Without doubt, one of the best things about living in the Czech Republic is the ubiquity of outstanding beer at insanely low prices. Even with the dollar continuing to tank (it’s lost 28.7 percent of its value versus the Czech crown since we arrived in Europe in August and 10.7 percent just since we arrived in Prague at the beginning of May; at 14.6 crowns to the dollar, it’s a far cry from when I first came here in 2001 and it was 39.7 to the dollar), beer remains a bargain. Depending on the brand and the bar, a half-liter mug of draft beer still shouldn’t set you back more than a couple of bucks, and that half-liter still costs a buck or two less than the puny 200 mL bottle of soda or water you’d get at the same place, so it’s very economical to drink beer.
Of course, it’s even cheaper if you just drink at home, because a bottle of beer goes for around 10 or 12 crowns, sometimes less, at the neighborhood supermarket. And you can get a wider variety of beer at the grocery store than you’ll find on offer in most restaurants, which mostly stick to the titans of Czech beer (Pilsner Urquell, Budvar, Staropramen, Gambrinus, and occasionally Radegast, Kozel or Bernard). Not that there’s anything wrong with the big boys.
I myself am quite fond of Staropramen, which is produced here in Prague, on the west bank of the Vltava in Smíchov. I toured the brewery three years ago, which was interesting (not just for the exceedingly boorish behavior of the roughly thirty British stag party revelers on the tour). I like Staropramen because they make a few varieties. There’s the crisp and refreshing lager (ležák), the more amber-hued garnet (granát), and the very good dark lager (černý). It’s the beer I seem to buy all the time for home consumption.
Of course, there’s another reason why I buy Staropramen so frequently. Mostly it has to do with the nice case I can get at one of the supermarkets. For 109 crowns (still under $7.50, even at today’s exchange rate), I get a case with four half-liter bottles of lager, four half-liter bottles of garnet, and a nice half-liter glass to keep. I happened to spy the identical glass on sale at the Tesco department store a while back, and it retailed there for something like 100 crowns. Ever since, I’ve appreciated the bargain of this case, which is basically, buy eight bottles of beer for a little under a buck a piece and get a free glass, or, as I prefer to think of it, buy a glass and get eight bottles of beer to drink from a little more than a nickel apiece.
All of this is a long-winded way of prefacing an anecdote I’ll relate from this morning.
I got up and was in the kitchen getting breakfast, which today meant pouring bowls of chocolate-and-coconut muesli. I poured the first bowl for me, put milk on it, took it out to the table, then returned to our closet-sized kitchen for the second bowl. In my absent-minded state, I forgot I had left the milk on the counter for the second bowl, and for some reason I opened our dorm-sized refrigerator, which had the unopened bottle of lager from last night still inside (perhaps positioned less delicately without the little jar of milk I had already removed). Sure enough, I open the door, and out comes the bottle, crashing to the floor and dumping its contents on the floor.
My first thought, after thinking about the tremendous mess I needed to clean up, was not to think about the beer that had just been wasted. Rather, I thought to myself, “Damn, we’re not going to get the 3-crown deposit back on that one.”
Yes, the three crowns lost to the smashed bottle represented the greater monetary loss than the one crown spent on the beer itself.
