The Czech team beat the crap out of Belarus, 5:1

Last night I went to the Irish pub with Depressed Michael to watch some hockey, Czech Republic versus Belarus. The Irish pub is about a kilometer down the road from the place we live, and it's become my favorite place to drink. When we walked in last night, the bartender nodded to us and handed us two pints of Budvar before we'd even made it up to the bar. Oh yeah. They know us. So we stood around and watched hockey, random chit-chat, whatever. After a while Martin the bartender got us a place to sit at a table near the TV.

The pub is full tonight, the usual crowd of Czechs, getting bleary-eyed drunk after work. They do this every night, most of them, and so cheerfully, too. Big red-faced men with mustaches, buxom women who can still rock a halter top, slender spike-haired teenagers. Buying each other shots, flirting in a ham-handed way, drinking beer like it's water. This isn't a restaurant, strictly speaking, but like most pubs here it serves classic Czech beer food. Nothing Irish, thank the Lord. There's no menu; you just have to know the things that pubs serve, and ask for something in that category. That category is awesome, by the way. Say, for example, you order a klobasa, the Czech version of a Polish sausage: you get a plate on which is arranged a freshly grilled klobasa, a whole bunch of chopped up tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, a scoop of mustard, and a scoop of horseradish sauce. And four or five slices of rye bread in a basket on the side. So yummy. I get pizza burn on the roof of my mouth several times a month from those things.

The pub is smallish and pleasantly dim, with heavy wooden tables and benches, and wood panelling on the walls. This is a step above most Czech pubs, which tend towards the flourescent lights and white-washed walls type of interior decorating. Sometimes we hypothesize that the bright lights are a scheme to sell more beer, to put the beer-goggled hooking-up a few more pints down the line.

So that was the evening...we'd planned to go back after the game was over, on the last tram to save walking uphill back to the dorm. Ended up staying on, though, like we always do, until 1 or so. Enough time for four or five beers and a music discussion. Chatted with the ever-present drunk guy who speaks "some" English...there's one in every pub. When we paid up, my bill was about $3.50.

It was a good night. Nothing special, just good.