you never have a camera when you need one

The Czech Republic won the hockey tournament last night, and although the last game against Canada was pretty good and the one against the States a few days before even had me screaming in my seat (for the CR, of course, being that I don't want to get beat up, and truly they played a better game), it was the post-win revelry that really takes it.

After watching the last period of the final game at a bar down the street, we walked outside expecting to see a few people in CR jerseys stumbling down the street, hollering and singing, as drunk Czechs tend to do. Instead, there were hundreds, all gathering on Wenceslas Square, shouting "Cesi" and hugging and swilling beer and loving life.

I have never seen anything like it. Picture an Alabama-Auburn football game where everyone is cheering for the same team (I know, hard to imagine, but try for the sake of solidarity - and you pick which team) that just won the most important game of the most important tournament for the first time in years. Now add tons of beer, matching T-shirts, flags and face paint; subtract the inevitable violence you'd have an Alabama game. And it was something like that. There certainly were police there, but they were more concerned with protecting the horse statue than getting the crowd to settle down.

At one point cars were inching along bumper to bumper up the street, and as they would stop for a moment, a crowd of guys would descend upon the car, drape the front windshield with a Czech flag, and begin shaking the bar back and forth to the point where I was truly expecting one to tump right over. Surely the drivers were mad, right? Nope, as the traffic inched up and flag was removed, the drivers were shouting and smiling and celebrating with everyone else.

So we stopped for a bit at the top of the square and watched the crowd celebrate. There really isn't anything like that in America - maybe in one city, but never the entire country coming together, drunkenly but amicably, to hail the national team. And yes, the screaming certainly got tiring as I was trying to sleep later, but it was really something to see an entire square jumping up and down and shouting in red, white and blue, flags waving, beer spraying, and people chanting for their country. Where is the camera when you need it?