Travel Report, EPT13 Prague, Day 11 -- Coffee, Crepes, and Communism

The last European Poker Tour festival is done, with winners emerging from both the Main Event and final High Roller in Prague. Both endings involved deals, and in fact when it came to the High Roller the sucker culminated with a deal rather than a victor being decided on the felt.

The Main Event had gotten down to three players when the deal talk first began. Essentially David Peters wanted more and couldn’t get the other two to give him what he wanted, so they played on and Peters ended up taking third (and earning considerably less than he would have with a deal).

Then at heads-up came another discussion and a completed deal, after which Jasper Meijer van Putten outlasted Marton Czuczor to win the trophy. Here’s a recap of the final day from Howard Swains that shares all of the final day’s highlights, including those deal talks.

Meanwhile later in the evening over in the high roller Patrick Serda and William Kassouf struck a curious bargain that gave Serda (who had a big chip lead) the larger cash prize but Kassouf the trophy and title, ending play with the deal (i.e., without playing it out for a small leftover bit of cash).

I was on the Main Event, and so wasn’t around for the multiple discussions punctuating the High Roller’s finish, which had to have been interesting to witness given Kassouf’s involvement. You can read Jack Stanton’s end-of-event recap for a bit more on how it all went over there.

Before play began, Vera Valmore and I made a return trip to a breakfast place we enjoyed before, lingering for a while over coffee and crepes with apples, oranges, grapes, bananas, and whipped cream (yum). From there we took a short subway ride over to the Museum of Communism located in the center of Prague on Na příkopě, itself an interesting, bustling area to walk around.

The not-so-easy-to-find museum is tucked away just above a McDonald’s, which gave us a chuckle. There’s a casino nearby as well, something else the museum advertises as a way to play up the contrast between how the Czech Republic looks in 2016 compared to the era the museum chronicles.

It’s a modest collection of materials related primarily to Czechoslovakia’s history under Communist rule from just after WWII through the Velvet Revolution. We took an hour or so winding our way through the various rooms looking at the photos, artwork and other propaganda, lingering over a couple of videos, and reading the long descriptions attached to each display.

Despite the often grim subject matter, the museum takes a humorous approach to things, particularly in the gift shop where the postcards and refrigerator magnets have more to do with kitsch than culture (“You couldn’t get laundry detergent but you could get your brainwashed”). I did get a kick out of one display near the end telling the story of the Plastic People of the Universe, that political “Prague Rock” band I wrote a little about before embarking on this trip.

The Kafka one might have been better, and as we left I found myself going over The Trial and The Castle in my head while remembering the dozens of times I taught “The Metamorphosis” to world lit classes. But I didn’t regret getting over to Na příkopě and exploring a different part of the city with Vera.

Kind of like with those tournaments, the museum visit was a bit of a compromise with which to end things here in Prague.

Home tomorrow! Has been great fun, and especially so with Vera here. But we’re both more than ready to get back to the farm. Let me go another 5,000-plus miles or so and we can talk again.

Photos: Museum of Communism.

Prague Rock

Back on the road today, heading to the airport in just a little while to hop a plane that will carry me over the Atlantic for the last ever European Poker Tour festival in Prague, Czech Republic. This’ll be a first visit to Prague for your humble scribbler, so I’m greatly looking forward to experiencing what everyone tells me is going to be a real winter wonderland.

Despite being to Europe many times and even living in France for a year, I never made it to the Czech Republic. Growing up, of course, it was Czechoslovakia, part of the Soviet bloc up until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Then came the Velvet Revolution and eventually in 1993 the split of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

I remember during the early-to-mid ’90s learning a bit about the writer Václav Havel who served as the republic’s first president. Aside from writing a lot of poetry and many plays, Havel was a big supporter of the arts and musicians, and had a famous friendship with Frank Zappa of whom he was a big fan (one reason why I was led to learn more about Havel).

In fact, in 1990 Havel even designated Zappa Czechoslovakia’s “Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture, and Tourism.” I vaguely remember that causing a ruckus over here when then-president George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker got upset over a civilian being made a liaison with with a foreign country.

Baker told Havel “you can do business with the United States or you can do business with Frank Zappa.” (All of this reads interestingly against growing turmoil regarding our current president-elect’s unorthodox -- and frightening-to-some -- approach to international diplomacy.)

Zappa was a huge underground favorite in Czechoslovakia, despite his music being officially blacklisted by the authorities right up until the revolution. He influenced a number of bands, including several from Prague. The most famous example was a group called The Plastic People of the Universe, named after the Mothers of Invention’s song “Plastic People” opening their second album, Absolutely Free.

By the mid-seventies The Plastic People of the Universe had become quite popular and politically active, getting involved in numerous protests against the Communist regime. In fact, following one of these protests came disturbance of the peace charges and harsh prison terms for the band’s members.

Those punishments (and others) prompted still more protests, including the important Charter 77 manifesto co-written by Havel that prompted still more attempts at cracking down on dissent with arrests of those signing the document. Charter 77 would become a hub of sorts around which gathered the forces leading to the subsequent revolution.

I only know one of The Plastic People of the Universe’s albums, one from 1974 called Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned, which unmistakably demonstrates the influence of early Zappa/Mothers. Apparently the album wasn’t allowed to be released and so bootleg tapes of it were circulated by fans for a few years before it came out on vinyl in France a few years later.

I know of a couple of bands of this same era from Czechoslovakia, my acquaintance with these “Prague Rock” outfits an offshoot of my ongoing interest in Krautrock being produced at the same time right across the border in Germany.

I especially like a band called Fermata, or at least their groovy 1977 album Huascarán (the only one of theirs I know) which reminds me a lot of later Soft Machine. They’re actually Slovakian (i.e., not from Prague). But from the Czech side there’s another group called Modry Efekt -- or Blue Effect -- from Prague that a lot of people like. They often get compared to Yes, with their 1977 album Svitanie (or “Dawning”) usually highlighted as their best (like with these other bands, it’s the only record of theirs I’ve heard).

Been spinning all three of these the last few days. The Plastic People record is clearly accomplished and a fun listen, although not being able to follow the lyrics -- mostly drawn from the works of Czech poet Egon Bondy (another “underground” artist whose writings were censored) -- makes it hard for me to appreciate it fully. Modry Efekt also features some occasional vocals, although they are more part of an instrumental mix and do make you think of Yes (whose lyrics I’ve always found opaque, anyway). Meanwhile the all-instrumental Fermata disc is probably my favorite of the three -- super spacey and pleasurably complex (and great writing music).

Talk soon, once I’ve rock-and-rolled my way over to Europe.

Photo: EPT.