steps’ has still remained as one of the most popular landing pages for new visitors to the blog. This has coincided with a gradual rise in Facebook ‘likes’ and ‘shares’, to around 1,100.
Then, in the past ten days, ‘How to be Czech in 10 easy steps’, has suddenly gone viral once again. From my blog having 47 visitors on 4th December, it suddenly shot up to 641 visitors the next day, and peaked at 1301 on 7th December. Yesterday, the visitor total was still nearly ten times the normal figure at 422. Once again it has been thanks to publicity, via social media, of this particular post. Even whilst drafting this new post, the number of Facebook ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ it has received, broke through the 2100 barrier!
The original post also attracted 77 comments. I think I am right in saying that this is the largest number of comments on any of the 252 posts here on my blog. In view of the recent upsurge, I suspect there would have been more comments, except for the policy I adopted more than two years ago, of not allowing comments on posts that are more than three months old, in an attempt to help reduce the number of spam comments I have to delete every day. However, real comments are most welcome on this new post 🙂
I really enjoyed reading and replying to all the comments, the original post received. In particular, I appreciated the many English-speaking Czechs, who could recognise what I was describing and were able to laugh and smile about themselves. There were several commenters who thanked me for being positive, rather than negative, about Czech people and their culture. This was always my intention. As I’ve written previously on this blog, I enjoy living here. The main thing I take issue with are the absurdities of Czech bureaucracy, which I know many Czech people get frustrated with too! I have no time for foreigners who constantly complain about living in the Czech Republic. There is a simple answer to their problem – go back to your home country!
Inevitably, there were several additional suggestions as to things I should also have included in my original post. With my first point, ‘Drink beer’, I should really have also added ‘or Kofola’. Kofola is a communist era product that was a substitute for Coca-Cola or Pepsi, which has enjoyed a nostalgic resurgence in recent years. Point 8, ‘Get a dog’, should really have been extended to, ‘or a cat’. And as part of point 7, going out into ‘the nature’, the important autumnal activity of ‘mushrooming’, should certainly have been highlighted.
Inevitably, ever since writing the original post in February, I have been on the look out to observe further examples that confirm what I wrote. I have to say that they are rarely hard to find 🙂 This particularly applies to point 3 of my original blog post, ‘Dress Czech’.
As I wrote there, ‘In the Czech Republic, you will frequently see a mother and her daughter out walking together, with the daughter pushing a buggy containing her new-born infant. You will then often notice that there is a competition between mother and the new grandma, as to which one has the shorter hemline’.
Two weeks ago, Sybille & I paid our regular Saturday morning visit to the Farmers Market at Vítezné námestí. Afterwards, we stopped off at Bar-Restaurace U topolu, for lunch. Soon after we sat down in the Bar-Restaurant, a three-generation family group came in. There was a toddler in a buggy being pushed by the child’s mother who would have been in her late twenties/early thirties. Behind them came the mother’s parents – grandparents of the toddler. Whilst the mother was in jeans and trainers, the relatively new grandmother was wearing knee-high boots, black tights, and a skirt that finished several centimetres above her knees!
A few days later, we were in another of our favourite haunts, Restaurace Pod Juliskou, when another family group came in and sat on the table next to us, this time without a young child. There was the daughter, again either late twenties or early thirties, together with her parents. Whilst the daughter was wearing what I call the Czech female winter look – spray-on jeans tucked into knee-high boots, together with serious heels, her mother was in a thigh-high woollen mini-dress, teamed with black patent leather knee-high boots!
A week last Tuesday, I attended a follow-up appointment with my dermatologist at Vojenská nemocnice, the Military Hospital, for treatment of another basal cell carcinoma, the commonest and least dangerous form of skin cancer, from which I periodically suffer. In the good Czech fashion of beginning work early in the day, my appointment was for 08.00. I duly arrived at 07.55 to check-in, to be greeted by a receptionist in a short red top that revealed part of her midriff and a serious amount of cleavage. It was a look that her boyfriend or husband would have enjoyed whilst sharing a romantic evening dinner, but not what I really wanted to see at 08.00 in the morning, before having my face attacked with liquid nitrogen!
Also in the past week, whilst leaving the metro and heading towards the escalator, a lady walked straight into me because she was trying read a whole series of notes, whilst walking along at the same time. Point 9 of my original post applies!
Therefore, in view of the continued high level of interest in my observations of how to be Czech, I am working on expanding the original post into a book. I started on the project in August when I took a week of my annual leave and tried to use the time to write. I am hoping to resume writing when I try and take a few days off as my post-Christmas break. In the meantime, there might have to be slightly fewer posts here on my blog 🙂
Update January 2014
In total breach of copyright, Prásk! the online tabloid newspaper belonging to the TV Nova Group, have published an abbreviated and very badly translated version of the original post – a complete act of plagiarism.
A few months ago, a British friend who has lived in Germany for many years, alerted me to this online article entitled, ‘How to be German in 20 easy steps’. It is written by a British man who is obviously trying to become accepted in the country in which he is now resident. The article had both Sybille and I in stitches 🙂 But ever since reading it, I have been formulating in my own mind, the equivalent article. So after nearly four & a half years of living as a cizinec / foreigner in the Czech Republic, here is my guide in ten easy steps as to ‘How to be Czech’.
1. Drink beer
The Czech Republic has the highest per capita consumption of beer of any nation in the world. The country also produces an abundance of excellent brews including Pilsner Urquell, the world’s first pilsner pale lager beer, Budvar, Kozel, Gambrinus, Radegast, Staropramen, Krušovice, Starobrno, Bernard and Svijany. In very simple terms, if you want to be Czech, you need to drink beer and enjoy doing so.
You also need to know how to drink beer – in particular to remember that in a Czech bar, your beer glass must always be placed on a beer mat. And going into a Czech bar, sitting at a table, taking a beer mat from the central container, and placing it in front of you, will frequently result in a half litre of Czech beer arriving, without you having to say a word! And be reassured – as far as Czech people are concerned, beer is not alcohol 🙂
2. Get a title
The Czech people love their titles – and use them! Even a simple office worker seems to have Ing. (Engineer) in front of their name. My recent reminder to renew my car insurance came from Ing. Pavel and Ing. Annabella, who both work for the Czech branch of a well-known German insurance company.
I was tempted to illustrate this point by photographing the mail boxes on the ground floor of our apartment block, but decided for reasons of personal privacy, it would be unwise to do so. But you would be amazed how many Mgr., Ing., JuDr., etc there are in our neighbourhood. Therefore our mail box very firmly has ‘Rev’d’ in front of my name. For if you are going to be Czech, you need to have a title!
Whilst recognising that I’m now setting foot where most angels would fear to tread, here is my advice to ladies as to how to dress Czech. Ladies – when wearing a dress or skirt, make sure that it is short – basically finishing mid thigh or even higher! And do not think that this is just restricted to young ladies. In the Czech Republic, you will frequently see a mother and her daughter out walking together, with the daughter pushing a buggy containing her new-born infant. You will then often notice that there is a competition between mother and the new grandma, as to which one has the shorter hemline.
Another aspect of the Czech female look is showing cleavage – usually plenty of it. Please don’t think to reserve such a look for a romantic evening dinner with your boyfriend or husband. If you are going to be Czech, showing plenty of cleavage &/or wearing a short dress or skirt is also the required dress code for going around town during the day and for wearing to the office.
Tight jeans, boots & high heels
When it does get really cold, then the correct Czech female look is spray-on jeans tucked into knee-high boots. And the boots really should have high, narrow heels, despite the cobbled streets and pavements of the historic centre of Prague and other Czech towns and cities. For part of being a Czech lady is being able to walk in such heels and not trip up on the cobbles.
There is far less of a dressing Czech code for men. But if any man wants to really be Czech, he needs to stop worrying about having his hair cut. A true Czech man has long hair and ties it back in a pony tail. As with ladies and short hemlines, the pony tail look is not just restricted to young men. Plenty of Czech men in their fifties & sixties have them too. Gents – you want to be Czech? Grow a pony tail!
4. Take your shoes off when entering a house or flat
Upon your arrival at the entrance door of a Czech home, you must take off your shoes. Your Czech host may well say, ‘Oh don’t worry about your shoes’. Ignore what has been said and still take off your shoes, leaving them in the entrance hall by the door. Failure to do so will result in you forever being known as the foreigner who didn’t take off their shoes. Nobody will ever think you are Czech.
Don’t just obey this rule when entering a Czech home. Adopt the same rule in your own home too. Then when Czech people come to visit you, not only will they take their shoes off upon arrival, they will recognise that you are also on your way to being Czech.
A happy couple roller blading
5. Be sportif
Despite Czech cuisine being somewhat unhealthy – if you can deep-fry it, they will 🙂 – you still see remarkably little obesity. The reason is that in order to be Czech, you need to be sportif. Go out for a gentle walk in a city park or alongside the Vltava River, and you will be passed by a succession of joggers, cyclists, skateboarders and roller-bladers. To be really Czech, you need to be one of them.
Having a baby or toddler that needs to be pushed around in a baby buggy or stroller is no excuse. Just pop on your roller-blades and push the buggy/stroller in front of you. This is strollering – the ideal form of exercise to lose weight after giving birth. If you don’t have the confidence to try it, classes are available as this poster below explains.
If none of these sportif activities appeal to you, then try playing floorball, a form of indoor hockey at which Czechs excel. Or go ice skating in winter, play tennis in summer. Yes – part of being Czech is being sportif. See also what follows in points six and seven.
One little frustration of living in the Czech Republic is the impossibility of getting anything done in most offices on a Friday afternoon. Why? Because everybody is busy packing up and clearing their desks so they can head off to spend the weekend in the chata or chalupa.
A chata is a (usually) wooden small hut or chalet, located out in the Bohemian or Moravian countryside. A chalupa is a bigger and usually more substantial version of a chata – a ‘country cottage’ might be an appropriate description in English. Particularly for any English-speaker who has fallen in love with a member of the opposite sex who is Czech, going to spend the weekend with the Czech relatives at their chata/chalupa, can be the make-or-break experience as to whether the new relationship will flourish and will certainly define whether, as a foreigner, you are going to succeed in becoming Czech.
Part of the chata/chalupa weekend experience is also being sportif, as in point five. Cars leaving Prague on a Friday afternoon will have bicycles up on the roof rack in summer, or skis/snowboards in winter. Some wealthier Czechs will have horses at their chalupa, ready for weekend riding. It isn’t just going to the chata/chalupa for the weekend – the real test for being Czech, is joining fully in the whole experience, including the various, mainly sportif, activities.
7. Enjoy being out in ‘the nature’
Even for those Czech people who don’t own or have access to a chata/chalupa, going out into the Czech countryside and being in ‘the nature’ as they tend to say in English, is deemed highly important. If you want to be Czech, you need to do so too, and be seen to enjoy it.
This means taking the train out of the big city to a small village or town, and then walking for many kilometres along one of the numerous way-marked paths through the forests and over the hills, to another spot where you can catch the train home at the end of the day. Or heading out of the city to where you can hire a canoe and paddle your way along the river, over a few rapids, to a distant location many kilometres downstream.
In summer, these activities can also often include swimming in the many rivers and lakes that are part of ‘the nature’ in the Czech Republic. And for some Czechs, being in ‘the nature’ also means being ‘au naturel’. Certainly don’t expect changing facilities at river and lakeside bathing spots and be aware that many Czech women don’t believe in wearing bikini tops. If you want to be Czech, just join in doing what Czech people do when they are in ‘the nature’.
8. Get a dog
The statistic I’ve read is that 40% of Czech households, have one or more dogs. I often think it might be higher than that. But as I know from our personal experience with Sam the dog, if you have a dog, suddenly complete strangers start talking to you and, far more importantly, to your dog. You have a dog? You must be Czech!
Czech people love books and love reading. The number of flourishing bookshops is testament to their love of reading. To be Czech, you need to be a bookworm too. But don’t confine your reading to fifteen minutes in bed before you go to sleep. No – read a book wherever you are.
What does that mean? It means reading on the tram, metro or bus and whilst standing & waiting for the tram, metro or bus. But don’t just restrict yourself to these locations. The real test as to whether you are Czech is being able to read and walk along at the same time! Yes – you need to be able to read a book, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.
10. Speak Czech
The most obvious, but also the hardest. Whilst many younger Czech people, welcome the opportunity of speaking English with a native speaker, and will respect you for having adopted and practised points one to nine above, the final test is being able to speak their language. Which means getting four genders and seven cases correct, every time 🙁
Did I mention ten easy steps. Sorry – I meant nine relatively easy ones and one that is extremely difficult.
I hope the regular readers of my blog will forgive the rather sharp contrast between some of my more recent writings on faith related issues and this post. But then I do live in the Czech Republic where football is a major sport and where both the production and drinking of beer are deemed to be highly important activities.
Back on the evening of Sunday 6th November, my son Phillip flew into Prague to spend a few days with me, his first visit here since January 2010. As football and beer are two of his interests, I was pleased that we were able to enjoy both of them together during the short time he was here.
The top tier of Czech football is called the Gambrinus liga as it is sponsored by the producers of Gambrinus, a very drinkable Czech beer. During the football season, each weekend there is a round of matches, spread out between Friday evening and Monday evening, in part to allow for television coverage of some of the games. Fortunately, the Monday evening match featured a home fixture for one of the five Prague based teams in the Gambrinus liga, FK Viktoria Žižkov.
Žižkov is a Prague suburb on the eastern side of the Vltava River, whereas the Chaplaincy Flat where I live, is on the western side. But it only took a thirty minute tram journey to reach the ground which lies below the hill on which the suburb of Žižkov sits, just the far side of Prague’s main railway station.
FK Viktoria Žižkov were playing FC Baník Ostrava in what would best be described as a bottom-of-the-table clash as at that point in time, Baník Ostrava were bottom of the league and Viktoria Žižkov were third from bottom. It resulted in a 3 – 0 win for the visitors and unfortunately for us, all three goals were scored at the opposite end of the ground from where we were sitting. But we did both enjoy ourselves and supped a few half litres of Gambrinus whilst watching the match.
Later in the week, Phillip and I went for a day trip to Plzen, the fourth largest city in the Czech Republic and the home of the most famous Czech beer, Pilsner Urquell. We travelled there by train, partly because a couple of days earlier, the local Renault garage informed me that the noise coming from the rear brakes on my car was not just due to the need for new brake pads, but also because the brake shoes and a seized-up brake calliper all also needed replacing. As the estimated repair cost is CZK 15,000 (about £500), about half my net pay for a month, I’m still debating what to do. However, travelling by train did also mean that I could enjoy the local brew without any concern of infringing Czech drink-driving laws.
The train trip takes one hour and forty minutes between Praha hlavní nádraží and Plzenhlavní nádraží. Above is a photograph of the grand station building dating from the mid-nineteenth century which no doubt once said Pilsen Hauptbahnhof when it was first built during the time when what is now the Czech Republic, was a subjugated part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The Pilsner Urquell Brewery is only a short walk from the railway station and, having booked and paid for our tickets for the 14.00 brewery tour in English, we had just under an hour in which we enjoyed a good lunch at a very reasonable price in the brewery restaurant.
The tour itself was by far the best brewery tour I’ve so far been on in the Czech Republic. The young female guide spoke excellent English, could answer questions coherently, and made the whole experience, which lasted around one and a half hours, most enjoyable.
Continuing the football theme, Phillip was very pleased to notice that the stadium of FC Viktoria Plzen was nearby so we walked across to it before heading into the city centre. For the first time in their history, FC Viktoria Plzen won the Gambrinus liga last season and then successfully qualified for the group stage of the UEFA Champions League this season.
Just before it got dark, we made our way into the main square of the city where the gigantic Gothic St. Bartholomew Church is situated. Around it was a street market selling a variety of goodies, together with some free musical entertainment, all of which was intended to celebrate St. Martinstide, as the following day was 11th November, the feast day of St. Martin, Bishop of Tours.
Whilst I’ve driven around Plzen numerous times on the motorway from Prague to the German border, this was my first venture into the city itself. It is now on my list of places to re-visit, preferably in summer when, with longer hours of daylight, I will be able to enjoy its many architectural delights.
