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I believe it was in the summer of 1974 when I came across the most
sentimental association with the famous Pilsner Urquell beer. As a young
Czech refugee in Canada, studying at the University of Western Ontario I
had
little chance to taste Czech beer. It was, after all, the era of hippies,
the time of coffee houses and folk music, the era of psychedelic
experiences
and the music of Beatles and Jimmy Hendrix. We had very little contact
with
our homeland. We were an exotic group of four Czechs who embraced the
unknown world of Western Academe, studying in a foreign language, far from
the friendly support of the family and old friends. We often reminisced
about the favoured pubs we left in 1968 and so many friends who shared our
liking of a good "pullitr".
During that summer I decided to travel to the Yukon and Alaska. These
names, far from being as familiar to a Czech reader as they are today, in
those days still had a high degree of romantic adventure and raw gold
fever hidden within them. I was not disappointed. The lure of gold,
coupled with an unsurpassed beauty of nature, that land of a midnight sun,
proved to be irresistible. I thought I was most likely the only
"modern" Czech there and the likelihood of meeting a fellow
countryman never crossed my mind. As it happened, one day, deep inside the
northern bush, I came across not one, not two or three, but across at least
a dozen of Czechs. They were the real "trampi" - friends way back
from the day of perhaps even the First Republic. They hauled from all over
the world. Australia, South Africa, Europe, North America. They were
friends whose love for the nature, the lure of the Yukon, and their
friendship for each other made them to meet every few years in the most
unexpected corners of the world.
Out came the guitars, the over used songbooks, the strains of
"umi". I was too young to really fit in this group of rugged
tramps and their world of "rebellion'. Yet I felt strangely at home
with this bunch that sang Czech songs and drank Czech beer in the midnight
sun of the faraway Yukon. Today, more than forty years later I still recall
the taste of Pilsner and hear the refrain to "Cestou do Cordoby potkal
jsem dve vdovy" in my ears. Never before and perhaps never again will
I feel the friendliness of the company and the connection to that beer as
I felt it then. Long live the Czech beer.
Zdenek Kutac, Canada
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