Milestones and Cobblestones

Winter has more than officially plopped into the alleys of Prague. I first noticed it on Thursday carrying groceries home and my eyes started watering from the cold. People sitting in café windows must have had a laugh at me, as I half-walked/half-skated over the frozen cobblestones suffocatingly wrapped in my scarf, arms full of groceries, and seemingly crying hysterically. Then again, those things tend to happen here. Friday, while not the official anniversary, was the date the Lindsey and I set to celebrate. To avoid waffling for a week, I volunteered to make the arrangements the weekend before, and settled on dinner followed by some live music. After reading several glowing reviews, I made reservations at Klub Architektu, a cellar that supposedly had some dynamite vegetarian options. I figured a 7 p.m. dinner there followed by a jazz quartet at the U Stare Pani club would be the perfect way to commemorate our first year of marriage. The restaurant was, in design, a pretty interesting place: stone lined walls that arched seamlessly into stone lined ceilings. It was also entirely empty. We sat down and the servers immediately cut off the music, which meant that our conversation bounced through the entire building off of those elaborate walls and ceilings. Lindsey had to ask them to turn the music back on.

The stellar vegetarian menu turned out to be different forms of fried cheese, breaded and fried (rind and all). Lindsey opted for salmon pasta and we ended up, like so many of our dining experiences, splitting. While it's difficult to mess up fried cheese, the salmon pasta was so perfectly described by Lindsey: "It tasted like getting Tosi's and heating up the leftovers the next day." I think she was just trying to be nice, though.

We saved dessert for the jazz club. Now the short walk to the club was marked by a misting snow and a wind that cut the alleys to shreds. By the time we got there, we were ready to climb into an oven, or a fireplace, or something equally warm. Yet, despite the information on the website, the performance didn't start for another hour. We were left with the choice of sitting in another empty restaurant listening to the band tune it's instruments, or legging it back to our place to warm up and relax for a while, which we did.

Upon our return, we were happy to see that we would not be alone in the club. We took a booth off to the side and ordered a Bailey's cheesecake (literally cheesecake doused in Bailey's) and a hot brownie with ice cream to split. The club was warm, the band was decent, but the disappointing dinner and wretched weather had taken their toll on the evening. We ended up ducking out before the last set and calling it a night, a very very cold night.

This raises one of the tested hypotheses of our relationship. It is rare that on a night (anniversaries, weddings, birthdays, Arbor Day) when we are supposed to feel incredibly in love, or things are supposed to go well, that we do, or they do. Our best moments, for the most part, have come when we're not doing something for a reason, but just because we feel like it. That said, I guess we'll just have to suffer through many more annual disappointments that we can pad with sweet desserts and fried cheese.
Our roommates, Pat and Nell, suggested another restaurant for Saturday, and despite our meager salary, we indulged in a redemption dinner and joined them and Alex and Liz. The restaurant, Kabul, was a family-run Afghan place, not far from Architecktu. The owner was actually our server as well, and the menu was full of kebabs and various meat and vegetable pastries. Lindsey ordered the chicken kebab and I ordered a leek and potato bolani. Unfortunately, our server wrote down my order on the back of his sheet and forgot to put it in. Now, for those of you not familiar with service in Prague, you're not familiar with it because it doesn't exist. Between the post office and restaurants, the general service motto seems to be, "Stop bothering me by asking me to do my job". So when my food did not arrive, throughout the dinner, I was ready to be told a variety of lies (I once had a waiter insist that I'd ordered something completely different from what I actually ordered and refuse to bring me anything more). Instead, the owner apologized profusely and brought me a free beer. Despite the obvious problem, it was a delightful meal and interesting restaurant. We capped off the night with a trip to a wine bar in Vinohrady to meet our friends, Lisa and Pat Buckle. And instead of navigating the night trams at 1:30 a.m. in single-digit temperatures, we opted for a cab. While it is still common to barter for your fare before getting in, many cab companies are using meters to give the illusion of fairness. I offered the driver 200 kc to take us home (a reasonable rate from where we were) but he decided to leave it to the meter, which let us off with a lower fare. When all was said and done, we'd scored a great meal, free beer, and a cheap cab ride, which puts the ongoing tally at: Jake and Lindsey 1, Prague businesses 200. At least it's not a shutout anymore.