When you want to translate a word from one language into another, more often than not a world of meaning is lost in translation. And ironically, this story was first written in Dutch, and then I translated it into English. I try interpreting Czech concepts through Dutch lenses. Translating this into English with its own meanings and images attached to each word only increases the linguistic confusion. But let me try.
Take the word 'cukrarna.' With 'cukr' as in 'sugar,' and the suffic '-arna,' signifying a shop specialised in something. Sugar shop. The Dutch translation would have to be 'bakery.' But a cukrarna isn't a bakery. A Dutch bakery smells sweet and rich. It smells of bread and biscuits and cream. The doorbell jingles. The store personnel are plump and cheerful. Cake and pastry is taken home in white cake boxes. You can't sit down at a table to eat your cake with coffee. That's something you do at Multivlaai. But Multivlaai is limited to 'vlaai.' Neither is a cukrarna a sweet shop. Like Jamin, where the offer is huge and the sweets expensive, and an average child with average pocket money cannot but feel overwhelmed with the task ahead.
You can't just translate 'cukrarna'. Not into Dutch, not into English. The cukrarna is entwined with the Central European coffee & cake culture that can be found in cities like Vienna, Prague and Budapest. But in most cases it doesn't have the pre-war elegance of this kind of establishments: their high ceilings, formal waiters, and the last news on newspaper wracks. Cukrarnas are their small town, shabbier, socialist sister.
You will find glass showcases with pastry, cake and marzipan decorations. Often, the pastry looks better than it tastes. You can buy sweets, and chocolate in gift boxes, and in the summer you can buy soft ice cream. You can sit down to have a cup of coffee. But the coffee is subservient to the cake, and often of mediocre quality. The walls are painted in pastel shades, and the shop assistants wear an apron and white clogs.
The cukrarna in the sleepy village along the main road where we end up on a Saturday afternoon doesn't only sell sugariness, it also serves its customers a portion of philosophy and politics. Next to the popcorn machine are two busts. The one on the left is of Edvard Beneš, president of Czechoslovakia from before WWII till 1948 when Gottwald (on the right) took over, and the Communists came into power.
When I go and search for the bathroom, I stumble upon a more extensive exhibition in the hallway behind the shop. The communist flag is draped over a little table, and Masaryk's bust is displayed on top of it. I spot Jan Hus, Hitler, Komenský, and some other historical figures.
"Imagine identical twins. One of them grows up in a loving home, the other doesn't. The first becomes a doctor, the second ends up a murderer. The difference between the two: context. Likewise, this exhibition: good and bad people. Had they had different chances as a child they might have ended up very differently. Hitler would have painted, and Lenin would have carried out his plans in a less destructive manner."
Nature vs nurture, in the hallway where the toilets are. Is there something to say for it? Certainly. But there's a lot to say.
And then there's the application: "Take a seat, lean back, have yourself some cake and coffee, and take time to think. About life."
Dictators and do-gooders as reminders not to rush through life unthinkingly. Dramatic world history as an incentive to eat cake. As if eating cake needs such an excuse. "Let's eat and drink, because tomorrow we will die." That too sells cake.