Your Feet Go Here By Darren Baker

česky

Jack Kerouac once described a scene in which he had wrapped himself around a bar toilet after drinking 60 beers. It seems like a lot of beer to consume, but in the States, beer is generally weaker in taste and alcohol. By Czech standards, it's safer to say that Kerouac had probably drunk only 20 beers. As for wrapping himself around the bar toilet, the standards are probably the same in both countries.

Czech beer is good, no doubt about it. My first taste went down in a pub, a village pub, the kind with high ceilings, lots of windows and not a breath of fresh air inside. The bartender was busy pouring beer into one glass after another, but only in spurts because the foam was taking so long to settle. Finally the waitress arrived and presented me with a glass of wheat-colored beer topped off with an incredibly thick head of foam. I was a little unnerved about having to tip my glass and head so far back just to get at the beer. It would be more than a little embarrassing to fall back onto the floor without a drop of alcohol in my blood.

In any case, the beer was definitely worth the wait and risk. Smooth, delightful, not too bitter or sweet. It should have been obvious from the way I swilled that first taste that I was quite impressed with it. But I soon discovered that the measure of a good beer in this country is done in gulps, not sips. While the other glasses at my table were already half empty after the toast, mine looked like it could've passed for a glass that had left the bar one spurt too early.

Excellent as the beer is, the pub didn't apply the same level of technology towards cleaning the bathroom. It smelled so utterly horrible that I had to dash out, take a deep breath and dive back in. It proved to be one of the most nerve-wracking moments of my life; a race between my kidneys and lungs while thoughts of that tasty beer struggled against images of Kerouac passed out on the toilet.

But at least this joint had a toilet. Once a group of students on a trip to Moscow were put up in a dormitory that had no toilet at all, only a hole in the floor. Actually two holes, one for boys and one for girls. If you happened to get confused and didn't know if you were standing over the right hole, all you had to do was look down at the two footprints outlined in front of the hole. If the feet were facing the hole, that one was for boys, if they facing away, then it was for girls. Say what you like, but you just don't get more logical than that.