Hamish Champ: Smiling and smoking in the Czech Republic
Three years ago I undertook my first ever brewery tour when along with members of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers I was shown round the Budweiser Budvar brewery in the Czech Republic.
Last week I was a guest of the nice people from Budvar for a second time and not much has changed about the place in the intervening years.
While times are tough for consumers everywhere the brewery, based in the town of Ceske Budjovice in Southern Bohemia, is holding its head up admirably. The beers it produces are certainly as tip-top as ever.
One other situation that hasn't changed saddened me however. After my first visit I'd remarked in what was one of my earliest columns for The Publican that one didn't see many people smiling in the Czech Republic, not even in bars. I said it made me realise how much more hospitable I felt our pubs were, notwithstanding the odd wobble here and there.
Cheery faces weren't exactly on widespread display on my return to the country last week either, a fact that even a local tour guide showing us round the beautiful medieval city of Ceske Krumlov acknowledged. With some irony he noted that one result of the city's current tourism boom was that you might strike lucky and find a restaurant waiter looking vaguely cheerful.
Who knows, maybe it's a legacy of living for decades under the oppressive yoke of Soviet rule that causes many of the Czech population to bear an expression similar to that of the late Les Dawson when he used to talk about his mother-in-law.
That's a conundrum I'll probably never get to the bottom of. What I am sure of though is that after sitting in a series of smoky bars for several hours - the Republic has yet to ban smoking in its pubs - I realise and appreciate the difference a smoking ban has on my own ability to breathe clearly.
Waking up after a night out in Ceske Budjovice my non-smoking lungs were wheezing like an old steam engine on its last legs, my hacking cough a fitting testament to the dozen or so fags-worth of secondhand smoke I must have inhaled during my time in a number of hostelries.
As I attempted to clear my chest the morning after the night before I recalled an old cartoon featuring a man in a pub chatting to the barman. The customer is looking down at the floor rather wistfully. "I miss that old spittoon," he sighs. The barman, dutifully polishing a glass, replies: "I know. That's why we removed it."
