One of Prague’s most iconic landmarks is the Charles Bridge — Karlův Most in the local tongue. Among the many legends woven around the bridge and the city, there’s one particularly delightful story: to make the bridge stronger, egg whites were supposedly mixed into the mortar during construction. (This is also said about Mimar Sinan, though apparently he wasn’t the originator of the idea.)
But there weren’t enough eggs in Prague for such a massive structure, so the king sent word to all surrounding towns and villages, asking them to supply more. The people of Velvary — the Bohemians we might jokingly call “the Black Sea folk of the Czechs” — gathered their eggs, but fearing the king would punish them if the eggs broke on the way, they hard-boiled them before sending them off.
Another group of well-meaning but equally naïve villagers lived in Unhošť. Since they couldn’t quite figure out why the king wanted eggs in the first place, they decided to play it safe and sent along some cream cheese as well.