Podebrady

Today's Czech Minute!
The Czechs clearly do not have the paranoid fear of pedophiles that Americans do because it is very common to see young children running around naked in public parks/fountains/etc.

I mention this fact because I first noticed it when we were in Podebrady, and have seen it several other places since, but I digress.

On Tuesday, Kamila and I got up and cleaned Mr. Mach's apartment as a small token of thanks since he had slept in his shop for three days while we stayed in his apartment in the city. He arrived at the apartment at about 9:45 to load us up for the drive from Prague to Hronov, which I was told would take about 2 hours. Kamila had her one tiny suitcase, and I had my two enormous ones, so we were quite the group trudging down to the parking garage!

It took quite a long time to leave the metro area of Prague--our route (if you're keeping track on your handy map of the Czech Republic) was basically due east to Hradec Kralove, and then sort of north-east to Hronov. Not too far out of Prague, we came into this exquisitely beautiful town, and I began looking around like mad for signs so that I could write it down as a place to come back to for further exploration. To my delight, as we came through the main square, Mr. Mach pulled into a parking lot and I learned we were stopping to explore a little and have lunch--thus I encountered Podebrady!

The main square in Podebrady, featuring a heroic statue of a lesser-known Czech king who was born here.


Podebrady is a Czech spa town, highly frequented due to it's not-too-terrible tasting mineral water and it's relative nearness to Prague. It is quite popular with Germans and Russians, I am told. There are many famous spa towns in the Czech Republic (Karlovy Vary/Karlsbad being the most famous), and apparently it is a completely usual thing for a doctor to "prescribe" three weeks at a spa. Unlike at an American spa which largely involves pampering, three weeks at a Czech spa would entail drinking a great deal of the local mineral water, soaking in said water, and engaging in vigorous exercise. (Martin's wife, Hanka, is spending the upcoming weekend in Podebrady and plans to rollerblade, and do dance and step aerobics, among other things--this is a "spa weekend" in the CR.) However, even if you are not in town on doctor's orders, you can still partake of the mineral water, which of course we all did.

This is where you can get a glass (or many glasses, if you like!) of the Podebrady mineral water. As you can tell from the foggy photo, it's kind of humid in there!


And here are Mr. Mach and Kamila, feeling healthier already, having drunk their respective shares of the magical water.



The fountains/faucets for the water are located in the middle of a large and beautifully landscaped park, the centerpiece of which is this fountain, where, you will notice, there were no naked children at the time we took the photo.



Mr. Mach took a rest on a bench while Kamila and I walked around the park. Afterwards, it was time for lunch! Still unable to read a Czech menu with any kind of reliability, I chose something for the name and got lucky--I had a great lunch of grilled chicken cooked with peaches, pineapple, and some other kind of fruit. Not exactly a traditional Czech meal, but still really, really good. The portion was huge, and I had yet to fully comprehend that this was due to the fact that lunch is the biggest meal of the day in this culture. ("Ohhhhhhhhhhh." I would say later.) The little restaurant we ate at, which Kamila remembered from her visit ten years earlier, was very cute, and also quite typical of every restaurant I've eaten at since:



Lastly, Mr. Mach insisted that we get ice cream ("zmrzlina" in Czech--GREAT word). I had read somewhere that Czechs really enjoy their dairy products, but they bring ice cream appreciation to a new level. This is the only country I have ever visited where people come out of an ice cream parlor, cones in hand, at 8:45 in the morning. The ice cream we got in Podebrady was new to me, however. I am used to soft-serve machines that might swirl vanilla and chocolate, but a swirl of apple and caramel? This I had to try, so we all had it! Mr. Mach being Mr. Mach, did we get smalls? No! Did we get larges? No! We had to get the "extra special" which was two levels above large. Here, Kamila enjoys hers:



And so, full of Podebrady "vota" (the Czech word for water--do you see how this blog has become educational as well? You don't even have to feel guilty for wasting time at work to look at it!) and zmrzlina, we continued our journey to Hronov. More on that later.