Prague
The city of Prague is sculpted by dramatic geography. The Vltava River, which should be as famous to Americans as the Thames or the Seine, snakes languidly through town. It carved a bluff on the western bank, where kings of past centuries built the largest castle complex in the world. Wherever you are in the city, you have a sense of this verticality, and whether you’re high up looking out, or down on the river gazing up, your eye is drawn away from your own small perspective.
In terms of imperial history Prague is no slouch, and I can’t help comparing it to Vienna, which I visited five years ago. But whereas that city is overwhelming in its pomp and grandeur, Prague is more homey and earthy. Its century of hard times still lives in the interstices between the ancient buildings, a vapor of hardship. I have a hard time identifying exactly what causes this impression. Perhaps the handwritten signs advertising mulled wine or beer or the way shops seem to spill out onto the street, even in January. Perhaps it was once a vain and arrogant place with a sense of its own world-historical gravity, but it feels modest and welcoming today. Vienna’s buildings felt like vaults containing the city’s treasures; in Vienna they’re out in the open, a new discovery around ever curve in the tangled streets.
Finally, Prague feels old. In terms of human settlements, it doesn’t rate with the truly ancient sites in Europe and Asia. Varanasi, the North Indian city I lived in from 1994-95, dates back nearly 4,000 years. Yet few places have preserved their physical past in the way Prague has (including Varanasi). The first night I was here, I walked across the Charles Bridge, a structure the Holy Roman Emperor (and namesake) commissioned in 1357. It’s a piece of Prague’s furniture—admittedly a very fine piece—one of a thousand wonders scattered across the river valley.
One of the signature features of the architectural style here are slender spires that seem to rise from the roofs of everything from gothic cathedrals to apartment buildings. I wondered, as I was walking, whether it was known as The City of Spires. I wasn’t far off; the actual nickname is “City of a Hundred Spires.” That name must itself be an antique—the true number is an order of magnitude greater. You can walk for miles and it seems around every corner you’re about to find another storybook building lifting its spiky crown to the sky.
This is my third visit to Czechia and Prague, but the first time I’ve gotten to know it even superficially. The two previous times I was very tightly scheduled and the tiny portion of the city I got to know fit inside the cozy walls of a pub or brewery. I flitted around one to the next, never really understanding the landscape that connected them. The past three days, I’ve wandered miles over the hills and back and forth across the river. For the first time, my stops for beer were a warming interruption, not the sole activity.
Beer, as I’ve mentioned probably too many times, is a product of culture. It’s a human creation reflecting the people who make it. If you don’t have a chance to see those people, visit their cities and towns, try to understand their history and the physical spaces they inhabit, can you really claim to have understood the beer? Time and time again, I find myself answering that question with a “no.” A few days strolling isn’t enough to say you know a place, and yet the experience inevitably transforms your understanding. The difference is akin to seeing the picture of a famous painting online and later visiting it at a museum.
When I visited Czechia twice between 2012 and 2014, so-called craft beer was starting to have its moment here. I learned, to my amusement, that everyone was talking about eepah (IPA), and—at least from some quarters—that common pale lager seemed dated.
A decade and a pandemic later, and things have changed. In the interim, Czech styles have become trendy in the U.S. Meanwhile, new Czech “craft” breweries are finding themselves selling more and more lager. On Monday afternoon, Evan Rail and I took a tram out to Břevnov Monastery and met with brewer Aleš Potěšil. The brewery made 42 different beers last year under the Benedict name, including IPAs, sours, and porters. Their classic 12° svetlý lezák—Americans would say pilsner—nevertheless accounts for 55% of production.
This is typical. I visited Matuška as well and had their hoppy American pale—it was fine—but their classic 10°, called Desítka (“Ten”), was stellar. I don’t know their production breakdown, but lagers now seem to have the pole position there. In 2012, Matuška was one of the early, popular emissaries for American-style beer. But for the better part of two centuries this country has been the province of pale lager. No one drinks more beer than Czechs, and despite that momentary boomlet of IPAs, lagers still constitute 99% of what Czechs drink.
At the risk of generalizing about a country I know only superficially, this reversion to classic lagers makes sense to me. Beer is a common drink here, one it seems everyone enjoys. One afternoon around 2p, I stopped in at U Šumavy for a glass of dark lager. There was a man drinking in the bar, but the six people in the dining room were all under forty, all women, and they all had a glass of beer. On Monday, Lokál, a classic Pilsner Urquell bar, was packed with a hugely diverse crowd. After a half liter, I strolled past chic wine and cocktail bars that were no more than half-full.
That Monday evening after I left Lokál, I just followed whatever street seemed to lead to the most interesting buildings. In the City of a Hundred Spires, that sometimes led to hard choices. Buildings that at a distance look like cathedrals turn out to be apartments on closer inspection. Every block led to something remarkable. One could spend years wandering and never exhaust the supply of spire-crested sights. It’s a curiosity I haven’t quite figured out. On the one hand, the incredible history and wealth to which these old buildings attest, and on the other bars by the scores filled with people drinking two-dollar beers.
They are related somehow, but written in a code I haven’t figured out.
Anyone who has stepped outside a well-lit bar into the still night with a head slightly blurry from drink will know how magical cities can seem—any city. Three nights in a row my evening ended as I stepped from the warmth of a well-lighted pub into the sparkling January nights, and my altered state of mind met the city of Prague in all its magical beauty. It’s an experience I missed the last two times I visited Prague. I can’t claim I’ve gotten much closer to understanding the city in any meaningful way, but I felt, on those nights, that the epiphany might lie around the bend of one of those lovely, winding lanes.