Litovel

Litovel is Olomouc slang for beer. When you exit Olomouc’s train station, the Sigma Hotel is across the intersection from you. Maybe the 40 foot (13m) picture of a Litovel bottle on the side of the building would mean that maybe it was larger than life. I never did well picking the most effective marketing campaigns for the masses. In Prague, almost any kind of Czech beer can be purchased somewhere in town, except Litovel. I have searched high and low, it seems there is a conspiracy against Olomouc beer in Prague. I found it once in Julius Meinl on Vaclavak.

If there is a mid-week hankering for Jihlavan or even “Cerny Brouck”, Black Beetle, they are easy to come by in a pinch. You would probably sell your soul for a crate of Litovel before you found it in Prague. There are two important things to know when courting a Czech woman, her dog and her beer. The dog might be a cat, but probably not. Her beer well, that is almost as important as her mom’s need for a new liver. Not to imply, that Czechs drink a lot, but they drink more beer than anyone else. I joke that the trams will stop for a beer truck before a pohotovost, ambulance. Civil values are important to keep in any civil society.

It is nearly impossible not to see a family with exactly two children. Not so hard to imagine, but the spooky thing is that they are almost always a boy and a girl. Czech boys have skills. The family will often decide on a single beer of the house, but it is not uncommon to see the woman carrying two different cases of beer home.

A beautiful thing is the Czech women’s utter ignorance or denial of women’s liberation. You never hear any of the picky complaints, and never ever an utterance of the phrase, “…because I am the girl!” A Czech girl on the other hand, is different. She will carry a baby in one arm, pushing the carriage filled with groceries with a crate of beer in her free fingers walking across the cobble stones in spike heels while her male companion lazily eats french fries. She probably cleans the house meticulously and has a full-time job, as the great Yakov Smirnov once said, “What a country!”

After all of that, the least you can do is try to find out which store has her favorite beer. It would be ungentlemanly if you do not point it out to her, so she knows to stop on the way home.