Dateline: July 3rd, 2022

One thing that we all are prone to suffer from is what psychologists call the “protagonist viewpoint.” That is to say that each of us believes that we are the main character in a book or movie that encompasses each of our daily lives. The trouble with this logic is that there are currently 8 billion people in the world, and guess what? You’re not the main character. You’re just an extra. So am I. So is everybody else we interact with.

However humble I may have thought myself to be in the past, whatever shreds of my “protagonist viewpoint” remained have been surely ripped to shreds as I try to adjust to life in this new country. This morning was another such example in which the author, merely an extra on planet on earth right now rather than humanities main protagonist, struggled to get through another day.

I woke up with a nagging cough–one that had been lingering since allergy seasoned boomed in the Connecticut River Valley where I had been residing prior to my arrival in Prague. I figured I would walk to the local drug store and purchase some cough medicine. Trouble was, the local drug stores in the Czech republic don’t sell medicines. They sell vitamins, herbal treatments, shampoos, toiletries, cosmetics–you know, everything that CVS would sell except medicine! Oy vey!

Fortunately, herbal tea seamed like a wise choice. I grabbed a box off the counter, along with some shampoo and detergent, and walked to the cash register to pay.

“Dobrý den,” said the cashier with a smile. She was blonde-haired middle aged woman who stood just a hair under 6 feet tall (or 183 cm).

“Dobrý den,” I replied as I placed my items on the conveyor belt. The cashier scanned the items with ease and then spoke at a pace that simply far too fast for my poor brain to comprehend.

“Sorry, I said. My cover as a fluent Czech speaker lasted all of three seconds. “Mluvím malý český,” I said. “Mluvite anglický?”

“Yes, she replied”. “It’s 320 crowns. Cash or card?”

“Cash,” I replied, as if to prove I was smart enough to at least count money after my latest foray into a foreign language flounder. As I handed her the money, she asked me if I needed a bag.

“No necesito–uh, nepotřebuji” I replied. For some reason, I couldn’t help but reply in Spanish (the only other language I speak conversationally) before mustering a reply in the correct Czech language.

When the cashier heard this, her face broke into a wide smile.

“Mluvíš hezký malý český (You speak nice little Czech)!” Her face was vibrant, her voice jubilant. Hey, at least the few words that I can speak in Czech are coming out right!

I put the tea and shampoo in my backpack and the walked across the street to an actual pharmacy to get my cough medicine. And at the actual pharmacies in Czechia, they only sell medicine, and almost everything is behind the counter. This includes something that is simply sold over the counter in the United States, Robitussin cough syrup.

I walked to the counter and simply asked if the pharmacist if she spoke English. She replied that she did, and asked me what I needed. I told her that I needed cough syrup, to which she turned around and pulled a bottle off the shelf behind her. As she handed the bottle to me, she read the instructions. “Make sure you take exactly 7.5 milliliters every 4-6 hours” she said, sternly. “And remember, this medication is not for children.”

When I heard that, I immediately thought of the children I saw drinking beer at the local restaurant Friday night. On the inside, I was laughing hysterically, but on the outside, I did everything I did to match her stern and serious facial expression and voice intonation. I simply thanked her and headed back to my apartment.

Upon arriving, I swallowed seven and half milliliters of cough syrup, studied Czech for another hour on DuoLingo, then slept for another six hours. When I awoke, it was just in time to take some more medicine–and just in time to head back to my favorite (and only) restaurant I had been to at that point in time.

Restaurace Pět peněz (Restaurant 5 money.) On this night, I ordered the Baltic salmon. As I ate, I savored the flavor for each and every moment. Mm, mám to rád, I thought to myself. mám to rád. Loosely translated, this means, “I like it.” More specifically, it means, “I have a happiness for it.”

As I tasted each and every magnificent morsel of this amalgam of salmon meat, sauce and vegetables, my mind transported me way back to Christmas Eve, 1987. Five-year-old me took a healthy serving of turkey, along with yams and asparagus. Then my grandmother offered me a healthy serving of gravy to go with it.

For some reason, gravy just made five-year-old me squeemish. I already liked the turkey, so why put anything else on it? I simply said no thank you. When my grandmother heard this, an atomic bomb nearly exploded in her mind. “”He doesn’t want the gravy?! She exclaimed. “What’s wrong with him! You can’t have turkey without gravy.”

When her mother (Momma Nonna to me) saw this, she she smiled and laughed. She had made this gravy herself–a recipe from her native village of Potenzo in Italy. Needless to say, this was very good gravy. She let her son (Uncle Joe to me) do the talking for him. “Relax, Mildred,” said Uncle Joe with a smile. “He’ll have the gravy when he’s ready. Let him go at his own pace.”

When I heard this, I smiled and feasted on my dry turkey. I repeated this process for years and years. Sadly, after Momma Nonna passed away shortly after Easter in 1992. Despite our best efforts no one in our family could every quite make the Christmas gravy the way that she could.

As I thought of that very specific Christmas 35 years ago, I just let the flavor of the food marinate in my mouth, and smiled. When I was ready to pay, I made sure to leave a 40 crown tip for service. I pulled two 20 crown pieces out of my pocket, and saw that each of them graced the image of good King Wenceslas. This brought my mind back to my grandmother’s living room, Christmas, 1987. Everyone’s there, and my mother is singing in her pitch-perfect Catholic schoolgirl voice:

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night, 
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gathering winter fuel

After caroling, it was time for the gift exchange, and Uncle Joe, (remember him) handed me a perfectly wrapped gift that was no larger than an ipad (needless to say, it was not an ipad. But you get the picture).

“I know it’s small,” he said as he handed it to me. “But important things come in tiny packages.” I thanked him as I ripped the wrapper to shreds (again, this caused my Great-Depression-raised grandmother to recoil in horror). With the wrapping removed, I saw a beautifully illustrated cover to an abridged version of Around the World in 80 days.

Hot dog! The man knew I was born to travel. I thought of this as I paid for my meal in full, handed over my Czech crowns to my waitserver, and parted ways with a simple “děkuji, na shladenou.” With this, the waiter smiled. Only two days in, and my Czech is slowing getting better. And with such fantastic food options everywhere, well, let’s just say I look forward to practicing live and in person every chance I get well I’m here.

Prague–where every restaurant serves a meal worthy of Christmas dinner.

Mám to rád indeed. I like it!