"Präger Frühlung" or simply "Czech" has always been a tavern with its own language. Self-loving modesty, a bit of kitsch, tanks, sparrows, lucid paintings and statues bordering on the bizarre. A raw historical blast that lives in the present moment. Photography is prohibited, as are political discussions, until George arrives. He usually starts from '91, combs through a lot of "black" dates and ends up far away. Then another beer, cigarette or joint when Vincent winks.
Rudiger, last name Czech, a German from West Berlin, is there every day, just to be. To show the world that without hidden intentions it makes sense to come in a blue shirt and office pants at 5 pm when "Čech" opens the door. He goes to Prague a couple of times a year to warm his soul, and after the trip he goes to "Čech" for a beer. He has been working as a chat at Deutsche Bahn for 35 years, but says he only visits the office and can't wait for 5 p.m. He doesn't talk much, is silent, listens and enjoys Urkel. Rudi is one of the Germans who went to the Yugoslav Embassy in Berlin in March 1999 to make a statement that, as a German, it does not concern him what the German state is doing with the FRY. It seems that he loves Tito more than our grandfathers, and he is ready to contradict without any bitterness when someone touches on Tito's communist "legacy" in Post-Yugoslavia. Once my friend got into a polemic with him about the leader who ruled Serbia and SR Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Rudika subtly dodged, pulled back and said what he had in three sentences. When I went to the toilet, he called out to me: "He'll figure it out, he's still young."
One ninety-plus German comes every evening for a small black beer. He says that the Germans in Pankov are all "pointy", with upturned noses, except for "Czechs". He had a friend who was held captive by both the Russians and the Americans. As he slowly sips his beer, stories about the past century come out of him naturally, as if he were recounting yesterday. The pub seems like a place where we all feel that it is possible to wage an equal struggle with our own nature, just as the gentleman in his old age at "Czech" seems to be able to free himself from the self-critical restraints that he identifies with his own people, and whom he himself cannot bear.
"Czech" was planted in the Berlin municipality of Pankov, whose root word comes from the Old Slavic word "pak". It is related to the swampy area, and it can also mean "bud". The owner is a former hockey player, Czech by origin, although more Czechoslovak. He drinks wine and beer as he sits at the bar and anxiously waits for his order. He says that the doctor recommended him to mix wine and beer. And if the doctor really did it, it's all down to the language, so you can trust him in what he says. There are more participants in the league, as well as played games. The smell of spilled drops of beer sufficiently permeated every pore of the interior. The impression that there is no smoking inside is almost negligible. It is enough to take a bite, order a beer and be silent. A ball of tongue will unravel its threads. The price of beer is the same since covid. Svijani for 3 and Pilsner Urkel for 4 euros. They do not want a wider range of offers and prices, thereby neutralizing social differences.
George is also an inventory and a sub-institution in itself. He belongs to the generation from the beginning of the 70s. It can be guessed where he fell on the threshold of adulthood. As he likes to say, "everything was something". Prison, mobilization, betrayals and adultery, four years of the battlefield in Bosnia. Shooting a man from Sešeljev in the leg who bragged about raping and harassing the Muslim population in the surrounding villages. There are some other quirks, which today's medicine and puritan everyday life would put in the category of PTSD, but that is not the language of the "Czech". At the beginning of the 2000s, on a work assignment in Rügen, one evening, stimulated by all kinds of stimuli, he started his Trabant and drove in the middle of the night to the open sea of the Baltic Sea, which at that time was freezing very confidently. He stood alone in the frozen darkness, to think and act out a scene from his life. At one point there was a cracking of the ice. That night, he says, he realized for the first time how big the Baltic is when there is no one to confirm that he is still on land. The Trabant started from somewhere. He was welcomed back with fanfare, but the news appeared in the German papers the next day.
George no longer plays any role in life except at "Czech", where the movie Deer Hunter has been living for a long time. Refinery of substances and alcohol, failed marriages, subversive acts, which in "Czech" gets a special admixture of something alive in all that chaos and paradox that his inventory led by George brings him. When he steps into a bar, he can get into a role because there he doesn't have to justify himself and explain himself. It will happen that one of the residents plays the ukulele and sings cleanly about forests and mountains. In the language of the "Czech" pub, there is no pressure that the truth must be exposed and understood, it exists and people come here to maintain the meaning of their own contradictions without thinking of giving up on it for a single moment.
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