My Czech Republic Blog

Blog written by two Prague residents about life in the Czech Republic.

Change Money?

By 1 Comment

I remember back in 1993, after my first move to Prague, seeing all these friendly “money changers” who would stand around on Na příkopě at the bottom of Wenceslas Square. As someone walked by they would ask “change money?” and boast they had the best exchange rates around to turn your dollars or pounds or francs into … well, something.

I read in an article on the Radio Praha website that money changers are still around and tourists are still getting ripped off. I don’t know why people take a chance with someone who approaches them off the street when there is a wide selection of ATM machines and banks all over Prague. I guess some tourists feel that the chance of getting a better deal is worth the risk of ending up with a stack of Bulgarian leva.

The Žižka Monument

By 3 Comments

The Žižka National Monument sits atop Vítkov Hill in the Žižkov district of Prague. The large statue that dominates it was built to commemorate the Hussite warrior Jan Žižka (1360? – 1424) and was completed in 1932. It is supposedly the largest equestrian statue in the world. From this area, there is a great view of Žižkov and other parts of Prague.

The communists made their mark on the complex. At one point it contained the mausoleum of Klement Gottwald, who was the first communist president of Czechoslovakia.

Zizka Monument

Zizka Monument

Zizka Monument       View of Zizkov

Photos © jeffshanberg.com

Oooolong, Lapsang Souchong and All the Others

By Leave a Comment

When I was a little girl growing up in Czechoslovakia, tea was tea. Cheap black tea from China, India or Ceylon was all we could get. The container said “Čaj”. When you asked for tea, you knew what was coming.

Those times are over. Capitalism arrived and brought with it all sorts of new things. Fruit flavored Pickwick teas were some of the first “bourgeois” arrivals that hit the young Czech market in the early 1990s. They woke up the lethargic Czech tea-drinking nation to a brand new, exciting era of a seemingly limitless selection of tea varieties, flavors and brands that now fill the shelves of supermarkets and specialty tea stores.

Asking for tea is no longer simple business. When I’m ordering tea at a Czech restaurant these days, I’m used to being asked, “Black, fruit or green?”, not necessarily in that order. I was recently at a Prague pizzeria and ordered tea. A container full of tea packets arrived at the table. Lemon, orange and spice, green, chamomile, peach, cinnamon, strawberry, mint… Not a single packet of normal black tea. But again, what is normal? Which reminds me, the same pizzeria used to serve tea in large, thick-glass beer mugs. I loved it. To my great disappointment, the beer mugs were later replaced by boring, fancy tea cups. Oh well.

70 Cent Soup

By 3 Comments

Jeff and I have gone out for a typical Czech lunch a few times lately. Many restaurants in Prague and elsewhere in the Czech Republic have a special lunch menu (usually called polední menu), which is valid during a specific time period – e.g. from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. – and consists of a limited number of menu items that are often smaller in quantity and cheap. Very cheap. You can get a full meal for under 100 CZK (3 – 4 EUR, 4 – 5 USD) even if the restaurant charges two or three times more for a dinner course. The point is to attract people from nearby offices to come down on their lunch break. The lunch menu usually changes during the week, so you don’t find the same selection every day.

Some restaurants keep their lunch menus focused on the cuisine in which they specialize. For example the lunch menu of a Thai restaurant may consist of smaller and cheaper versions of pad thai or curry dishes. Others follow the Czech tradition and create menus that include popular Czech standbies like roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut, goulash, Viener schnitzel with boiled potatoes, meatloaf with mashed potatoes, fried cheese with fries, fried mushrooms with fries, fried cauliflower with fries… And soup. Czechs love their soup and the chefs know it.

I had my fair share of these typical Czech lunches back when I had a nine-to-five job in the Old Town. I’ve eaten fried mushrooms with fries too many times. But that was ten years ago and I’ve almost forgotten about the convenience and comfort of a quick Czech lunch. The steaming soup is brought to your table two minutes after you order it, the beer is nice and fresh and the pork chops with rice taste exactly how you remember them from your school cafeteria.

Jeff and I have decided to explore the restaurants in our neighborhood and see what their lunches are like. So far we have made several promising discoveries. I’m starting to wonder, why cook at home when you can get a perfectly fine meal AND fresh beer at a restaurant, you don’t have to do the dishes, and the soup costs 70 cents?

(The bill in the picture above is for two soups, a 0.3 liter Hoegaarden beer, a mineral water and two main courses. The total came to 193 CZK – about 9 USD/7 EUR).