The pubs opened last week. Or maybe the week before that, I don’t know.
I’m not the first person to notice how our lockdown days are nearly indistinguishable, each one tumbling into the next, so that Friday often feels like Monday, Tuesday, or Sunday. Who even knows what time it is? We’re all living through a widespread state of atemporality that was once enjoyed only by the ultra-rich and junkies.
That’s partly why I’m not quite sure when—or if—the pubs reopened here in Prague. I live in the capital of the country that drinks the most beer per person every single year, and in normal times our hospody—aka pubs or taverns—are the always-beating hearts that keep our favorite liquids flowing.
Broadly speaking, Czech beer is draft beer. The reason Czechs drink so much of it is because we drink it on draft, though that has been changing slightly: as enjoying bottles and cans at home has become more common over the past couple of decades, our per-capita numbers have been decreasing slightly. This should come as a surprise to no one. A century and a half ago, Belgium drank far more beer than it does now, even higher than the figures among Czechs today. What changed? Belgium switched to bottles.
But while other countries have embraced packaged beer, the Czechs still predominantly prefer draft Lager—and drinking socially. There’s a famous quote about hospody from former Czech president Václav Havel, who loved his own time in pubs: “I suppose that drinking beer in pubs has a good influence on the behavior of Czech society, because beer contains less alcohol than, for example, wine, vodka or whiskey, and therefore people’s political chat in pubs is less crazy.”
Obviously, that was before the pandemic. The Czech lockdown happened fast, far faster than anywhere in the U.S., before there was even a single death from the virus in the country. After the government announced the closure of schools on March 10, Czech pubs and restaurants were given restricted hours for a few days before being shuttered completely from 6 a.m. on March 14. The Golden Tiger, where President Havel took President Clinton in 1994? Closed. My tiny local? Closed. The borders were also closed, which means there are no tourists. All the hotels were closed, as well as all the cafés, shops, museums, theaters, and castles. For over two months, all you could really do was buy groceries, get medicine, or go to the hospital.
And it worked. Thanks to the early lockdown and a universal requirement to wear masks, our infections dropped. We did so well—both in terms of slowing the spread of the virus and treating the ill—that we offered to take in patients from harder-hit countries like France (though ultimately they ended up not coming). As I write this, the Czech Republic has a coronavirus-deaths-per-million rate of just 30. At the time of writing, the U.S. is at 333. The U.K. has an ignominious 588. Spain is at 580.
The early closure here certainly saved lives, but it also hit the Czech economy hard, especially pubs and breweries. As a result, it seemed like every week brought some new program designed to help them. First—if I’m remembering rightly; the weeks really blend together—there was Zachraň Pivo, or Rescue Beer, which created a map of 328 small breweries across the country that were selling directly to consumers. Then there was Zachraň Hospodu, or Rescue the Pub, which did something similar, selling vouchers for 2,511 Czech pubs. The defunct craft beer delivery service Peevo, which crapped out last year, rose from the grave during quarantine, delivering beer from Pivovar Kamenice and Andělský Pivovar, among other small brewers. The most recent move comes from Pavel Borowiec, the editor of the magazine Pivo, Bier & Ale, who sent an email a couple of weeks ago promoting a new campaign to support breweries, Pro Pivo? Do Pivovaru! I’m sure there will be another before long.
But just like almost everywhere else, there’s been pressure to open things up and get back to normal. And with the numbers of new infections now low and dropping, the government agreed four weeks ago—I’m almost sure that was when it happened—to allow pubs and restaurants to reopen outdoor seating, with a number of limitations in terms of customer spacing and sanitation. And on May 25, whenever that was, pubs and restaurants reopened their interiors to customers.
Which is wonderful to imagine, of course: I love the pubs here, as well as the cafés, bars, and restaurants. But I still don’t think going out for beer is right for me, most obviously because there’s still no vaccine for this virus—not here, not anywhere. A recent, large-scale study indicates we’re a long way from herd immunity as well, given our estimated infection rate of just over 0.4% of the Czech population. Everyone knows that many carriers of the virus are asymptomatic, while we’re also starting to learn that the virus can be spread by talking. It doesn’t really make you want to be in an enclosed space where people are laughing, telling stories, and shouting “na zdraví!”
My guess is that there will probably be an increase in cases now that things have reopened here in the Czech Republic, just as we’ve already seen in South Korea and Germany. If that happens, our beloved pubs might have to close again. And then we’ll do this strange dance again, and again after that. The same will happen elsewhere, probably more than once.
Meanwhile, the days blur together and we grow ever more used to doing our drinking at home.
