Czech Up On It
January 12, 2019 & December 31, 2019
Don’t ask me why, but a play on a Beyoncé song seemed an appropriate title for an account of my holiday adventures in my ancestral homeland. It’s also indicative of some of the many terrible “Czech/check” jokes that were made during this adventure, and then later during my Italian adventure to Sicily during La Befana (January 6th), when the play on words became “ceca/cieca” (Czech/blind – they sound roughly the same).
It seems appropriate to reflect on the happenings (aka mis-adventures) from a year ago today, the worst New Year’s Eve I’ve experience thus far (and because I’m on a plane and this is about the only productive thing I can do right now). A year ago today I was in the Czech Republic with my mom, whom I was driving (dragging) all over Bohemia to our ancestral home towns, eating as many dumplings as I could, trying to converse with the locals, and visiting sketchy spas...
“If you got it, flaunt it, boy, I know you want it…”
An appropriate (or hilariously inappropriate) way to introduce how I stripped naked in front of a Czech “nurse” (heavy on the scare quotes here) before my mint infused mineral bath at a “spa” (same). We were staying in Karlovy Vary, a quaint resort town at the western edge of Bohemia that was the closest city to our ancestral villages. Prior to our eventful - or uneventful NYE, depending on how you look at it (below) - I had decided that we should experience the reason that made Karlovy Vary famous – its healing spas. Karlovy Vary means Charles’ Spring, from King Charles IV of Bohemia who lived in the 14th century CE and reported that the hot springs helped his wounded leg. The hot springs and their supposed healing powers grew to be famous from the King’s statements and bathing spas were built. In the 16th century it was found that drinking the water was also beneficial to one’s health. Numerous spas of various price ranges sprung up all over town since then, as well as a few ornate gazebos and long porches that were built over fountains that poured out the healing liquids so that people could sit outside and drink from the waters at their will. I tried the stuff. It was awful. But maybe I’ll live to be 100 now. Or maybe I’ll have an undetectable parasite forever – who can tell. Maybe both? Anyway, as Kristin Newman says in her book “What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding” (my favorite book to reread while traveling – read it, it’s hilarious), “Do the thing you’re supposed to do in the place you’re supposed to do it.” Hence, a mineral bath in a Czech spa town.
After some intense online research, I found a reasonably priced spa that seemed to have pretty basic spa options (no weird seaweed mineral hot spring wraps for us, thanks), in contrast to the fancy stuff for the stars who flocked here for the annual film festival. As one would expect, most of the info online was in Czech and despite my numerous (mostly failed) attempts to speak Czech (everything came out somewhere in the middle on the Czech and Polish spectrum – they’re pretty similar, so I only confused people slightly, rather than entirely), I definitely wasn’t going to glean anything helpful from the Czech websites, so I picked a spa that seemed reasonably priced and went with it. The key question was then what to wear to the spa underneath the clothes? Swim suit or birthday suit? I found a single picture of a girl on a blog in her swimsuit while in the mineral bath and since that was the only clear suggestion regarding appropriate attire for the occasion, we went with that. But that turned out to be wrong. Upon arrival at the delightfully Soviet-hospital-esque "spa" an intimidating Czech "nurse" who I could not understand yelled at me to undress (I think) and watched me as a stripped naked and then got into the tub (seriously, she stared me down and did not look away, as I expected her to out of some appreciation for the customer’s privacy...).
“Ooh, boy [nurse?], you looking like you like what you see…”
I spent 20 minutes in my Soviet room wondering when someone was going to come in to harvest my organs, all the while inhaling the mint scented mineral waters. When the 20 minutes were up, the “nurse” appeared again, stared me down as I got out of the tub (felt like she was undressing me with her eyes… but I was already undressed), then wrapped me up like a burrito in a massive towel and gestured to me to lay down on the table for 10 minutes of “relax” time (“relax” was the only thing I could understand). I stifled back laughter instead of relaxing, so I probably didn’t get my money’s worth, but at least I smelled like mint afterwards and presumably left "healthier" than before from the mineral spring water. (How does one actually measure whether the mineral spring water actually improves your health?) I found my mom later, who had finished her bath earlier than me and was worried that I had been sold into the Karlovy Vary underground network, pacing the hallway and giving off a nice lavender scent. Organs intact, we left giggling.
In addition to sampling the local waters, we also sampled to local wares in Prague, which – according to many websites – has the best Christmas markets in all of Europe, and its own signature Christmas market cuisine. I’m not sure if potato spirals are a traditional Czech dish, but they were delicious regardless of their culinary historicity. We did some sampling of the local liquors, as well. We got buzzed on some mystery honey booze/Czech moon shine that was simply called "Christmas drink." (And yes, I realize that sounds a lot like the mystery booze at a holiday frat party... but thankfully no frat boys were involved... that I remember... anyone know who Pavel is and why I have his phone number?) We also ate some langoš, a deep-fried bread with cheese, garlic, oil, and – of all things – ketchup on top. I had read about it online and vowed not to eat the disgusting thing, but that vow crumbled quickly. Somehow this doughy bread puck ended up being satisfying (was this before or after the Christmas drink? I don’t remember…).
“Won't you come over and check up on it…”
So, back to our adventures in our tiny rental car (a Czech-made Skoda – to blend in!) in our ancestral land, looking for relatives or their gravestones in our ancestral towns. After much research, I had identified a handful of towns that our relatives had lived, died, or gotten married in in the 17th through 19th centuries. One would imagine that these were adorable little Czech hamlets, but this is far from the truth. To be brief about it, we understood why they left (read: all dumps). After being gawked at by the locals in Vrbice, Dekov, and Kolešovice, we drove back to Prague in the Skoda for what was supposed to be a nice final day in Prague before early flights and busses the next day. We had (stupidly) saved a few things for the last day of our adventures (the Jewish cemetery and Mucha Museum – oh, Alphonse, how I wanted to see your paintings!), so the plan was to drive back to the outskirts of Prague, where I had booked a very cheap hostel (it was the only thing in the price range on NYE), which was also conveniently close to the airport so that I could drop off my mom, then drive back into Prague so that I could drop off the car, then take a bus to Bratislava, where there was a very cheap Ryan Air flight back to Athens. Keep in mind, the only Bratislava reference I had was from Eurotrip, in which Bratislava is a terrifying European backwater, which, thankfully, is far from the truth, so I was slightly hesitant to explore until I did one Google search and realized that Eurotrip was not the best source of information, unsurprisingly. Anyway, we had a plan. It seemed like a decent plan… until we were a little late getting to our hostel. While popping into our ancestral towns on the drive back from Karlovy Vary in western Bohemia and finding that they were slightly decrepit and sad, I was determined to find some concrete connection to our Bohemian roots and, more importantly, find a town that didn’t look like it had been abandoned by all the Czechs who left when my great-great-great (great?) grandfather Johan had left (seriously, these towns were run down and probably had a population of 17). But I had to give into my determination eventually and succumb to the fact that our ancestral land was beautiful (and filled with hop fields!), but the individual towns were a bit lackluster – not the charming European communities I had envisioned. Oh well. Anyway, back to the plan. So, I made us a little late by driving all over the Bohemian countryside, but we finally arrived at our hostel, knocked on the door, and got no answer. Of course, I had run out of data on my phone earlier that day and the Vodophone store in Karlovy Vary was closed, and miraculously the Vodophone app on my phone wasn’t working (woo!), so the only hope was to wait. Soon a family arrived, also German-Polish, but the real deal (unlike my mom and me). They had two small children who spoke some English and the mom spoke a tiny bit of English, which made hanging out in the cold parking lot together slightly less awkward. Unfortunately, although I’m getting more and more of the Mediterranean covered in terms of the languages each year, my northern European language skills are still lacking, which is a bit of a bummer when I go north because everyone speaks to me in German/Polish/Czech/etc. Darn face. Anyway, we managed to communicate just fine, mostly through the 6 or 7-year-old daughter who had learned English by watching My Little Pony videos on YouTube. Kids these days. All the while the parents were calling the hostel owner, we rang the various buzzers, and my mom gave up and hung out in the car. It was going on two hours of waiting outside in the cold for this dip**** to show up and since he wasn’t responding to the calls from the German-Polish family, it seemed like it was time to give up and form a new plan. (Insert many expletives out of the range of the children, directed at the ****head hostel owner, who got a VERY bad review in every online venue possible.) New plan: drive into Prague, find a café with WiFi, look for a new hotel on NYE (ha!), then check in and do the remaining items on our Prague list. We decided to drive back to the very cute hotel we had stayed at a few days earlier, since I remembered there being a café or two with WiFi nearby, or at the very least we could attempt to mooch some hotel WiFi. The mooching was unsuccessful, but I did spot a cat café a few doors down. Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever been to a cat café, but I think I never need to go back to another one. I’m sure there are nice cat cafes, but this one was definitely not. Did you know that there’s a cover charge for a cat café? I didn’t! It was about $8, if I remember correctly – yikes. And in addition to the insane cover charge, we were hit with a cloud of cat pee/litter upon immediately opening the door. No, thank you, I will not pay money to sit in your stinky cat pee café, get covered by cat hair, and drink a beverage that may or may not have cat hair in it. We left. We found a restaurant with WiFi nearby and ordered cat hair free soup instead. (We were those annoying Americans who immediately asked for the WiFi password upon ordering.) After a few quick clicks through Booking.com and some AirBnB’s, I realized that unless we were willing to hand over a small fortune, roughly equivalent to my student loans (which, in retrospect, was probably only about 23 dollars... I never did get that darn conversion rate down), we were not going to get a hotel that night in Prague.
Since my mom was flying out at 6am and my bus left for Bratislava at 5:30am from the city center, it seemed pointless to spend a Skoda’s worth of crowns only to get a few hours of sleep, so we decided to forego our previous plans and spend the night at the airport instead. (Sorry, Alphonse! Next time!) Riveting, I know. My mom had found a website about sleeping at airports, which said that the Prague airport had decent benches for sleeping (the ones without the dividers between the individual seats, so that you can lay down – woo!) and some food options, so we hoped for the best, although I figured all bets were off due to the holiday. We dropped off the car, wandered around the sketchy part of the train station for the bus to the airport, found our bus, and made our way to the airport in hopes of finding a restaurant that was open (flash forward: they were all closed). (As if I’d let my mother go to and sit by herself at the airport in Prague on NYE – I’m a good daughter.) After spending about $7 (probably 40 crowns, but who the heck knows) attempting to get vending machine potato chips and failing, we gave up and ate the melomakarona (honey-cinnamon) cookies that I had brought from Greece, which I love, but someone else didn’t, it turned out. More for me. And so, we sat, feet propped on our luggage as we tried to stay awake in the seats with dividers between them (where the nice bench seats without dividers were, I have no idea) and I waited for 4am to arrive, when it would be time to take my bus BACK into Prague and time to wake up my mom so that she could check into her flight. At 12:04am my mom looked over at me from our "comfy" (according to the blogger, aka a liar) airport chairs and unenthusiastically said, "Oh - happy new year." Then she fell asleep. Good memories. And so after eating cookies for dinner and trying to stay awake in a desolate airport, at 4am I took the bus back into Prague to another sketchy bus station to find my sketchy bus and made a non-sketchy friend along the way, who was also wandering around the block looking for the bus station. Thank you, Google Maps, for making downloadable offline maps – what a lifesaver. After paying a few crowns to use the medium-sketchy bathroom, I hopped the bus and immediately passed out and woke up hours later in Slovakia (now that sounds like a scene from Eurotrip!). While I trudged from one bus stop to another, I gave up on the idea of heading into the center with my suitcase and sitting at a café for an hour (it was rainy and I was super grumpy from sleeping only three hours in the last 36). I finally made it to the airport, only to be stuck in the Ryan Air “already boarded” area that you can’t leave and sat there for another hour. Oh, the joys of travel. While there I contemplated all the terrible and scathing, but honest things I would say in my hostel review, cursing Ryan Air the whole time as I was trapped in the tiny glass room while the flight continued to be delayed for an indeterminate amount of time. Good thing I didn’t have to pee. Happy New Year to me. Here’s hoping this year starts off better.
Czech on me tonight…
