Drinking Beer in Prague
It was April, and I was in Prague for the second time. I was studying in Germany for the year, and I was traveling with a bunch of other international students – some Americans, some Germans, some French girls, and a very tall English guy. We even had a Czech in our group. I had been here in December. I had already seen the castle, the Charles Bridge, the Astrological Clock (most overhyped clock ever), the Sex Machines Museum (which I could write a whole other article about). Glen, the very tall English guy, was also a Prague veteran, and was bored with the tourist sites. His first time in Prague, he had been to a traditional Czech pub that he wanted to go back to. He thought it was called “The Friendly Tiger;” the place was covered in pictures of tigers, and the name ended with “tigra” or something like that. My guidebook had mentioned the place. It was the pub where all the tourists went to escape from all the tourists. Irony or no irony, we decided to give it a try. Glen comes from a long line of beer experts (his uncle is active in a Real Ale Society in England), so I take his advice on anything alcohol-related. Our group broke into two halves, and Glen and I led the more adventurous half on our first foray into the real Prague.
It was three in the afternoon, exactly the time when you’d expect locals to be at work and tourists with nothing better to do to be getting tipsy. Something was backwards here. The place was so packed that we could barely find a seat – and it was packed with Czechs, Czechs of all ages, having drunken conversations that sounded like an endless series of consonant clusters.
We waited a few minutes, for the old men at a long table by the window to pay up and stagger home. Then, we took a seat, and mumbled “pivo” to the cold-eyed waiter. He nodded, and came back a few minutes later with a pint of freshly-brewed Czech beer for each of us. We drank our beers quickly, talking in a mix of German and English, the linguas francas of our group. The locals ignored us. This is the pub where they even ignored President Clinton when he visited.
You don’t have to ask for more beer at “tigra.” If you don’t want any more beer, you have to put a coaster over the top of the glass. Otherwise, the waiters who are constantly on the prowl for empties will just take your glass, replace the beer and make another dash on your coaster. Czech beer, unlike American beer, has a flavor that makes you want more of it. It’s nothing something you chug mindlessly, but it tastes good, and you end up drinking it fast without even realizing it. Soon, we were on our second round. Erick, the lightweight of our group, was already in his party mode, laughing and taking pictures. The flash was starting to annoy the locals. Instead of turning away from us in determined ignorance, they were staring at us with open hostility.
We hadn’t even had lunch yet, and the potent Czech beer was hitting our empty stomachs pretty hard. We checked the food menu, which was only in Czech, and didn’t have hamburgers, hot dogs, or any of those other staples of tourist places. A man at the table next to us spoke a bit of English. He was slurring it pretty badly, but he remembered enough words to give us a rough idea of what each dish was. I ended up with some sausage and bread. Standard Eastern European fare: dark, dark, dark, dark bread, and meat that was more fat than flesh. Simple food, meant to provide fuel and hold down alcohol. I followed this with a bowl of tripe soup, another Soviet Bloc staple.
The “hour or so for a pint” Glen had proposed had already turned into more than two hours when a pair of Czech high school students joined us at our table. We learned from them that this place was actually called “The Golden Tiger.” I was disappointed at this – all the tigers on the walls were smiling, and after a couple liters of beer, this did seem like a very friendly place. The two boys had just had their final exams, and they were looking to celebrate. They told us that the prices here were inflated, and proposed that we go to their neighborhood pub. We counted up the dashes on our coasters, paid up and hopped on the subway.
By the time we got off the subway, the sun was setting, and the muted glow of dusk was giving everything a surreal cast. We were in the middle of nowhere, between some railroad tracks that were overgrown with weeds and had rails missing. The two guys led us over a dirt path to the abandoned train station. We could see dim yellow lights behind the windows of the pub to the left of the pitch-black station lobby.
The bar was filled with middle-aged, potbellied men with faces full of busted capillaries, vaguely outlined by the flickering candles at each table. Our group must have stuck out, but the patrons were too focused on their vodkas to take any notice. Even the bartender looked like he was about to pass out. The once-white walls had yellowed from decades of non-filtered cigarette smoke, except in the places where they were covered with torn posters of Lenin and Stalin. We sat at the only free table, and took a look at the menu. It was about 50 cents for a beer, and even less for a shot of rubbing alcohol or whatever it was they were selling as vodka. Yup, this was the real Prague.
