Why aren't we already in Prague?
I must confess that I am a somewhat mediocre traveler. I don't feel enough exuberant sensations when visiting temples, cathedrals or well-known emblematic geographical locations to endure queues without huffing and puffing.
I prefer a type of tourism self-indulgent based on eat and drink , with some cultural stops that have to do with what contemporary, autochthonous and alternative.
I love the neighborhoods where they live youths that exorbitant rents cannot be allowed, where there are no queues of tourists or franchises . Those neighborhoods where you still breathe local, creative, effervescent atmosphere Y prague has a few that are worth a visit.
What Prague hides
The amount of fabulous places to visit within a kilometer radius is easy to master in two days, and the historical richness it contains is unbeatable, from the royal opulence to suffocating communism . Like all cities where they have gone from one political extreme to another in less than a hundred years, the bulk of the population is highly cultured and resistant . And, the most interesting thing for those of us who go with insatiable appetite , is that one can sit at good-looking bars and tables without overly lightening one's wallet.
One of my strategies to get it right the first time is to start by locating the bars where they serve natural wines . I have rarely found one that is not frequented by epicureans , which are usually connoisseurs of local secrets that one looks for when trying to infiltrate between the knowledge like one more
Natural wine lovers tend to be very snobs, exquisite and stingy when it comes to wasting their money on businesses with false pretensions, in which it is so easy to fall when you are **a tourist who is impressed by typography, abstract interior design and the false promises of some chef ** that three or four bloggers agreed to nominate as the salvation of a gastronomic scene.
A toast at RED Pif?
The first success was choosing the restaurant NETWORK Pif , about ten minutes walk from the tourist epicenter, the Bethlehem Square neighborhood . The place welcomes you with a imposing bar and a well-stocked wall of wines, mainly French that we ignore to taste the local delicacies.
It turns out that the Czech Republic, in addition to its famous pilsner beer , produces some of the most worthy natural wines in the entire wine scene using these ancestral methodologies. I, who get overwhelmed reading letters with more than ten references, I do the practical thing and tell the waiter Serve us something sour, white and local.
Without giving him more information, he surprises us with a wine that caresses the taste buds just as he longed for, and my girlfriend is amazed at read the name on the cork . If you believe in things like destiny and mystical signs, holding a cork in an unknown city with your first name and the first initial of your last name printed around it should open some portal to paradise, and for a couple of hours it did.
The chef, of Sinhalese origin, surprised us with some dishes executed with the mastery that one acquires working in places of renown and French influence.
Let yourself be carried away by the creativity of RED Pif
That same night I decided to give one of my night walks to try to feel the city vampire atmosphere and as usually happens to me when I get carried away by intuition, crossing a decaying courtyard, lit by a small neon sign, I found Bokovka , a Free wine bar with minimalist decor - between a gloomy basement of communist oppression and a Lavapiés art gallery - with custom-made furniture for hold more bottles of czech wine , and one display case with local cheeses and sausages , announcing everything necessary to understand that he was in good hands.
To access the bathroom, you have to leave the bar and go up the stairs one floor until you meet some old cinema seats well preserved. If you tend to let yourself be guided by the state of a bathroom as an indication of the quality of a place, this one deserves to be immortalized for Instagram.
Bokovka, the perfect place to have a wine in Prague
A drink later, I continued wandering aimlessly , excited to be in a city that reminded me of Tomáš's resentment of Soviet sociopolitical trends in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I watched some street sweepers and considered the odds that they, too, had licenses to practice osteopathy or something difficult to learn. It's the good thing about walk alone through unknown streets , which gives you to hallucinate a little, forgetting the worries, imagining stories , like when you look at a window lit from within, and your perspective from below only allows you to see curtains and some detail of the ceiling, perhaps a lamp. Enough to believe in your head that a couple about to divorce lives there, with children solemnly playing with soldiers, or an iPhone, pretending to be fine when in reality the world is falling apart.
I contemplated an almost full moon from one of the bridges that join the two parts of the city divided by the vltava river , and I kept walking, back this time, towards my hotel. But the sound of minimal techno coming from a bar with a window displaying a cozy interior grabbed me in the stomach and I felt compelled to go inside to have one more drink and maybe make friends with locals who could guide me a little in this city that hides much more than what appears in the guides.
A Russian resident bought me some cigarettes and a Old fashioned , telling me some things about the city that they were not going to give me time to get to know on this first visit.
The tragedy is that I did not write down or remember the name of that place with a backyard ideal for summer nights . The only piece of information I can provide is that interesting things always happen where they play minimal techno...
Wandering the streets of Prague
The next day we set out for the typical tour that you have to take in any historic European city. The castle, the old town and the Jewish cemetery.
If you feel an attraction towards morbid, romantic and dark -because sometimes you feel dead inside and it gives you some consolation- this graveyard , one of the oldest in the old continent, manages to generate tremendous feelings of frustration, desolation, sadness and regret.
Gossiping the speech of one of the guides towards her group, I discovered that the Hebrew greeting practiced by Orthodox priests known as cohen, descendants of Aaron, is identical to Mr. Spock's famous Vulcan salute . It turns out that this contribution to the saga of star trek it was from the actor himself Leonard Nimoy , which recalled the gesture of a visit to a synagogue when he was little.
As he tried to take respectful photos of the stacked graves, my head tried to form a connecting link between Nimoy, the Hebrew priests, and the famous author of _ Songs Of Love And Hate _.
But when the flu begins to manifest, creativity to build ideas is blocked and you have to find a remedy as soon as possible before the stomach takes over the emotions and you end up arguing with your partner. Fortunately, Prague has more correct restaurants than other cities where culinary malpractice is a sport, and not far from the cemetery, we enjoy a today's menu between working Czechs as the only tourists in the place.
Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague
At night we decided to take an Über to what would be Poble Nou in Prague, the Karlin district , to see what they served in Veltlin , the wine bar that comes out on top of all prague wine bar guides . A place without a license to serve anything more elaborate than pâtés, cheeses and untoasted loaf bread , which coincided with the uncorking of a wine produced by a friendly bohemian, present and dressed as one of the members of the Tony Manero Foundation.
This time we chose something more tinted than the clarified white, pinkish and fruity. Like almost all pale rosés, he lovingly allowed himself to be drunk.
Your table will end like this in Veltlin
Our last hours in Prague were spent walking through the residential district Vršovice , (pronounced Vir-subiza) looking for the Krymska street , another concentration of bars and businesses operated by bohemian youth , whose presence was non-existent at that midday hour.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I am a mediocre traveler, who does not check timetables before crossing a city. we go through Havlickovy Sady , the first park I see in my life in the middle of the city where they cultivate a vineyard since the fourteenth century called Grébovka.
Havlí?kovy Sady, the park-vineyard of Prague
A few meters from the Powder Tower , we ate in a restaurant Cafe called Cerna Madonna ( The Black Madonna ) that met all the requirements so as not to feel that we were wasting time and money in a local Chinchinabo, despite being in the heart of the tourist hub.
In fact, we ate wonderfully, and it was hard for us to decide on a dessert, since they offer from some showcases endless seductive tartlets , similar to those of the Bubó in Barcelona .
?erná Madonna in Prague
Walking about seven minutes to the Old Town Square there is **the GOAP (Gallery of Art Prague)** , where they simultaneously showed exhibitions on different floors of Warhol, Dali and Alphonse Mucha.
Warhol's, in particular, had interesting facts about his Czechoslovak origins , including photos of his humble ancestors mixed in among the jazz record covers he designed for RCA and the cans of soup from him.
forty eight hours they gave enough time to appreciate both the culture and some of the local habits as well as the historical legacy, apparently incomprehensible in such a short time, but nice to look at as a pedestrian and gossip of foreign guides.
*This article was published on November 15, 2017 and updated on June 20, 2018.
Oh, Prague... you haven't been and you'll want to come back...