This time I will visit Zuza together with Franziska, so it promises to be a nice weekend filled with tourist attractions, combined with a nice doze of German and Czech language. Of course I’ll go and find the typical Absinth spoon which I need to perform the perfect Absinth drinking ritual.

This is the official (Czech) Absinth ritual:
· Fill up a very small glass with 1/4 of Absinth.
· Place a special teaspoon on top of the glass, and place a little cube of sugar on top of the teaspoon.
· Poor 1/4 of Absinth over the sugar cube that is hanging above the Absinth.
· Light the sugar cube and let it burn for a while (like a minute).
· When the sugar cube starts to turn to caramel extinguish the fire and stir the sugar through the Absinth.
· Add some ice cold water to the Absinth and it is ready to drink. Enjoy!

To illustrate:
The spoon with the sugar is on top of the glass. After poring some absinth over it you simply burn the sugar… wait a little and that stir everything together. That’s it. Be careful though… there is a rumor that says you might get drunk very fast.

Nazdravje! Na zdraví!

Tomorrow or this weekend I’ll give my culinary abilities a nice test. I already got all the ingredients and all the equipment. All I need to do is make the connections and hopefully a delicious cake will be the result. With this cake I should probably invite my parents and brother to come by and visit, so that all future criticism about lacking cookies will be ended.

Okay, this is the recipe:

Honey Cake I

You need:
· 2 honey spoons
· 2 milk spoons
· 1 egg
· 15 dkg powdered sugar
· 5 dkg butter
· 1 soda bicarbona tea-spoon

Do:
· Mix everything together.
(My experience is that it is easier to mix everything this way – You lay a pot over another one with boiling water and mix everything in the upper one.)
· Add 50 dkg four (we call that sort of flour ‘smooth’ but I don’t know if you have different sorts of flour).
· Make a dough.
· Roll the dough with a rolling pin into 4 flat pancakes.
· Lay a baking paper onto a baking sheet and lay a pancake on a baking sheet and bake it.
· Pile all baked pancakes and ‘glue’ them together with creme (butter, powdered sugar, flour, milk)

Honey Cake II

You need:
· 350g smooth flour
· 1 egg
· 100g sugar
· 50g butter
· 2 honey spoons
· A little bit of cinnamon
· 1 soda bicarbona tea-spoon
· 1 water spoon

Do:
· Whip everything , except flour, together in a pot on a oven.
· Add flour and make a dough.
· Greese a baking tray and dust it with a little bit of flour.
· Put dough on a baking tray and make it flat with your hands.
· Bake it.
· Spread the cold pancake with a creme and leave it for a next day.
· Cut it into stripes and pile it one on another.
· Spread the surface with creme and sprinkle with chopped nuts.

How to make creme?

You need:
· 3/4 l milk
· 200g sugar
· 1 package vanilla sugar (Do you have anything like this? If not, just skip it)
· 8 flour spoons
· 1 vanilla pudding spoon
· 2 yolks
· 250g butter
· Rum (a little bit) :-))

Do:
· Mix 1/4 l milk, flour, yolks and vanilla pudding.
· Cook 1/2 l milk with sugar.
· Add mixture ad a) to hot milk ad b) and cook till it’s thick.
· Let it cool down a little bit and add butter, rum and whip it all

Breakfast in the Czech republic was normally a sandwich with a beer and a shot of liquor. Sometimes breakfast was just some liquor made from berries, mixed with hot water. Afterwards the touristic part of the day started. My guide Zuza showed me various parts of the beautiful Prague. We started out viewing big parts of the city during the day and visiting a lot of bars during the evening. As the week progressed the time we spend in bars drinking and eating also increased quite a lot.

The result was a very nice week. Prague is a great city that I will have to visit again soon

I just went to some awesome club, Palaca Acropolis in the Zizkov neighborhood (of course in Prague), and the stage in this club was full of people partying.

They celebrated carnival with close to all musical instruments you can think of, and the result was very nice. It resembled a combination of the Blues Brothers and Vive la Fete, with the only difference that the music was played a lot faster : -p

I had planned to go by train, but the costs are higher then the airplane, and it needs to be arranged weeks in advance. Going by plane is a lot of hassle booking everything last minute, so I think I’ll try my luck and go by car.

I am very curious… after some research I found out Prague is a beautiful historic city and I’ll be visiting the perfect guide that live in the middle of it all. Still I’m going to buy a tourist guide, together with a bottle of berry brandy and a packet of cookies to be well prepared.

I discovered I have a deep respect for the Czech way of life.Every day around one Zuzana proposed to start drinking some beer, quickly moving onwards to stronger liquors. After I told her I did not like becherovka, I was told I just licked it, and should drink some more. Strange, because I distinctly noted my throat burning. I got the advice to practice a lot more drinking beer and alcohol to be prepared to visit Prague.