Does that make us smokers?

So for those of you who do not know, the American phenomenon of paranoia about the dangers of first and second-hand smoke (this is not to say it is not a legitimate paranoia!) does not extend over into Europe. Since all restaurants in Maine have been smoke free since I was a little girl, it was a bit of a shock to my system to be in restaurants here where everyone is smoking (including the bartender). Even though Tom and I do not smoke, he keeps joking that when we're back in the U.S. we might need to say we're smokers after all the smoke we've inhaled here.

Anyways, we went in search of a restaurant last night, and decided to try the little place by our grocery store first. We walk in and find a table and after the waitress brings us beer we find out it's just a bar, no food. Tom kept asking if I had my camera so I could take a picture but thankfully I did not have my camera there with me! Since we were completely surrounded by very burly locals (there was actually a great deal of mullets as well) and five minutes in there seemed to be equal to one year of a pack a day habit we quickly drank our beers and left in search of food (and hopefully not just more bars since I didn't think I could handle a full out pub crawl).

After taking the tram down the hill we found one place where there wasn't an open table (at least five of them had pink slips on them saying they were reserved, so the place was half empty but had no seating) before we found what has to be our new favorite restaurant. We sat and ordered beer (Gambrinus, which I like more than Pilsner Urquell) and asked if there was food. The waitress brought menus but apologized there were none in English (we had strayed off the tourist path) which was fine by us because we like guessing. A man soon came to the table to take our orders, explaining that he speaks a little English and can help. I ordered biftek (steak) and was perfectly happy not to have him explain it to me since I wanted to see how it came out (which was with a little fried egg on top). Tom asked what the favorite dish was there and ended up getting a delicious goulash with little savory potato cakes. For dessert the waitress said the two options in Czech and we just picked the first one. It ended up being delicious crepes with ice cream and chocolate sauce. So the guessing game worked out perfectly and we had one of the most enjoyable meals so far!