Czech Vice

CAUTION: This post contains some material that would make a sailor blush. Read at the peril of your innocence.

I've been wondering whether or not to write a blog on vice. On one hand, it seems so unnecessarily lurid to show my readers the seedier side of life here. After all, you are probably perfectly happy with cute pictures of Sophie and my tales of appalling quantities of meat, yes?

But vice is alive and well here in the Czech lands...maybe even startlingly so. Beginning with our first glimpses of the ubiquitous casinos and brothels, our first whiffs of the pervasive tobacco smoke, and, our first quaffs of the ever-available beer, it's clear that this place ain't no Kansas taffy pull!

Yet despite the striking differences from the American approach to vice, it's also clear that taking a "holier-than-thou" position has gotten me no closer to understanding; this is a different culture and a different country--a country enjoying its recently found freedom from years of political, economic, and thought control. And yet, the Czechs are just SO much more permissive about vice that it's hard not to judge. Well, I don't know exactly what to think but I perhaps it will make for interesting reading. So here it is:

VICE in Meat Land!

Gambling:
The most visually obvious vice here is gambling. Like other parts of Europe, they have sports betting booths and, like the US, they also have state-sponsored lotteries. But unlike the US, we see little casinos EVERYWHERE. They are just part of the normal cityscape. With their gaudy neon storefronts and digital money tickers, they project a sort of sleaziness that most Americans are used to seeing ghettoized in dedicated neighborhood or cities like Vegas...i.e., not mixed in next to family-friendly department stores or banks. It has taken us a while to get used to it.

Oddly enough, the casinos always seem empty. But I finally figured out why when I went out with some of my colleagues after 10:30 when most pubs were already closed and we had to go to a casino (which are allowed to stay open all night).

These casinos aren't like their American counterparts which have a mix of machines and tables run by live human dealers or attendants. Rather, these are bars with some machines (slots, blackjack, and automated roulette tables) but virtually no live attendants (i.e., bars with gambling problems). And when the late night revelers come in, the bartenders start pouring beers into the clients who in turn pour LOTS of cash into those machines: $2.5 billion in 2004, a growth of 4.5 percent from the year before! In addition, there is also a phone gambling craze going on...but again you wouldn't know it from seeing all the empty casinos in the day time. The Czechs we know claim these casinos are "only for foreigners," but you sure could have fooled me, EVERYBODY I saw was Czech...but then again, maybe it always feels good to blame the Germans?

By the way, the gambling situation is unlikely to change any time soon. Just like in the US, the government is addicted to the tax stream and, apparently, their gambling laws are completely wacky (e.g., there is something called a "herna bar" which can have machines but doesn't get regulated by the same laws as the casinos). And speaking of bars....

Drinking
The myth about the Czechs' voracious appetite for alcohol ain't no myth. Czechs drink a whopping 157 liters of beer per capita each year (compared with 81 liters in the US!). The also drink twice as much hard alcohol. Yikes.

On one hand, you can't really blame the Czechs for their beer habits; the beer is SO good; one can easily throw back 2 or 3 beers (.5 liters each) before you remember you are drinking alcohol (sort of like New Year's Eve punch, only it's not pink and that friend of your sister's isn't looking at you all funny from under the mistletoe). And besides, the beer is cheaper than any other beverage on the menu (~$0.40 retail, ~$1 restaurants). Really. I mean, if we could only convince Sophie to switch from apple juice....

The most obvious reason for the high rate of alcohol consumption, in bars at least, is the way beer is served. In most pubs they will just bring you another mug unless you specifically tell them to stop. They keep a tab running on a strip of paper at your table. Sometimes it's fun to walk around the bar just to see what kinds of tabs the other tables are running. One night I was out with a friend when a pair of guys in their late 50s at the next table started talking to us. And get this: their tab had a whopping 18 marks! ...which might explain why they thought they were WWII veterans and why they thought I was their "lovely Scottish boy" (and why I knew it was time to go!) On a funnier, but maybe more pathetic note: one pub I went to literally supports its inebriated male guests with handy "headrests" above each urinal. Zeooow.

Drinking is also facilitated by a much broader range of drinking establishments. There are casinos, hernas, restaurants, sports bars (that also mean gambling), "hospody" (i.e. pubs with food), full-fledged bars (no food), and wine bars ("vinoteka") that serve wine by the "deci" (but you have to brush up on your metric system to play that game). By the way, the Moravian wines are delicious and the vinokeka seem much more gender-balanced than the pubs.

Domestic alcohol consumption is at least as brisk as what I have seen in public. Most of the families we have visited have welcomed us with a shot of "something" or a glass of wine (imagine visiting Granny and being offered some tequila!). Being the light-weights that we are, we only have one shot, and usually our hosts are fine with that. However, sometimes, your hosts will want you to try their full range of homemade brandies...and next thing you know you are singing Phil Collins songs. Watch out!

The Czechs also have very different ideas about alcohol retail. You can buy hard liquor anywhere: supermarkets, convenience stores, fruit stands, and even at the little road side "tabaks" where you buy your newspapers and tram tickets (there's always 2-3 guys drinking beer when we go by this tabak on the way to Sophie's school at 7:45 am!)

My favorite way of buying wine is to bring an empty water bottle up to the grocery store where they will refill it with one of the wines "on tap." Wild, huh? (Speaking of wild, do they still have drive-through liquor stores in Wyoming?)

The scariest thing about the drinking statistics I quoted above is that they are based on commercial alcohol production not actual production. Home brewing is very common here, especially for wine and spirits. Our neighbor makes a wonderful apricot brandy from the trees in his yard. In an earlier blog I reported on a Czech family we met during one of our walks that had us over for lunch and served us (literally) mind-numbing quantities of store-bought beer plus homemade wine AND slivovice (plum brandy). Like the Christmas cookies I reported on, there is also a brisk unofficial market in "domastni" wines and brandies...none of which gets reported for official statistics. In other words, alcohol consumption is significantly higher than official statistics.

One last thought about alcohol consumption: Apparently, alcoholism is on the rise among women. One theory mirrors the "welcome-to-the-workforce" explanations for why American women are getting more stress-related diseases. Another theory is that the rise of western feminist values has opened bars as a socializing option for women. The last theory is the most interesting: under communism one could easily "blame the system" for one's troubles. But with the system dismantled all that blame comes home to roost and gets medicated. Either way, it's all a little scary.

Smoking
Until very recently the Czech Republic was one of the most convenient places to be a smoker in the EU. Cigarettes cost less than $2/pack and smoking was allowed just about everywhere (recently, the government has started to raise tobacco taxes...by 2007 or so, cigarettes will cost $4.00...I'm not a smoker but in the US I think the price is somewhere between $3 and $4, yes?)

In the US, the campaign against smoking has been so successful that we have turned what ought to be a health concern into a moral issue. I'll admit it: back home it actually "shocks" me when I learn that a colleague or friend smokes. So when we first arrived here it took us a while to shelve that righteous attitude. But that said, we still can't get used to the constant smell of smoke in restaurants, cafes, and bars...and, of course, on our own clothes. However, unlike the situation with gambling and drinking, the government is hungry to change smoking habits because the obvious financial impact smoking has on the state-supported health system. However, I doubt the anti-smoking campaign will ever acquire the ethical valence we have given it in the states...and frankly, that might be for the better. There's a refreshing lack of silly superciliousness that Americans might appreciate more if we'd also just shaken off four decades of communism.

Sex, sexuality, and the body
The deal with the vices of the flesh are more complex than the others. Because the Czech Republic is in Europe we weren't surprised that Czechs share their neighbors' liberal attitudes about nudity and sexuality. Like Germany, people just aren't as concerned about showing a little more skin. I mean, there is even a nudist area at our municipal lake! The best illustration of how this more liberal attitude affects our daily lives is when we go to our local public pool which provides men and women with separate shower rooms but a shared coed large locker room. In other words, when you come into the pool area, you get a key for one of the lockers in a big coed space. Some people use the provided changing stalls, but nobody seems to mind when people disrobe outside the stalls. After getting into your suit, you pass through separate showering areas to get to the pool. But, the doors to the shower rooms are made of very revealing semi-opaque glass; nobody is pretending it's entirely private.

Now that I have gotten used to seeing everybody in their undergarments (and less), it just seems like a much healthier attitude than the average American pool scene with all those ironic attempts to separate men and women as they change into their revealing swim wear. That said, I still haven't gotten used to going with my coed ultimate team to tournaments where we end up sharing a locker room AND shower room! (I will spare you further details. And anyway, my parents will read this...shocking!)

So, all that pool and locker room stuff is in the realm of public nudity, not vice at all, and easy to accept after the initial shock, particularly because it applies equally to men and women.

However, as you move along a spectrum from public nudity towards the sex industry, things start to feel less healthy...maybe it overtly objectifies and demeans women...usually immigrants. Some of it seems harmless (like the movie poster I saw with an artistically posed topless women...but even THAT would have gotten a theater shut down in the States!). But some of it seems more borderline, like the advertisement outside a clothes shop showing a topless gender-neutral person getting whipped on the back by some "friends." And then, of course, there are just many more "men's magazines" on display in places where kids can easily see them. (Apparently, things have toned down considerably since the post-revolution celebrations of freedom of expression when there was porn everywhere).

From there, the spectrum continues into obvious sex-trade territory. As in the US, they have strip bars, except here, as with the casinos, those establishments aren't separated from the rest of the city (in fact, there's one place around the corner from my work on the same block as the cathedral and bishop's headquarters. The most shocking surprise is that unlike the US (except Nevada?), they also have "nightclubs" that are actually full-service legal brothels. And like the strip clubs, the night clubs are also integrated right into the city scape. (On a positive note: this "legal" status gives employees access to health care). Being a family man, I can't really report on the interiors of these institutions but I can report on something stranger.

After work on Thursday night, I often go out for beers with my coed colleagues to a neighborhood bar we all affectionately call "tits-out" because, indeed, your drinks arrive just slightly ahead of a pair of exposed breasts. Yes, really. What makes it weird is not just the topless waitress (which, I assure you, IS weird). What makes it weird is the fact that the waitresses and my fellow patrons are so completely unfazed by this arrangement. This is not a topless bar in the American sense of the word. That is, no sultry dances. No breast implants. No lingerie. No lap dances. These women just bring out drinks, take orders, and empty ashtrays. Think "Hooters" in the US, but, ironically, much LESS sexualized.

Final thoughts on vice:
So once again I am wondering why am I reporting all these smarmy details to YOU (my dear family, colleagues, and friends) instead of showing you pictures of our February skiing trip? I don't know exactly...but I THINK I am telling you all this because I am honestly struggling with the contrast between, on one hand, the Czechs' tendency towards public introversion and interpersonal conservatism, and on the other hand, their much more liberal attitudes towards vice. However, I'm wary about throwing stones because I'm equally puzzled by the conflict between American puritanism and our very public displays of, and discussions about sexuality...or more poignantly, our tendency towards public "Christian" self-righteousness (e.g., Clinton sex scandal) and the many ways in which we tolerate remarkably unChristian business and political behavior (e.g., invasion of Iraq). The Czechs aren't about to invade anybody and they just don't care who is sleeping with who. But maybe they should--the Czech divorce rate is one of the highest in Europe (~50%). But then again, 50% is only slightly higher than our highest divorce rates which are, ironically (did you know this?) in the American south, our most religious states.

So these it is. And you thought the only Czech vice was meat garnishes!

Greek Getaway

Because we were certain that winter in Central Europe would be so cold and bleak that we would need to see some sunshine by January, we planned a trip to Greece for post-Christmas r and r. In fact, Europe's been really warm this year, which means (and I hate to say this to those of you suffering from chilblains right now) that Greece was especially sunny and beautiful. And we took full advantage of the off-season activities, such as they were: we walked through olive groves, took a bath with some old guys, dined with an artist, and hitched a ride with a sorta-famous author. Oh, and we saw some famous buildings, too.

Planes from Brno fly only to London, Prague, and Munich. We've flown to London and Prague. This time we flew through Munich's LOVELY airport--our three hour lay-over was worth the cost of the flight. Munich airport is quiet, provides spending opportunities for kids who have saved up money for special German Playmobil, offers lots of delicious fresh food at reasonable costs (weird for an airport), and doles out hot drinks and newspapers at even more reasonable costs (i.e., free...like, really weird). AND for our (coach, of course) flights in and out of Munich somebody thoughtfully hired stewardesses who coquettishly offer passengers chocolate, nuts, presents and, if you look like a celebrity (which is how I must have looked in my plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and Breck boy hair cut), offer you your choice of red, white, or champagne...only they brought us a whole bottle of champagne so we would "enjoy your holiday." It worked--we did.

We spent the first five nights of our vacation on the serene island of Lesvos in a beautiful sea-side Byzantine town called Molyvos. Thankfully the Byzantines had all moved out but they left a stunning wedding cake of houses clinging to a hill around a satisfyingly "castley" castle. As we were there in the off-season, it was QUIET except (and this is a very significant "except") for the dulcet tones of the vegetable, meat, and fish vendors driving up the few passable streets hawking their wares through loud-speakers mounted on their trucks. What they were saying, I think, was: "aahwaaa kaalaaa aah chee-chee-chee." It sounded all Greek to me :), but apparently that is just enough "chee-chees" to get the little old ladies to shuffle down the hill to buy octopus arms, broccoli, sheep's testicles, and what have you. (So the Greek waiter asked his guests if they are having a good time. The guests replied: "Absolutely, we're having a ball!")

We stayed in a guest house run by a Dutch guy and his very cute dog ("Rickie"). While Rickie didn't do much in the way of cleaning or financial transactions, he set a great tone for our stay: Happy and wagging in the morning, happy and wagging in the daytime, and then asleep in his basket by 8:00. We loved Molyvos. The oranges, lemons, and olives were ripe on the trees, the lambs and baby goats were frolicking (and mighty tasty, too!), the weather was perfectly cool and sunny, and we had only a 10 minute drive (or a 4 hour walk through sheep poop and down precarious cliffs...another story) to a natural hot spring housed on the beach in a cool Turkish-style building that looked suspiciously like Luke Skywalker's house on Tatooine.

I'll just say three more things about Lesvos:
1) alas, in the off-season there are no marauding hordes of lesbians.
2) The island is big enough to have some geographical diversity: while most of it is drop-your-jaw- olive-groves-avec-sheep beautiful, some parts look like a moonscape...but also with little sheep astronauts ("sheepranouts?"). In fact, Lesvos has the world's biggest petrified forest, apparently left over from an ancient forest buried by a slightly less ancient volcanic eruption.
3) Because the Greeks and Turks don't get along (ethnic cleansing, Trojan War, or whatever), the island is militarized: sometimes subtly (e.g., there are no accurate maps, 'cos who knows what those surly Turks might do with a map?) and sometimes not-so-subtly (e.g., traffic signs for tanks?!) The tension was palpable enough that we decided not to call the landform across the straits "Turkey" opting instead for the Czech word for hen (as in, "wow, this yogurt tastes even better than the yogurt in Slepice").

We were afraid that after the sun and relaxation of Lesvos, Athens would seem loud, polluted, and tiring. We stayed in the Plaka district which, like the Sultanahmet district in Istanbul, is a virtual tourist ghetto. But what could have been an insane choice in the high-season was perfect in January. Because the prices were lower, we could afford a NICE hotel in the shadow of the Acropolis and, although we had to run a minor gauntlet of touts, the nearby restaurants were all wonderful, the food so fresh and easy to find, the service so friendly (a welcome respite from our Czech dining experiences...god, I miss good old American Thai and Indian food!) that Athens was a great choice.

Of course, all the ancient Greek sites were amazing. The archeology museum was like a trip through my college Art History text book. And I'm a sucker for that sense of legacy. But I'm also glad I had read up on the history of Modern Greece (i.e., post-Alexander the Great). During the Roman times Athens remained an important cultural center but, particularly after the rise of Christianity and the consolidation of power in Constantinople, Athens became a backwater of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires and remained so until relatively recently. (Athens' population in the early 1800s was only about 10,000!) So unfortunately for the architecture of Athens, the only really "nice" buildings are close to the old city around the Acropolis. The rest of the city sprawled out in the 1950s in the form of concrete apartment buildings. But, as I said, we behaved like tourists are supposed to and really only saw the ancient sites, the gorgeous central park, and, of course, the changing of the guards in their cute outfits, bizarre Martha Graham march-dance, and pom-pom shoes (I think that kind of humiliating hazing is illegal in the US army...)

Although Sophie suffered a little from "ruins fatigue," (heck, we all did!) she was, as usual, our passport to some really fun unplanned interactions. On Lesvos, she met a girl whose Britsh-expat mom and dad ran an art shop that sold the dad's funky olive wood carvings. They had us over to their house a couple of times for dinner. Shepherd's Pie, anyone? Also, at the end of one of our walks through olive groves, farms, and Byzantine churches perched on rocky outcroppings, we ended up a bit further from home than we wanted to be. We thumbed a ride from, as it turned out, Carol Christ, the famous feminist theologian who now runs "goddess tours" and such things. But Sophie's superpower of cuteness was most effectively exploited on helpless waiters who, after learning her name would swoon and proclaim, "But Sophia is a Greek name! Bravo Sophia!" (short break for head patting) "What can I bring my baby to make her happy?!" (pat, pat, pat) "The adults?! They will have beef and onions--but my baby! She does not eat meat? I have a fish that will make you so happy. . . Ahhh, SoPHia! Try and you will see how happy this fish will make you. (pat, pat,pat)" And it did.

So, full of olives and fish and glowing from 9 days of sun, we returned to the Czech Lands. Our baby rat had turned into a RAT! Maida is still very cute and always game for a snuggle but at our bedtime, which is her AWAKE time, she can turn into a one-rat-infestation (she's learning how to crawl up the walls by bracing her back against the radiators...yeeaah! creepy...). In addition to oversized vermin, we were also greeted with a FABULOUS snow fall, our first since December. Sophie was so angry that it was snowing on a school day that we decided to go sledding at 6:30 am. But the snow stuck around for a week, long enough for serious daily sledding on our little "Butt-ie" sleds.

We loved Greece but we are happy to be back in the Czech Republic, despite the lack of effusive head patters or tasty bovids. Sophie is meeting new Czech friends, my teaching is going very well, and Betsy's enthusiasm for her work got a much-needed boost when she spent a few days at a Czech-Slovak Fulbrighter retreat in a Slovakian spa town. My only disappointment was the recent cancellation of a overnight trip with my colleagues to experience a traditional Czech pig slaughter. Oh well, you can't have it all!