Dinner at a Traditional Czech Restaurant

A week ago, I went to Prague to meet up with my mom, sister, and brother - who was on a school band trip. For the first day there, my mother and sister and I did the typical tourist itinerary for Prague, but the second day, we tagged along with my brother's band group, which gave us some time in downtown Prague in the morning, then took us to the cultural center outside of Prague where they were going to perform. The concert went well, and afterwards, they took us to a typical Czech restaurant in the Prague suburbs.

This sort of Bohemian bagpipe is made out of a rabbit.

I thought that it was pretty insane to expect a group of 50 people to fit in just about any European restaurant, but this establishment was ample enough for all of us, plus a large group of about 25 Japanese tourists. Right from the start, I could tell that this probably was not the way Czech people ate on a daily basis, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Inside there were many large, long tables and on one cleared end of the room, there was a musical trio playing traditional Bohemian music and a lady dressed in traditional garb singing in pitches higher than I knew existed.

They came around serving everybody some dumplings with cabbage and onions, while the singing lady entertained us for a good amount of time. The second plate was skewered meat flavored with lots of paprika and other Central European spices. By now, the singing lady had already stepped off the stage, being substituted by a dancing Gypsy couple. They were a very lively act, and even invited some of the audience to go up on stage with them. The victims included many students, the band director, some elderly Japanese women, and other miscellaneous guests. This is when the singing lady came back and got everybody moving.

My brother dancing with the Gypsy.

After finishing off our appetites with dessert and coffee, some of the musicians started going around the room with all sorts of instruments I had never seen, such as the bagpipe above. After about an hour of reveling, we finally went back to the hotel.

Even though this probably did not give us an accurate view of daily life in the Czech Republic, it was definitely a good time and certainly something I would recommend to future visitors.