Ever been to Karlovy Vary? The Mafia Can Cure You There
By Michael Owen
Contributing Writer

Karlovy Vary is the Czech name for Carlsbad, a resort town in Western Bohemia where people go to enjoy the restorative powers of ancient hot springs. Its patrons included the late Goethe and also the Russian mafia. I went there on Saturday with my program, when they finally recognized that we were all sorely in need of the sustenance provided by hot springs, as Prague’s climate is presently the precise opposite of hot.

My first exposure to the magical Carlsbad waters was underneath a freestanding structure built to shelter a faucet. Apparently the faucet is attached to one of the hot springs, although for all I know it is connected to a hot-water heater in someone’s basement. Various tourists, some of them concealing Russian Mafia identity cards, gathered around the faucet to fill special ceramic vases shaped like watering cans. Then they stood around, sipping ritualistically from the long stems of their ceramic vases. Our program director, Alzbeta, gave us small plastic cups to sample the water for ourselves, since we had not yet obtained more suitable vessels from the ubiquitous souvenir shops.

“What do you think of the water?” my friend Jessica asked me.

“It’s fine, but I don’t know what the big deal is,” I responded coolly, sipping from my small plastic cup. I pretended to savor the nuanced salinity of the water, anticipating that it would, as promised, aid my digestion and renew my vigor. To ease the ordeal of swallowing something so vile, I told myself reassuring lies, such as: perhaps it is an acquired taste.

“It tastes like feet,” Jessica said.

We walked between an ornate colonnade and a river. The town is quaint and beautiful, but for some reason one of the hotels is built of dark granite and concrete in a style reminiscent of Mordor from the Lord of the Rings movies. Alzbeta explained that this hotel is the best place to stay, because it is the only place in Karlovy Vary where you do not have to look at it. Probably, I thought, you also do not have to look at it if your disfigured corpse is tossed in the river by Russian mafiosos, but I would rather just stay in the hotel.

We took a funicular train to the top of a mountain. A funicular train is pulled by a sturdy cable, so I spent the majority of the time looking out the large windows past the gorgeous autumn foliage and the intriguingly misted landscape at the foot of the tracks, where, if the cable were to break, the funicular train would either not stop, killing us all, or stop suddenly, ejecting me through one of the large windows and killing us all. I searched my memory for anecdotes of funicular train malfunctions, but could find none and was left free to invent my own version of the tragedy. Funicular train, I thought. Located in a stronghold of the Russian mafia. The signs were clear, and yet I had not been warned. I decided that the next time I am supposed to go on a trip with my program, I am feigning illness.

Luckily, we reached the top without incident. Far below us were the rooftops of the ancient houses and of the ornate colonnade. We snapped pictures amid the red and gold leaves and walked down the mountainside, dodging a car that came up the cobblestone road at about 100 kilometers per hour. It was not so much the car’s speed that worried me as its refusal to slow down even when a collision with a group of naive American students was imminent. Next, I thought, they will be “accidentally” pouring blocks of concrete around our feet and throwing us in the river. I dived away from the car and kept walking, but a menacing hand reached out and grabbed two of the other students, who thereupon vanished.

I have six weeks left in Prague, provided I escape organized crime’s attempts on my life. On Saturday I decided that I need to make more of my experience while I still can. I should eat at new restaurants, read in new cafés, watch new episodes of “The Family Guy.” (“The Family Guy” is about the zany antics of a family whose youngest member is an infant with a misshapen head and a middle-aged British man’s voice. He says things like (when his brother is offering him ice cream), “Yes, but no sprinkles. For every sprinkle I find, I shall kill you.”)

Having returned from Karlovy Vary, I made use of my new zest for life by freezing myself nearly to the point of coma at the tram stop outside Bohemia Bagel. Prague may be the most beautiful city in the world—they sell beer at the opera, for God’s sake—but if you do not have the appropriate seasonal accoutrements you may as well stay home. Or douse yourself in water from hot springs. A little scalding, you say? That’s nothing compared to the mob.