LitskiLite: Homecoming - Summer Trip To Czechia, Part 1: Prague

A playground in the shadow of Charles Bridge

Prague has always played a most significant role in my life, and has been the one constant in the last 35 years that I chose myself, and for many reasons.

I was in Prague when I got a call saying I could begin a new job in Belgium, which was the starting point of the trajectory that took me to Leuven, Saarburg, Luxembourg, Valencia and ultimately Ireland.

It was the place where I got my Cambridge language training qualification and also where my old friend Giel and I came on holiday and he ended up staying. He’s been here for a quarter of a century now, and is Milda’s godfather. Another old friend that I met even earlier, back in 1992, became professor of architecture and vice-president of Gaza University. His son is now in Ireland working as a medic in an important hospital and he hopes to send his daughter to one of Dublin’s great universities.

The terrace at the Lobkowicz Palace café, near the exit to Prague Castle

Prague was always my go-to place in times of need: the city I consider my spiritual home, where I feel more like “me” than anywhere else. She is a mix of Slavic and Germanic, which is probably why I feel drawn to her, and why I regard her as my Ground Zero. She (for I consider her like a favourite aunt) has always opened her arms wide to me and embraced me in my lowest moments.

The magnificent lobby of the National Museum

I hadn’t had the opportunity to visit her for almost a decade, and after everything that has happened to us, I think we deserved to see my beloved aunt once again for some much-needed attention. I also wanted to show the children all the things that brought me here in the first place, and why she’s still the place I go when I need to heal. This time it’s all of us, and heal we must: what happened to us in the summer of 2023 was a trauma that I will never recover from, and a chapter the children have found difficult to close.

The children often talk about their time back in our lovely house in Saarburg. When we abruptly had to up sticks and move, we spent two years in Valencia. With its constant pressures, ubiquitous noise and interminable annoyances, it was hard to fully mourn our former lives, which deepened the issue. Ireland has allowed us the space and the time to process what befell us, and some solace has been found in the fact the children attend a fabulous school with some of the best facilities for Livia in the EU. We are also lucky to have a great garden with superb nature, especially the wonderful birds.

But we have still been processing what happened in that fateful summer that forced us to leave behind everything we had built up. That’s why this trip was such a necessity: a place of familiarity, where so much of my life has been written, and where I have found the energy to pick myself up and get back on my own two feet. We all needed it this time, though.

It has changed since we were last here in January 2017: it is a more cynical, impersonal and expensive place. Like all great European cities, it now costs a prohibitive amount of money to visit many of the attractions or go out to eat and drink.

In spite of that, I was incredibly relieved to find out that all three children loved my spiritual home too. In the nine days we spent in the city, we visited the transport section of the National Technical Museum, the prehistory section at the National Museum, the Museum of Illusions, and Prague Castle (twice), we watched the figurines perform their haunting dance on the centuries-old astronomical clock in the Old Town Square, we took three good, slow walks across Charles Bridge, we had an adventure in the Valdštejn Palace Gardens with some peacocks, and we found ourselves in numerous playgrounds across the city, a sure sign that everything is fine.

Dainoris pores over one of the models of the castle in its earlier development

Milda tackles a goulash

I was highly encouraged when Dainoris asked to go for the second time to Prague castle, specifically to see the exhibition on its history. I took him there myself one very hot morning and he asked a lot of pertinent questions. He was indeed thrilled to see some real skeletons, but it was the different models of the castle over the years that really caught his attention. The first one showed the landscape of the area before the castle was there, and why it was a good place to build one. The last model showed even the houses in the neighbourhood known these days as Dejvice.

We also visited a lot of restaurants where I was able to introduce them to what I call “happy food”. Goulash and dumplings, roast beef tenderloin in a creamy root vegetable sauce known as “svíčková na smĕtanĕ”, deep fried Hermelín cheese, fruit dumplings with cream and melted butter, honey layer cake known as “medovník”, breaded and fried Hermelín cheese similar to Brie, and a wide range of sausages from the humble “utopenec” to the grilled staple, “klobása”. But being in an international city, it was important to go to a few places we wouldn’t normally have access to; so we indulged ourselves with a Serbian “pljeskavica”, an exquisite salmorejo Cordobés (my favourite cold soup), Belgian stoofvlees, and some curries, pastas and pizzas. Yes, Prague is now a proper gastronomic hub.

During the week, the temperature rose to truly outrageous levels, following the rest of the continent. Yellowing grass in parks, wilting trees and shrubs, people cowering from the penetrating sun in cafés, in shopping centres, under awnings, parasols and tree branches. Night times were often hives of activity, especially among the more active. Letná park was full of people drinking, playing music and lounging around until well after midnight. I was one of them, as I was sweating like a pizza chef at a mafia kid’s birthday party. One night, I just walked and walked and walked until three in the morning, savouring the cooler air and losing copious excess weight that I had accumulated in Ireland over the last 12 months.

Livia and Dainoris roast on the Čechův most

We ate pizza too

On Wednesday 29 July, we met Giel and his partner at the embankment in Smíchov, one of Prague’s proper inner suburbs, comparable to Bermondsey in London or Nanterre in Paris. They live further out, but it is their side of town, and they knew a decent place to eat. Milda was quite daunted about meeting her godfather, although she wanted to sit next to him in the restaurant. Dainoris has been asking about seeing his godfather ever since, so I’m putting him on standby!

Making memories on Charles Bridge at sunset

One of the most appealing aspects of Czech culture is their ability to produce outstanding fruit drinks, lemonades and sparkling cordials. The engine for this has been the beer manufacturers: realising that many, many younger people (not only) are abandoning the pursuit of drinking alcohol, the breweries set about transforming the non-alcoholic beer market by creating a host of imaginative canned fruit drinks.

Velkopopovický Kozel is an extraordinarily good Pilsner beer, but to engage new drinkers, they have recently brought a wide range of excellent fruit beers to the thriving Czech market. Drinkers can try their blackcurrant and cherry, apricot and lemon balm, or lemon and elderflower drinks. Svijany, another brewery, has an offshoot called Svijanela, making orange, grape, lemon, raspberry, pineapple and mango lemonades. These are just two of the vast number of breweries currently pivoting to this, and Milda, Dainoris and I have been living the dream.

Going for a ride at the Czech Technical Museum

These excellent commercial offerings have also prompted independent restaurants to offer their own homemade lemonades. One of the most spectacular ones that can be found in Czechia is the draught raspberry lemonade, packed with real fruit, and perfect for a hot summer’s day. Supermarkets have whole aisles full of these drinks. Where is Spain with this? And the UK? Not to mention France? The range of fruit drinks on offer in those countries is pitiful. After this trip, two of the children and I will have severe withdrawal symptoms. Maybe I should open rural Ireland’s first non-alcoholic pub…

Standing under the skeleton of a blue whale

Milda in the Old Town Square
near the spot where I accepted
a job in Brussels in 2001

The marvellous upside to having access to such delectable drinks and excellent places full of atmosphere in which to enjoy them is we don’t feel the rush to finish up and leave so quickly. Except when Livia gets a tad overwhelmed, which has made it problematic trying to balance our needs with hers, and often the others can get quite upset with her. She also has a new tendency of speaking to anyone with a baby or a cute dog, so we have had to make sure she is still with us when we are walking somewhere. On that subject, she absolutely hates walking far – when I say far, I mean more than a few minutes.

So our week in Prague was a huge success, and we shall not again wait almost a decade before returning.

We now head to the mountains of northern Bohemia on the border with Poland.