Praha (III)

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In December 2006 I arrived in Prague just after the carp sellers had gone home for Christmas. The only remnants of the Christmas carp sales were small piles of bloody snow on street corners and in town squares and fish scales stuck between sidewalk paving stones. This time around I had arrived in Prague a few days earlier. For the days leading up to Christmas I was able to see the carp sellers in action and all the Prague residents lined up to purchase their traditional Christmas meal. The younger people seemed to opt for pre-cleaned fish, but the older customers seemed to prefer whole live fish, presumably to bring home and keep in their bath until Christmas.

Supposedly it is a Prague tradition to bring a live carp home in the days before Christmas and to keep it alive in your bath until you are ready to cook it for your holiday meal. I have been told the reason the carp is kept alive and in clean water in the bath is to allow for the fish to sort of become cleaner as typically carp live in pretty dirty environments and eat pretty unappealing diets. This does not seem to make the idea of eating carp any more appealing to me. Maybe next year I'll actually eat carp but to this day I never have.

Anyway, in December 2007 I spent a few days in Prague leading up to Christmas before traveling to Munich and eventually to Malta for the Christmas holiday. The time I spent in Prague this time around was relaxing. We visited a few bars and even a brewery before leaving for Munich. The bars were great. The brewery was not.

The U Flecku brewery is listed as a typical tourist stop on a lot of Prague guide books, but I don't think it is worth the trip. I guess it is a really old brewery which is still producing beer by the original recipe. This beer is not good and apart from shots of Becherovka it is the only thing you can drink there. Imagine a cloudy, dark, vinegar scented drink served to you in a dark smokey room. This is what you get at U Flecku.

The other thing that was apparent this time around in Prague was how much more costly this city has become in the past few years, especially if you are changing money from the US Dollar to the Czech Koruna. I realize that the US Dollar has depreciated pretty much everywhere over the past few years but it does seem that a $1.00 Staropramen tastes a little better than a $1.50 Staropramen.

After a trip to Munich and Malta I arrived back in Prague in time for the New Year's Eve festivities which essentially is comprised of fireworks and public intoxication. Anyway it was interesting to see and luckily no one near me was hit with any wayward fireworks in the drunken chaos that was midnight on January 1st in Prague.

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