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Monday, June 28, 2010

Wenceslas Square Sausages

"If you never try a new thing, how can you tell what it's like? Think of the man who first tried German sausage!" - Jerome K. Jerome

In all my many years living in Prague, for no particular reason until starting this blog I had never yet sampled a sausage from one of the ubiquitous stands lining Wenceslas Square.




Maybe I’d heard too many off-putting stories of dodgy after-effects. Maybe I have just never fallen prey to the post-booze munchies in that particular part of town. Or maybe I am simply more of a good old gyros girl at heart.

Either way, it was without doubt at long last time to right this wrong.

And so on my next visit to Wenceslas Square, I headed to the stand on the corner of Vodičkova, for the sole reason that it’s the one I always pass on the number 9 tram and therefore stuck in my mind.


It’s another good six months till Christmas, but in my world t’is always the season for svařak.


In the event, my virgin bite of Wenceslas sausage was into a Vaklavská klobása (like all the sausages on the square, priced at around the 50kč mark).


Yes, that is a lot of mustard - when it comes to condiments, I go hard baby.

Despite blogging appearances, I’m actually a pretty dedicated healthy eater / exerciser, and this amount of concentrated fat at one time was quite a lot for my system to take – I swear I could feel the grease start to ooze out of my pores as I ate… For this amount of calories, I quite frankly didn’t think the Vaklavská was worth it – it wasn’t all that tasty really, and I kind of got bored eating it halfway through.

On the next visit, I tried the Bavorská klobása from a neighbouring stand. I asked to have it with brown bread rather than the rohlik the server initially reached for (is it me, or are rohliks, so beloved by the Czechs, simply a stale, chewy abomination to bready kind? – I don’t care if they do only cost 2kč, I still don’t see the appeal...). It came served with a large portion of fried onion, which I love, in this case in fact far more so than the sausage itself, which I found a bit tasteless with an unpleasantly squishy texture. I imagine that’s actually how it’s supposed to be, but still, not quite my bag really...


At this point, I was understandably starting to tire of my as yet less than successful, self-imposed sausage-seeking mission, and was beginning to doubt that klobása and I were even compatible at all – after all, I’d clearly gone this long in Prague without feeling the need to indulge, so why persist in my vain attempts at sausage appreciation now...?

And then, in one final last-ditch attempt, I tried the Pražská klobása.


Jackpot!!! This tasty variety reminded me more of Hungarian klobása in its spicy flavour and distinctive redness of the meat, and after my previous failed attempts I was really pleased to have finally found something to genuinely hit my S-spot. It was, of course, no less fatty and greasy than my two previous versions, the difference being that this time I actually felt the sacrifice was worth it (though on my fifth and final consecutive day of 100 length compensatory swims afterwards, I was - understandably - no longer quite so sure...).

So all in all, I wouldn’t say I was quite a klobása convert yet, and when it comes to meaty post-drinking bites, my loyalties are still firmly in the kebab camp.

That said, I’ve now tried a new thing at least, and finally undergone a belated Prague rite of passage – now, having taken a good four years to actually get round to it, I think I can happily wait another four until my next Wenceslas round! ;-))


4 comments:

  1. I also have not yet indulged in a Czech hot dog stand sausage although my very first blog post was all about not eating one...

    http://girlinczechland.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/meat/

    Like you, perhaps I'm more of a kebab girl at heart although I can heartily recommend a klobasa cooked over the campfire with a Czech beer :)

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  2. Looks like you haven't had a good rohlik yet than. It's pretty hard to find one nowadays actually, but generally all are good in the morning. You just have to know what goes well with it and have the proper craving. (for example, sometimes I would kill for a rohlik and lučina)

    Apart from that it is indeed just a cheap bread substitute.

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  3. I love Pražská klobása in a roll with fried onion.. its just something which really "suits you" after wild dancing at some dance club :) and great great great as a "pre-cure" of a hangover :)

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  4. You have to try the 5 little white links -- maybe they are called Nemecka -- though I thought some stands called them Bavorska. Usually my favorite. Here's my post from years ago -- I had a lot of fun with that one:

    http://czechoutchannel.blogspot.com/2007/05/wenceslas-square-sausage-stands.html

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