Where to start?

Clouds have been covering the Ondrejov skies lately. Making observations at night is thus impossible which gives the astronomers around here plenty of time for other things like sleep. Or drinking.
Last night/tonight, Danka, Teresa, Fuke and their friend Petr, who is also at the Institute and not the Petr who is sponsoring my stay, took me to a concert at the restaurant we at lunch at a few days ago (I forget its name, again, Restaurace Propast?). I had no idea what it was going into it, but of course that didn't bother me and boy was I in for a treat. Teresa had reserved a table for us, inside this time, which allowed for a whole nother experience. The interior of this place is very rustic - the walls are exclusively decorated with animal skins and vintage farm implements; there is a legit wooden plow hanging from the ceiling.
I also found out, once there, that the musician of note was a formerly popular Czech singer/songwriter, who was "very old." Teresa excitedly pointed out the guy when he walked in and he completely played the part of the middle aged guitar hero whose glory days were well behind him. He still dressed as if he were a rocker, but he looked like he was more apt to rock a chair than rock the house - balding, beer belly, etc. This guy, however, couldn't hold a candle to his bass player, who showed up either sunburned on his face or already drunk, carried an incredible inner-tube like beer gut, and looked like he hadn't changed his haircut or his sleeveless t-shirt since he was a roadie on a 1980's AC/DC tour.
Anyways, the band (+ drummer and keyboardist) started playing and everybody in the place settled into their extremely bluesy heavy guitar-riff based rock. Except each song featured an extremely fast and hammer-on laden solo by the guitarist/former pop-hero; it pretty much sounded like Slash playing solos for Buddy Guy. Viktor, who showed up later, told me this is a formal genre known as Czech Big Beat. It's funny, I can just see these guys learning to play rock and roll listening to bootlegged Guns n' Roses and Van Halen albums deemed ideologically dangerous by the government, living in the shadow of communism, being completely baddass, then all of a sudden BAM, the Berlin Wall falls and they become national heroes. I'm about 92% certain that's exactly how it played out. Also funny is how the Czechs apply their Big Beat to any number of songs, including Elvis' "Blue Suede Shoes" and Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking," with obligatory Czech lyrics.
Highlight of the concert was definitely when a woman, who was old enough to be considered a babicka (granny) wearing waist-high jeans, a bra and an open leather jacket started dancing to one of the bands jams. In a description that is completely fitting (and which only I will completely understand), one could imagine it as a female version of wrinkly, tan, 5' 4", 115 lbs Tom Deits doing the Eric Lauritsen meetings hip wiggle dance. Her go to move was to kick up her legs like the Rockettes and clap her hands underneath each time, not even close to landing on the beat. A close second was when the Czech version of Yanni - another former pop star, with long flowing hair, facial hair, etc. - got up and started doing back up vocals for the band. He chose mostly to improvise and basically stuttered his way through the rest of the concert.
Make no mistake about it though, these guys put on a pretty entertaining show. Danka later told me that these guys still have sell out shows and tickets go for the equivalent for $50, so we were lucky to see them.
Meanwhile, I'm on my 6th Plzen, which at 30 koruna per beer puts me at almost excatly $10. Gotta love that exchange rate. The show ends and Viktor decides we're all going to do shots. He invites the pub owner to have a few with us and this segways nicely into a 2 hour seminar on hand to hand combat; the guy had served with the Czechoslovak forces in freaking Desert Storm and decided he needed to show Teresa, who is in high school, how to disable a man at close range with one's bare hands. Only for the third half hour did he even bring out a weapon - his knife - the rest was all using only his arms. Unfortunately, this is all in Czech, so I only catch the live demonstrations he did on Fuke. I felt sorry for Fuke, this other guy was the size of a grizzly. At least now I know that a finger to the base of the nostrils can temporarily disable someone!
Petr and I start dozing off, so finally we leave the pub, only to go back to the institute, where Viktor somehow has a loaf of rye bread and like six porkchops waiting for us to eat. In addition, we have several bottles of wine, liberated from Eva, the secretary, who keeps them in case a VIP shows up and there needs to be a reception. Ironically, Viktor and Fuke had already liberated two bottles on a previous occaision and what we drank were their replacements for the originally promoted wine. Oh well. So we drink wine and shoot the shit. Viktor says to me, "you want to see the real Czech? This is it." When I start to yawn and talk about going to bed, Viktor graciously tells me "yes, that is ok, because you drink with us until 6 am, and you had beers before this." That about brings me up to speed. FYI, we left the Institute for dinner at 7pm the day before. I'm crashing hard. Good thing I overslept until 2pm yesterday (12 hours, hell yah).

Quote of the Night: "Never sit between two Ukrainians at a conference. I have twice and both times it ended not well" - Danka (apparently each Ukrainian will get you drunk on their own, since they can drink a lot and will feed you drinks the entire time. Or maybe just try to eiffel tower you.)

Song of the Night: "These boots are made for Walkin", Czech lyrics

Album of the Day: Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

Buying Beer

Rewind -Mmerica's Birthday, Fourth of Ju-ly, Creede, CO: Nick Edwards and I were hanging out at the Elks Lodge Hoe-Down-Shindig and wanted a beer. Not Kip's margaritas. Not even PBR or Keystone. Something that really said, "MMMERICA!." Tecate, fuck no. High life? Maybe. Hold on, we've got it: BUSCH. In a can. Straight up, not Budweiser or Natty, just Busch. Great. Two please, keep the change, happy 4th. Nick, I owe you one. Wait a sec, this stuff tastes funny. The only problem, as we soon found out, was that it was Busch N/A. Like 0.02% Alcohol. Eff. (The waitress herself didn't even realize, was cool and let us shamefully drink Tecate instead).

Fast-Forward to Today - Ondrejov, Central Bohemia, Czech Republic: I'm buying groceries at this tiny place in town, completely confused, consulting my Czech phrasebook ever 12 seconds, when all of a sudden I go into the back room and find crate stacked upon crate of Czech beers, .5 liter bottles. And I jizz in my pants, I don't need a phrasebook for this.
And I won't have to wait until I go to the pub to try them all, I can do it when I get home, at 9:30 in the morning! I buy four: Gambrinus, Pilsner Urquell, Stravosometingorother and Bernard. Then, as I'm looking around the rest of the store, I see they have Budvar, the original Budweiser. "I have to get one of these," I think, "I'm in the Czech republic for crying out loud! I can't not get the ORIGINAL Budweiser." Great. All my groceries, including the beer, costs less than $20. Gotta love that exchange rate.

I get home, proudly line up my new beer bottles on my table, looking over the labels, admiring how beautiful it all looks. Then, it hits me like when everything you're experiencing is perfect and then you realize its a dream, but you don't wake up, you keep dreaming, and your dream just kind of stops being good - it's still a dream, you don't get out of it and wake up, but it's not as good as it used to be: nealcoholicke. COME ON! I know enough Czech to read that: non-alcoholic. Thankfully, it was just the Budvar, the other stuff is still full strength. I'm gonna have to drink it, I really do not want to try to deal with returning or exchanging it, if that's even possible here. I guess I'll get to see if Czech non-beer is better than American non-beer. But can we quit with the amateur hour here?