Red Corner: Cool Restaurants Prague

by Neil Woodburn on

I’m a little disappointed.

Today while shopping I ran across a book called Cool Restaurants Prague. Having lived in this fair city, and frequented what I thought were its “cool” restaurants, I was excited to find a book all about them. The only problem was that the book was wrapped in plastic. No worries, I thought. How could someone screw up such an easy concept?

So, I bought the book and just spent the afternoon glancing through it.

Cool Restaurants is actually a series of books published by teNeues Publishing Group in Italy that spotlights “cool” eating establishments in more than 20 cities across the world. The concept is simple: offer a few pages of photographs of the interior of each, showcase one recipe, and then move on to the next restaurant.

The problem with the Prague book is that it is soulless. The majority of photographs lack warmth and charm and fail entirely in, what I assume, is their goal of evoking cozy, architecturally arousing eating establishments that are hip, beautiful, and… cool. Sure, a few of them do indeed look great and I would love to check them out, but the book as a whole fails to motivate, inspire, or even tempt my appetite. I’m not sure about the others in the series, but had the Prague book not been wrapped, I would have had the opportunity to leaf through it and then put it aside.

Of course, I might simply be bitter that nearly every restaurant in the book was new to me. If they are indeed the city’s new crop of “cool” restaurant, I’m no longer in the know. And that’s depressing.

Word for the Travel Wise (02/04/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

Last month a friend of mine tried to call me out on my short Hostel horror film write-up saying how my recommendation of the film actually duped him into seeing it and how horrible it was. First piece of clarification – I did not tell anybody to go waste their 10 bucks on lousy cinema. I was curious to know who out there was willing to do so. Secondly, another reader pointed out a small error I had made in the trivia (which is still actually very interesting) found on IMDB. Originally I had noted that a good portion of the film was shot in Iceland, when what I really meant to say was “the director asked the President of Iceland for an official pardon for making Icelanders look like drunken sex maniacs with the character Oli and any damage the film might cause to the country’s reputation.” Yes, that was rather off from what I wrote the first time, but I think everything is cleared up for the most part. See Hostel at your own risk and the film was shot in the Czech Republic.

Today’s word is a Czech word used in the Czech Republic:

zmrzl – froze to death

While it is certain this ‘zmrzl’ word has something to do with freezing there has been a call for verification on this particular word over at Wikipedia. Some state that it is the past-tense form of the word ‘zmrznout’ which means to freeze to death. Another person noted ‘zmrzl’ simply means (he) froze and doesn’t always result in the death of a person. Either way that’s got to be one tough way to go and considering the amount of confusion from my Hostel post I thought this was a good word to explore today. If you’re not too fond of this one stick to ‘zmrzlina’ or ‘zmrzlinový‘ which both mean ice cream according to this Bohemica.com dictionary.

Bohemica is a great, extensive, online starting point for new students. Their site is free from what I can tell and includes additional sources to helpful books and offline learning. Also, check out Amazon to purchase the Lonely Planet phrasebook and other beginner’s guides.