a drinking tour of Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov

Any visit to Czech Republic isn’t complete without a visit to Cesky Krumlov. I’ve certainly mentioned this before and have gone over more of the cultural affairs. Before, as I knew it as some sort of sleepy touristic town, this past weekend I’ve discovered that it’s also not a bad place to party and that it can potentially go on all night long. For my friend’s birthday, I decided to make the trek again, naturally using the Student Agency bus, which is the cheapest, quickest and most direct route to town, and it also has individual televisions and free coffee.

We stayed at a place that’s just on the edge of town, Hostel 99, next to an old bridge that must have served to protect the location some time ago. Hostel 99 comes complete with its own restaurant and bar and a deck with a fireplace and a killer view. However, there’s a caveat to that deck: the neighbors below are known for calling the cops after 10—a norm all across the Czech Republic it would seem. The sign further advised, “Down the street is a little town called Cesky Krumlov, there are a lot of bars that stay open all night long there.”  

It was a strange thing for me to read, as I had already had my vision of Cesky Krumlov, which was only further modulated by our recent visit to Hallstatt, where everything shut down after 7:00. But Czechs are heartier partiers than Austrians, there’s no doubt about that.

The Drinkathon Begins

We began at the Eggenberg brewery restaurant, which is naturally right behind a Catholic Monastery, now the remnants of an old Crusader Order. The monastery construction was started in the 15th century, with the last phase completed in the 17th century. The Communists abolished the monastery and it was in disrepair until about a decade ago, when it was restored and now used as a museum and for conventions.

The Crusader Monastery

The Eggenberg brewery makes a decent enough local brew. It’s not too creamy, not too bitter, but neither is it so outstanding. It is however, the mainstay beer of the town. While the brewery restaurant also doesn’t have that outstanding of food, the interior is a great hall with a nice medieval feel to it. Here we racked up beers 1-7.

Inside the restaurant

Live Music

Next stop was Cikanska Jizba, or the Gypsy Bar in English. It’s a small tunnel of a bar, with a busy wait staff and a four-piece gypsy band squeeze around a table, with a guitar, an accordion, a violin, and a bass. This was perhaps the highlight of my evening, given my own love of live music. They prattled on for several hours as we drank up more Eggenbergs and I had a pretty tasty pizza. Not only do they serve pizza, but also other meals from the Roma kitchen. Beer count: 8-12.

heading to the gypsy bar

Billiards

Then we went to Barrel Bar, which resembled something of an underground cave. I mean, the top part was a bar, complete with a large post of John Travolta from Pulp Fiction, but then you go down some steps and you’re in a cave with a pool table. We crossed a bridge and turned right to get there, and it was located next to one of my favorite restaurants to eat game meat, Rozmberska basta. At this point I was about 13 beers in, so it seemed like a good place to nap against a wall while everyone else played billiards. One other guy we were with already had his power nap at the brewery, so he was racking up everyone’s cash. A few rounds were on him.

time to rack up the money

Dancing

We ended the night with only a few of us still standing. We went to a dance club behind the Egon Schiele museum, City Lounge. It was a dance club just as memorable as the name makes it sound, a place you could probably find in any city anywhere in the world, where you can expect to pay double price for your cocktails and meet lots of bros with popped collars.

the packed dance club

I remember the place as empty but my friend says it was full of people dancing. Yet, looking back at my pictures, my memory seems to serve better. I think they were empty probably because they had run out of beer and it was four or five in the morning. Any place that doesn’t have beer won’t keep my attention long, so at this point I went and made it back to the hostel. 

Cesky Krumlov is also a great day time and family place, and you can keep reading about it here.

the festival and the tramp

Loket, By Rejectwater, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46676354

Lying in the grass, looking up at the dwindling light of the Sun as pinpoints of light slowly turn on like their lights from a skyline, with music blazing out from one direction and the next, some girls laughing over near a grove of trees, dancing in a circle, some guys commenting about the girls while they sip drinks and nod their heads to the pulsing of the bass from the nearby stage – these are parts of the image of summer that I love, the festival life, the life of being outside, slightly so inebriated, feeling the earth pulse through me as it rocks and shakes with the footsteps of passing people. When I lived in the United States, I always enjoyed the idea of a festival, but in general the complexity and price of getting a beer makes it only mildly worth it. Here in Europe, especially in the Czech Republic, where the beer is cheaper than water and finer than champagne, festivals are fodder for fun. And it’s hard to go anywhere in Prague where you don’t run into a festival, in some park or some street corner, there is something that’s going to be going on with beer, sausages, potato pancakes, or all three.

But also getting out of town is fun, since the festivals ravage the countryside, moving from town to town like the ranging tramps of old that they seem to have been inspired by.

The Tramp

The only time I had heard of “tramps” before was from the Lady and the Tramp, after which I still didn’t know what one was, and also just before I beat some kid up in second grade when he called my mother a tramp. I beat him so good, I was crying for afterwards about it. Nobody calls my mom a tramp, even though I didn’t have the slightest clue what a tramp actually was – nor, apparently, did the other kid.

But then I moved to Czech Republic and started reading the Good Soldier Svejk, and I started meeting folks on the street with nothing but a knapsack over their shoulder and a healthy distrust of anything to do with the G-word (government), talking about how 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy and that Trump is set to bring America back to what it once was or could be or might have been or something rather this way or that. But sometimes it was interesting to journey into the city and see what things were going on, that old stench of civilization that just wouldn’t wash down the Vltava along with all the Drano, fluoride, and whatever the hell else is turning the color that lovely shade of brown.

Tramps are the bearers of a long Czech tradition of shafting the government and taking to the woods. The movement seems to have started sometime around the times of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, when forced conscription had been put in place. Czechs have never been lovers of their rulers, being passed from one to the next over the generations, but this was a line crossed too far. In times of war, instead of going out to pointlessly kill some folks that didn’t have anything for them but fought for the wrong ass hole on the other side of an invisible line, they set to the sticks and wandered about the hills (this would be what we call “draft dodging” over in those United States, and Muhammad Ali had something to tell you about them).

Tramping was a highly illegal activity and carried huge punishments, from torture, to beatings, to execution, depending on the temperament of the local military tribunal. The Czechs of the countryside also knew this, and were quite sympathetic, so there grew some strange tradition of hospitality for the rovers and meanderers of the Bohemian wild and would regularly take them in and help out.

Times are different these days though, what with globalization and refugees. The tramping life is no longer seen as something brave and idyllic, but now the basic term for the chronically homeless. Still, heroes to some, heroes of sorts.

Meander Feastival

The Meander Festival celebrates all those things tramp, the free spirit, and Bohemian ideal. Set just across the Russian border at Karlovy Vary, on the Czech side in the small town of Loket, it’s a three-day music festival that caters to all sorts, the outcast and the tramp, the hippy and the intellectual, the small one-man band and the hundred guitar acts, local and international, fire breathing and water streaming, theatrical acts, clowns, lions jumping through hoops, an impregnable castle, a princess and a pauper, and a meandering river. Really, it’s got something for everyone. “We booked the lions because -” Andy, one of the festival organizers and principal operator of A Maze in Tchaiovna explained to me while smoking something that may not have been tobacco while drinking something that may not have been tea, “Because I thought there needed to be something more. You know, for the kids. It’s really going to be spectacular this year. Oh, and tell them about the bus!”

The Meander Bus leaves A Maze in Tchaiovna on Friday the 10th at 5:30 pm and returns at 2:00 pm on Sunday. You can book your ticket there in advance, one way or both. There are also public transit methods via Student Agency and local routes that aren’t too hard. Or you can drive or coordinate a car to Loket. 

Be sure to catch Cupla Focal - the band in which I play accordion - at midnight on Saturday. And if you need something to read for the bus, check out a copy of How It Ends sold at A Maze in Tchaiovna.

Loket

Loket was founded in the 9th century and is near the Russian town of Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. Its name translates as “elbow”, called such because of the meandering elbow shape that the Ohre River makes around the town. Overlooking the town – like most Czech towns – there’s a 12th century Gothic castle, which was once known as the “Impregnable Fortress of Bohemia.” In the 18th century, the castle was burned to the base, but a hundred years later it was rebuilt as a prison, which was probably used for those draft dodging tramps trolling around the Austrian barracks. The Communists shut down the prison though and turned it into a museum, which it’s been ever since, showing the life that never really existed in the place but did before the place was built. Or something like that. Anyways, come for the castle, stay for the festival. Or vice versa. As you wish. 

Loket, From http://www.loket.cz/en/

from the bayou to the castle

Dr. John rattled the white keys with such an intensity there seemed to be like a Hurricane rolling through the stage. With an impeccable sense of rhythm and a style for flourishes, Dr. John rocked on. If you haven't heard of Dr. John, you've missed a life long career of weird voodoo antics, amazing piano playing, and some psychedlic jazz blues rock that not even the highest of Deadheads could ever reach. It's all the hoodoo magic that does it, and to convince you, the doctor always puts a skull on the piano and dresses in the most flamboyant of Cajun styles - purple suits, gator skin boots and black hats lined with gator teeth. Here is my favorite song of his, Such a Night:

In Prague, it's not hard to catch a live music show. Touring acts almost always stop here and the night almost always ends up cheaper than it would in Paris or London - though the door fee might be the same cost, drinks are always a bargain in Bohemia. The trick though is to know if the show is worthwhile because of the place. Even the best bands can be kind of a let down if the place isn't that good.

View from outside the Terrace

Dr. John was playing at the Castle Riding School Terrace, which meant in the boiling August heat that it would be an event wet with sweat. I felt sorry for the old Doctor, wearing his purple suit and having clear trouble even walking - he looked quite feeble crossing the stage, that is, until he sat in front of his piano or held a guitar, then he went all Yoda on Dooku - but what else could be done about the heat? The Terrace is a beautiful place, no doubt, with a very amazing view of St.Vitus Cathedral, one of the few places in Prague where you can see the full church without any sort of obstruction, top to bottom, and still be close enough to see the architectural detail. This however, was my first complaint - the stage faces the cathedral, so instead of getting the ocular feast of both the band and St.Vitus, you must choose one and only one. How much more of an amazing venue would it be if they combined both, and all they would have to do would be to move the stage to the other end? It's a free standing stage as it is, so this is no big ordeal.

The stage and seating is the second problem. The seating is all level and the stage is very low, which means that unless you are sitting in the very front row, someone will always be blocking you. They divided it into two sections - a VIP section in front and a cheap section in the back, with no clear room for standing, though halfway through the concert, people decided to move up and linger on the sides. It was unclear if that was an okay thing to do. What the venue should have done here is leave the expensive seats, and then make a proms area on the sides for standing, with tall tables available to place your drinks - no seat reservations there. If back seats were really necessary, then they could have arranged them in addition as tables, or at least on some sort of bleacher system. Otherwise, what was the real point? Anyways, Dr. John plays funky, danceable music - either in the swing sense or the weird hippy raise your arms and feel the Eternal Earth Spirit of Communion sense. And with the weird Louisiana bayou vibe, why have such a structured seating arrangement?

Dr. John on stage

And lastly, the failure of the venue was to serve only champagne. I realize most of the clientele were older people, but it's still Prague and the musician is still playing psychedelic funky bayou jazz music - it's not supposed to be bourgeois champagne swilling silt. But that part was fine, to each their own, just it would have been better with a cold pils in my hand, helping to contain that intense Autumnal frying pan.

Dr. John though was amazing. He put on a full two hours non-stop, barely even wasting time with idle chatter to the audience. His "musical coordinator" tried to do some awkward chatting, trying to rile people up for "the living legend, Dr. John!" but it was unnecessary and silly nonsense, better to leave legends be legends and people to know it from pure inference. Once you have to announce greatness, you already lose it.