Pasteries in Prague
By Michael Owen
Contributing Writer

A traditional Czech dessert is made by assembling something delightful from fresh ingredients and then adding raisins, thus rendering it inedible. You do not have to add raisins; some people add dates or prunes. The thinking seems to be that if it is a fruit most people despise that has been sapped of its life-giving moisture, it is well-suited for the top or center of a pastry. If you are a foreigner who is served the pastry, you must choose whether to offend your host with a gesture of revulsion, or collect your belongings and run.

Shortly after arriving in Prague I figured out how residents avoid this problem. At The Globe, Prague’s original expat cafe, they have delicious brownies for 40 crowns ($1.40) each. These brownies differ from the ones served at Pomona's Coop Fountain only in that they (a) are thoroughly cooked and (b) contain the same amount of chocolate as Cheerios.

The Globe provides a quick fix in emergencies, but near Jerome House, my hotel, there is also relief in the form of a cafe called Ultramarin. Their dessert menu includes a vanilla ice cream-warm raspberry combo whose name translates as “Hot Love.” One night I was dining by myself, since I needed to catch up in my journal, and was forced to ask the waitress for this dessert.

“Hot Love?” she inquired after I had butchered the Czech written on the menu. I think she was speaking seductively, although I am a poor judge of such things.

“Prosim,” I responded. Please. I cleared my throat uncomfortably, and then I opened Nylon magazine and slackened my wrist in a vain attempt to convey to the waitress the fact that I was not trying to hit on her. A few minutes later, she returned with my Hot Love, which turned out to be sublime. I have been to Ultramarin only once more since then, but my dessert on that initial visit was among the highlights of my semester so far.

True paradise, though, is at bakeshop Praha, a gourmet American-style bakery located just off Old Town Square. Last Friday, when I found it for the first time, I was so excited that I ate a Lorraine quiche, a slice of banana-walnut bread, a chocolate chip-walnut cookie and an apple muffin in one sitting. Since then, my friend Katie has started laughing every time she sees me within reach of food, and in a fit of dreadful self-consciousness I decided to find the YMCA. I swam there for the first time on Monday. The psychic stresses of living abroad may take their toll, but I have no intention of leaving Prague encumbered by the physical aftermath of my gluttony.

Conveniently, my “Reading Prague” professor has started leading our class on walking tours around the city. Our first destination was Vysehrad, a fortified section of the city that King Charles IV claimed had been the location of Pragueís first castle, and thus the origin of Bohemian culture. Now it is the site of a giant neo-Gothic cathedral (built less than a century ago) and a cemetery where famous people like composer Antonin Dvorak are buried. A few blocks away there is an ugly and monolithic building that was initially used for a big meeting of the Communist Party every five years; the rest of the time it was vacant.

My “Reading Prague” professor shows every indication of being manic. Even though he is fairly young looking, he has completely gray hair, and when he speaks his sentences are separated by enormous gasps that suggest genius, or undiagnosed asthma.

“It is really quite striking,” he will say in a thick accent for which, on the first day of class, he deliberately did not apologize. “EEHHHHHHHHHHCHCCHHH. Charles IV claimed Vysehrad was the first castle in Pracccccchhhhhhhh. Here is Dvorak’s tomb!” Through all of this he gesticulates more than seems comfortable, flopping his arms like the great Dvorak himself, were Dvorak to inject himself with methamphetamine. Once, during our walking tour to Vysehrad, his phone rang the theme from Star Wars.

After our trip to Vysehrad, we jumped on the tram instead of the Metro we had taken there. The tram is not as smooth of a ride as the metro, and because I have an aversion to touching things on public transit, even if it is the only way not to fall, I almost fell several times. Still, it afforded a better view. Plus, the metro is built several stories underground, so that to ride it, you have to descend an enormous escalator. But to ride the tram you only have to dodge traffic and make your way to the middle of the street, where the trams run, then get on before the door closes. (Some of the trams were built before democracy and safety regulations, so the doors close even if you are blocking them, or were blocking them before they closed on you.)

When our tram let us off on the riverbank near Jerome House, I made a beeline for Bohemia Bagel, another expat joint across the bridge. I ordered a tuna melt, and for dessert I had banana bread. Neither of them had raisins, which anyway I have figured out are only a ruse. “Eat our authentic raisin-infested pastries,” Czechs say to foreigners, laughing conspiratorially at our obvious confusion. “Look at our authentic centuries-old cathedral at the ancient heart of Bohemian culture,” they add. “Plus, here is Dvorak’s tomb!”