Cold Sunshine

Here is a beautiful sight - a busy worker at a klobasa stand, the Czech's mighty response to the pitiful American hot dog. These things are large and delicious, and I never, ever want to know what's in them. You can choose to eat them in a soft bun, or plain on a paper plate, with a slice of chleba (bread) to sop up the grease and mustard.

Klobasa stands are ubiquitous - they dot the landscape like their hot dog cart counterparts in New York. There's no sense in choosing one over another for reasons of flavor - they all taste the same, all kept in the same steam tables, served with the same pale mustard and optional pile of pickled cabbage.

Eating a klobasa is a humbling experience - they're served on flat paper plates with no lip to curb the pool of mustard. Some variants are served with buns, German or American style, but the traditional Czech version is a flat piece of rye bread roughly the same texture as the plate. Biting into a klobasa is an invitation to squirt grease on your good white shirt, drip mustard on your tie. It's possible that you'll end up with caraway seeds stuck between your teeth. It somehow contains two main ingredients but can require three hands. Whether you're an executive in a nearby office building, or a homeless person on a bench, the experience is the same - you can't look cool while eating klobasa.

And of course, it isn't complete without a cup of beer. Pilsner, preferably - the Czech favorite. You need something light to cut through all that grease and mustard. Since all of your hands are occupied with the meal itself, the beer will sit next to you on the bench, or balanced precariously on a fence post until you can spare a few fingers to snatch it. It will taste, on a good day, like cold sunshine.

You will drink your public beer from a plastic cup in the middle of the Czech equivalent of Times Square, eat your messy sausage, and lick the mustard from your fingers as though this is an entirely dignified thing to do. Because it is - because every Czech citizen understands the need for a hit of grease and a bit of a buzz in the middle of the day.

You will return to the United States and you will scowl at the hot dog carts: the sausage is too thin, and the buns aren't stale enough, and of course, no one will offer you a plastic cup of beer. You will glance around at the steady rush of the sidewalk, how no one stops. It's easy to eat a hot dog and drink a soda with only two hands. It doesn't demand pause, the effort of finding somewhere to have your lunch.

This, you think, is the fundamental difference in the street meat experience. People hurry places in Prague, sure. But they take their lunch like they're entitled to it. Like it's owed to them, an exchange for the demands of life. Americans eat like it's an apology to their bosses. Like there is no room to balance anything: work and life. A beer on a fencepost.

These observations will settle in your jaw with a certain degree of borrowed Czech resentment. For a time, you'll try to cling to the practice. You'll find a small corner park in which to eat your hot dog, stubbornly outside, even in the hottest part of the summer, but the pace of American life will seep back into your feet. One day, you'll realize you've finished eating before you reach your bench, and think I'm home, with a prickly yellow sadness.

You don't miss Prague. But sometimes, when the sky is blue, and the wind cuts cold, and the sun finds its way through the gaps between the buildings, you will suddenly, inexplicably, find yourself longing for it. You'll go to the bodega and search the cooler for a much different beer than the ones you drink now. Something thin, bitter, and light.