Still, I have the sense that the Czechs now face a Velvet Occupation, the seductive onslaught of consumerism and its trappings that rush in to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. But they don't seem worried. They behave with extraordinary courtesy and tolerance towards the tourists who swarm through the Old City, stopping to stare perplexedly at maps, hoping scrutiny will reveal some pattern to this totally unplanned, illogical warren of short, twisting streets. Should they worry? Sometimes I worry for them; at other times, I find that impulse in myself unacceptably patronizing. After all, bohemianism gets its very name from a section of this country.
Two nights after I arrive, my companion -- who bussed in from Sweden the same day -- and I walk a mere three blocks off the main drag of the tourist trade -- Karlovy Street -- to U Vejvodu, a quiet old pub and restaurant, where we feast on roast duck, Bohemian dumplings and sauerkraut, and wash them down with two huge draft beers, for 350 Kc. -- about $16.
From there we wind our way across town to a theater where we pay $3 each for front row seats at the Divadlo Komedie, where the Black Box Theater Company, an English-language troupe established here in 1991, has mounted a solid, credible performance of two "Vanek" plays, one by Vaclav Havel, the other by Pavel Kohout, both directed by Nancy Bishop.
