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They Fry Sperm in Trebon

On the main square in the Czech town of Trebon, the bank has a statue of a man holding a big fish over its door. The city is all about fish — farmed here in manmade lakes for centuries.

Another statue honors the town’s 15th-century megalomaniac lake-building hero, Jakub Krcín (now considered a “hero” since his medieval lakes absorbed enough water to save Trebon from the 2002 flood that devastated Prague).

At dinner, my beer glass says, “Bohemia Regent anno 1379.” It occurs to me that I’m consuming exactly what people have been eating and drinking in Trebon for over 600 years: fish from the reservoir just outside the gate and the local brew. And they are good at fish.

Just like the French have words distinguishing triple the kinds of kisses we have in English (can a French-speaker help send in a few examples, please?), the Czechs of Trebon cook fish with both passion and variety.

For maximum experience, we ordered all the appetizers on the menu tapas-style (a good trick when trying to eat your way through another culture): “soused” (must mean “pickled”) herring, fried loach, “stuffed carp willet sailor fashion,” cod liver, pike caviar, and something my Czech friend and guide Honza translated as “fried carp sperm.”

I said, “You can’t fry sperm.” And everyone at my table insisted that, while female fish have a whole trough full of eggs (caviar), the males have a trough full of the male counterpart — and it’s cookable. Fried carp sperm tasted like fried oyster…same texture, too.

For my main course, I had to try the rest of the carp. I thought carp just swam in hotel fountains. It was the cheapest fish for good reason — bottom-end…muddy weed-eater…mucky mucky carp.

Trebon’s other claim to fame is its spa, where people come from near and far to soak in peat. Envisioning the elegance of Germany’s Baden-Baden, I had to give it a whirl. Besides, I thought it would make good TV. Stepping into the huge institution, we checked in. Immersed in a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestambiance, we were ushered through.

My attendant didn’t really understand why I had an entourage (local guide/translator, producer, and cameraman). She just treated my like some deaf-mute she was assigned to bathe and massage. She pointed to room number 8. I stepped in to see a huge naked lady climbing into a stainless-steel tub. She must have meant number 9.

Number 9 was a tiny shared cubicle — someone else’s clothes already hung there — which led to a big steel tub. (I never saw my cubicle mate.) She mimed to take off everything. I kept my military-green swim suit on (afraid of a prankish combination of high-definition footage, my producer Simon’s sense of humor, and YouTube). She snarled.

Camera work is slow. She was anxious. The peat muck only flows at the top of the hour. I climbed into my stainless-steel tub, she pulled a plug, and I quickly disappeared under a rising sea of dark-brown peat broth (like a gurgling sawdust soup).

Then, my tub was full and all was silent. My ten toes looked cute poking out of the hot brown and glassy-still sea. She kept acting like I would overdose if I stayed in too long. But we filmed our sequence (one of the stupidest-looking show opens we’ve ever done — I looked like a naked Al Jolson).

Finally we were done shooting. Standing in the tub, I showered off the sludge. She ushered me into the massage room and laid me face-down. It was like a nurse’s office with a pile of dirty sheets stacked in the corner. Honza translated it in our guidebook as “hand massage.” That sounded redundant at best…vaguely kinky at worst. Honza said that’s literally what massages are called in Czech (rucni masaz).

We just wanted to film my shoulders. But she insisted on ignoring the camera’s needs and giving me a hand massage from my shoulder to just about where I didn’t want the camera to go. When the crew had what they needed, they left. I tried to go, too, but she wouldn’t let me. She had to complete the massage that every patient at the Trebon spa is entitled to. (Most people at the spa were there at their doctor’s orders, with expenses covered by insurance.)

I walked out with a mucky massage cream causing my shirt to stick to me, and without a clue what soaking in that peat soup was supposed to accomplish.

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Yellow Lampposts and Czech Flypaper

The honey-colored flypaper spirals down from a thumbtack, anchored in midair by its now-empty canister. Speckled with lifeless flies, it swings each time the violin bow pokes it.

It’s very tight quarters as the string quartet plays everything from Bach and Smetana to Czech folk favorites and 1930s anti-fascism blues. The string bass player grooves like a white Satchmo — his bow sliding in and out between diners under the table. My sweater is just in the way.

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The bandleader plays a 100-year-old black wood flute. During a break, I finger its mouthpiece — worn like an ancient marble relic by countless nights of music-making. The flautist sports a big bushy moustache just like the emperor — Franz Josef — who looks down from a yellowed poster.

Above the quartet is a high window. Teenage heads bob into sight — straining and craning on tiptoes to look in. Each time a song ends, beers giggle golden on rough wood tables as the roaring crowd claps and cheers for more. As the night wears on, there are fewer tourists clicking photos and more locals singing along. As the quartet sways together like seaweed in a nostalgic musical tide, it occurs to me that in little towns all over the world, no-name bands are causing strangers to smile…and drink more beer.

Crossing the Czech border, I stow my love of wine away, and become a beer-lover. Here, the beer hits your table like a glass of water does in the States. On my early trips — before I learned Czech beer is more powerful than the beer your father drank — I used to have a big beer at lunch and spend the rest of the day wobbly…sightseeing on what I called “Czech knees.” Now, when in the Czech Republic, I resist a momentum-killing beer at lunch and finish each day with a fresh draft beer (tonight’s is still trying to kill my momentum as I type).

Honza, the co-author of my Prague guidebook and my sidekick this week as we film a TV show on “The Czech Republic Beyond Prague,” told our camera, “These days, with the EU opening things up, so many Poles and Hungarians are going west to France and Germany to get jobs. But not the Czechs. We can’t find good enough beer anywhere but here. This beer keeps us glued to these bar chairs.”

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Back in my hotel, I climb to my attic room — careful not to bean myself on a medieval wooden beam. (I feel like I’m sleeping in a playground structure built before the age of steel piping.) I lean out my tiny dormer window, the sound of the boisterous bar small in the distance.

I am so happy for the freedom, peace, and prosperity countries like this are enjoying. The new, sturdy roof tiles around me are slick with a light rain. The street, wet and shiny, is as clean as a model-railroad town. Cars, while not expensive, are new and parked tidy as a jukebox. The scene is lit by cheap yellow lampposts. After forty bleak years of communism, the lampposts seem to be intentionally cheery…like a fashion accent decorating the line of pastel facades that arcs out of sight.

In small Czech towns, the facades are humble. Three centuries ago, each was given an individual personality — with far more variety and fun designed into them than even the famous gables of Amsterdam. And today — after a grime-filled 20th century — they sport new paint jobs: A mellow rainbow of simple solid pastels, with lines that accent the individuality of each facade. And behind each facade lives a family.

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Warping European Reality

Many TV producers joke that their work is all about “warping reality.” I’m working really hard to show the truth. But it occurs to me that I, too, am warping reality. I have an image of Europe that I want to share. When I learn that my wishful thinking is not the truth, it is a challenge for me to accept the new reality.

I often have a script-driven agenda: I wanted to show “typically Welsh” people in Cardiff, but could only find immigrants on the street. I wanted to show traffic that “stayed in its lanes like rocks in an avalanche” in Rome, but found only polite and law-abiding traffic. I wanted to show tough alpine peasant stock in Liechtenstein, and found only kids that looked like Americans, Swiss people on holidays, and Croatians serving them in the restaurants.

In producing our show, we don’t shoot ugly things. We want to make Europe “easy on the eyes.” (I’ve talked my producer, Simon, into showing only two toilets in 70 episodes.) Whether as a tourist, guidebook writer, or TV producer — and whether in Paris or Bergen or Prague — I acknowledge only the historic core of a city…about 5 percent of it. We just made Zürich, Luzern, and Bern look great, showing only the historic core. In doing so, we ignored 95 percent…and contributed to the tunnel-vision of prospective visitors to these cities.

Europeans cities have forests of cranes, lots of scaffolding, and plenty of graffiti. But the images we bring home — whether for our TV episodes or for your photo scrapbooks — crop that out. Cameras roll when good-looking people walk by, when slick cars roll past, and when sunshine makes colors “pop.” Someone with a huge mole or a terrible skin problem is too distracting to have talk to the camera — even if they have something important to say.

Europe is full of punks, beggars, Bolivian music troupes, and immigrants violating preconceived ideas of who will draw your beer. You won’t see them on the show. We found the perfect spot on a bridge to film an “on camera” (when I talk to the camera), but had to disguise the “F**k Bush” slogan spray-painted on the wall behind me.

I want to show a Europe untainted by corporate logos. It’s just reflex to shoot around the now omnipresent Starbucks, McDonalds, and café umbrellas advertising Coke. My camera strap has a bold yellow “Nikon” on it — which is felt-penned out and flipped upside down when filming. I don’t even show my own guidebooks in our TV shows. (I get my little “ad” at the end, but just try to find any “product placement.”)

The tourist board guides who help us have an agenda, too. In Liechtenstein, they assumed we’d shoot the casino and a falconry exhibition and not talk about the Prince, who threatened to abandon his country if he didn’t get more political power. (We compromised and did none of these.) In Bern, they could get us into their parliament building, but not the needle-distribution desk at the heroin maintenance center. (We did both.)

My earlier producers had an agenda, too: film “people of color” traveling whenever possible to imply more diversity among European travelers, and avoid showing people smoking. Those two concerns aren’t even on my radar.

But I jump at the chance to illustrate a society that is committed to public transit and pedestrian zones. I enjoy showing people biking without wearing helmets (as Europeans do) as a kind of “take that” to a society that is so diligent about that issue while so enamored with guns. I also like to show the responsible consumption of beer and wine in the presence of children — because I think a social scene that is not segregated by generation is a good thing.

Any media warps reality. Travel media generally conditions you to find the Europe of your dreams. My shows — if I’m honest — show you the Europe of my dreams. I know how easy it is to warp reality in travel media. Consequently, I know that other media, as well, can also cause me to loose track of just what’s a window and what’s a funhouse mirror.

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Little, Little Liechtenstein

“Two centuries ago, there were dozens of independent states in German-speaking Europe. Today, there are only four: Germany, Austria, Switzerland…and Liechtenstein.” That’s how I start the bit on Liechtenstein in our “Little Europe” episode.

I love the way tiny countries are defined so clearly by geography. Liechtenstein is a bowl in the mountains — high ridges on the east, milky baby Rhine River still giddy from its tumble out of the Alps running south to north on its west, and a stout and classic castle guarding the entry to the valley on the south. About the size of Manhattan, it’s truly landlocked, with no seaport and no airport.

We had a day to shoot it, and a guide to make sure we got it right. The good news — it was gloriously sunny. The bad news — it was Sunday, and the streets were dead. We drove around looking for a few of the 35,000 people with Liechtenstein passports, and found little more than empty villages.

The prince was in the news recently for threatening to actually abandon his principality if his citizens didn’t give him more political power. Liechtensteiners, who seem pretty easygoing about these things (women didn’t claim the right to vote until 1984), accepted his demands. Now, apparently, Prince Liechtenstein has more real authority than any other royal in Europe. (Though ruling a country the size of Manhattan, with the population of Yankee Stadium on an off day, doesn’t exactly give you a lot of power.)

The prince’s palace — not open to the public — overlooks his domain from atop a cliff. We knocked on the door, and the guard looked at me and my film crew like we were nuts.

I ended the segment at the literal top of the country, saying, “Like Switzerland, a big part of the principality’s modern economy is tourism and sports — hosting visitors enjoying its dramatic natural beauty. Ski lifts, busy both winter and summer, take nature-lovers to the dizzying ridge that serves as the border with Austria. Even in little, little Liechtenstein…the views are big, and the hiking possibilities are endless.”

Crossing the Rhine back into Switzerland, we snooped around to find the perfect vantage point from which to film a wide shot showing the entire country. Liechtenstein all faces west. The entire country is in shade late into the morning. And each evening it’s all bathed in the rich light of the setting sun. When our cameraman took the big camera off the tripod, our Little Europe show was in the can.

Over the last two years, we dropped into San Marino, the Vatican, Monaco, Andorra, and now Liechtenstein. In just over a year, the show will air on PBS. As we zipped back to Zürich — just an hour away on the autobahn — I pondered just how candid I want to be about the visit-worthiness of three of these little lands.

(By the way, in response to comments that I seem down on Switzerland: I really like Switzerland — from the lakefront promenades of its elegant cities to the scalps of its Alps.)

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Scaloppini or Kalbsschnitzel?

There are two kinds of Swiss restaurants — with and without cooked cheese. The Swiss eat out at a “cooked cheese restaurant” because they don’t want to stink up their house with the smell. But, when eating out, the Swiss carefully avoid a “cooked cheese restaurant” if they are not having fondue or raclette. Also, only tourists eat fondue in summer. I just saw the sorriest sight in all of Luzern: a fondue restaurant in August serving two lonely tourists.

Being just over the border from France and Italy, the Swiss seem to have an inferiority complex about the quality of their restaurants. My Swiss friend brags, “In western Switzerland, our restaurants have the most Michelin stars per kilometer.” I say, “Perhaps that’s because Michelin hides its money here.” My Swiss friend says, “Let’s talk about the weather.”

At an Italian restaurant in Luzern the menu listed everything in Italian and German. The Italian sounded more appetizing than the German to me: I was all set for scaloppini…until I read the German name (Kalbsschnitzel),and went with something else.

I asked the waitress to translate “Autruche”on the menu. She said, “It’s the one that puts its head in the sand.” She was German, from Berlin. I asked how she liked working in Switzerland. She said, “Good, except we get only four weeks vacation here. In Germany, workers all get at least six.”

I bought six liters of water for the crew at supermarket for the cost of three half-liter bottles at a convenience store. Convenience stores all over Europe are convenient…but supermarkets are a far better value.

Driving out of Beaune, in Burgundy, we came to a blight of roadside billboards and it occurred to me: Europe is generally free from highway billboards.

Driving through the Swiss countryside hoping for good weather tomorrow for filming, we notice fields blanketed in fresh-cut hay. The farmers don’t cut hay unless they figure the weather will stay dry. Love to see that cut hay. We’ve been blessed with perfect weather for the production of two TV shows in a row.