Pick-A-Day

March 2005
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Cheb

So I’m still not sure why I picked Cheb (Webcam of Main Square; +6 Hours from US Eastern Time, so that might explain why it’s dark!) in the Czech Republic as my destination this weekend, but I did. I suspect I chose Cheb precisely because it was in the Czech Republic and because going there was a less expensive substitute for going to Prague. Roundtrip on the train was about 35€, two nights in the hotel was 62€. Going to Prague would have cost me 68€ and 100€ for the same. Ironically, at 4 and one half hours via train, Cheb is just as far away as Prague-only with more stops and a slower train.

For the geographically challenged, Cheb is located at the far, far west edge of the Czech Republic. At one point in history it wasn’t Czech, and, in fact, after World War II a number of Germans were forcibly resettled out of this region and into what we now call Germany by the new Czech Government-no compensation was given to the Germans for their suffering in the brutal march out of the region. On the other hand, in 1938 Hitler was encouraged to take over this part of Czechoslovakia by Germans living in the region.

That said, in my first two hours after arriving in town, two sets of young women tried to interest me in purchasing what they were offering.

I pretended to not speak Czech (easy enough, I don’t) or German (less easy, I have learned enough to get by as long as it’s simple German) and ignored their calls.

Friday night was basically a dud. I was staying at the Hotel Hvezda which has a perfectly charming location right on the main square. Too bad my room, room 222, was located about as far away from the entrance as I could get. On the second floor (third in the States), I had to wander a very long hallway in order to find my room was the last possible room in the hotel. That said I wasn’t subject to people walking past my door, although I had to turn on 3 separate light switches to ensure that I didn’t trip or walk into a wall.

(More after the jump)


After arriving at my hotel, I headed out and found a restaurant for dinner-beer, salad, and spinach pizza at Pizzeria Giuseppe came to 181 CZK, or 6,30€. Very inexpensive: pizza alone in Weimar would cost 7€. My weak German skills came to my rescue as the menu was in Czech and German, but no English. In fact, my German came to rescue me several times.

I then wandered around town briefly, along the way turning down the second set of girls (the first tried to get me as I was on my way from the train station to the hotel). The center of Cheb is filled with many cobblestone streets and lots of interesting looking buildings.

I was tired after my trip, combined with the fact that I hadn’t been sleeping well, caused me to decide to go to bed early. That and I wanted to be ready to be TouristAdam on Saturday.

Saturday was a memorable day, partially for the wrong reasons. I got up and headed to breakfast where I accidentally helped myself to a breakfast buffet set up for the Czech Handball Team. After that I headed to the post office as listed on the Lonely Planet map. Too bad that it’d moved since the book was published.

I ended up going to the Museum Cheb where after paying for my ticket I wandered into an exhibit about Carnival and Easter where I couldn’t under a single word. It was all in Czech. I was hoping for anything in German-but there was nothing.

Fortunately my problems were quickly alleviated by the arrival of a tour guide who was eager to practice and improve her English-I then had a very complete tour of the first half of the museum, until she had to leave me in order to give a tour in Czech. Her first question was, basically, “How on earth did you, an English speaking American, end up here in Cheb in the middle of winter, and at 9:30 on a Saturday morning?”

I gave my answer about how it was close to Weimar-and then noticed that we were standing next to a display case or something that referred to Goethe.

Big surprise there.

Long story short, I had a lovely morning at the museum, wandering off only to get lost while looking for the new post office-which fortunately I found before it closed. There I mailed a few (but not very many- a very few, so don’t get your hopes up) postcards off to Deutschland and the States.

It was only then that I realized that I had made a huge strategic error: All the little shops around town closed at noon or 1.

C’est la vie.

I wandered Hypernova, a large store for awhile, where I picked a CD because of its cover-the artist, Tomáše Savky was cute (and I adore his hair!). That and he sings a cover of “We are the Champions” (in English), and a song called “Fuck It” (which I think is also a cover, but I’m not sure of what, plus it’s in Czech, except one word). (Wacky Photo!)

That left me with some time to kill, so I wandered randomly and found myself at another one of these obscene and strange outdoor markets that I have seen all over Europe: Prague, Amsterdam, and Tallinn (indoor here) where there is stall after stall of people selling the same damned crap in each stall. This one was the Dragoun Bazar and was slightly understated on the official city map. The market was filled with Germans buying what I can only assume are “authentic” Puma, Esprit, and Adidas shirts/pants/shoes/jockstraps or whatever-all for bargain prices. I noticed that I wasn’t the only American in Cheb, although I did not identify myself to the other Americans-I just wandered around and wondered what could possess anybody to actually buy this crap.

I ate a very late lunch at a Chinese restaurant near my hotel but far from the bazar-where they picked up on the fact I was from the States, and since in English there is no equivalent expression to Guten Appetit,” they said “Bon Appetit!” The gentleman also introduced me to my dish as “Chicken with Fungus.”

The last cultural thing I did in Cheb was visit Gallery 4 which had a nice display of photographs taken all over world.

It was 2:30, Saturday afternoon.

The rest of my time in Cheb was spent (a) taking a nap; (b) proof reading the rest of chapter 7 and all of chapter 8 of a forthcoming book at a café; (c) reading Friday’s issue of The Guardian most carefully; (d) taking a walk and wondering what the name of Americká Street was before it became Americká Street; (e) sleeping; (f) eating breakfast; (g) leaving.

Had I been there in April I would have been able to tour the Cheb Castle which is supposed to be quite interesting. Unfortunately it is closed for winter until April.

Other notes: Gay: There is supposed to be a gay bar in town, I found its entrance, but on Saturday night it was -10°C and snowing, plus I didn’t feel like telling the whores “No” again. Young Whores: From the Prague Post: “‘I don’t have knowledge about child prostitution in our region, and you can trust me — I regularly check on my region, even at night hours,’ said Cheb Mayor Jan Svoboda.” From the BBC in 2002: “He (Mayor Jan Svoboda) said that the problem of child prostitution had been ‘overplayed.’ He said that it was a difficult issue to tackle because ‘girls of 13, 14 are pretty much grown up… so the question is, what age are you talking about?'” Charming, eh?! Currency: Pay in Crowns. I’m glad I did. On two of my restaurant receipts, I have conversions as follows: 173CZK is 7,21€ and 181CZK is 6,30€. The latter comes closest to being honest. The actual amounts are 5,85€ and 6,12€ respectively. I left 200CZK/6.76€/8.96$ in both cases.

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