Why do Czech men love sandals and white socks, and why do Czech women practice extramarital sex with greater gusto than women in most other European countries? Did you know that Czech Euroscepticism has its roots in 1620? That Czech society is in reality an undercover matriarchy? Or that some Czechs have names like Hippopotamus, Don’t Eat Bread and even Pepa From Hong Kong? When is it crucial not to do as you are told, and should you be happy when somebody gives you a painting of a rhombus?
In this manual, foreigners will find light answers to these and many other weighty questions about the Czechs and their fascinating society. It is written by a foreigner who after years in the country has discovered that many things and people are not what they seem at first glance.
Great anthropological book
- Academic Titles: Important to get it right, and Czechs parade it around proudly.
- Albright, Madeleine: Czech by birth, and is her mother tongue.
- Alcoholics: 25% of Czechs have a drinking problem. Parliament has 5 on-site bars and restaurants. First city to open a detention station to take care of dead-drunks in 1952.
- Anti-Charter (See Charter)
- Austrians: Czechs associate them with “national suppression”, “hypocritical snobs”, “arrogant”, and “eco fascists”. Czechs were beaten in Battle of White Mountain in 1620, reduced to a province of Austria. Franz Josef’s decision not to come to Prague to be crowned a Czech king. When Austria-Hungary in 1914 declared war on Serbia, Czechs were drawn into a carnage in which they didnt have any political interest and which cost 200,000 Czech lives. Nuclear power plant Temelin – in South Bohemia in 1980′s. National Referendum in Austria in 2000 to press Czech Republic to scrap Temelin. Otto von Habsburg to the Czech media: “I love all the peopls in the former Dual Empire, well, except the Czechs, of course.” But many world famous Austrians were actually born in Czech. Complicated and interwoven, their relationship arises out of their similarities.
- Ballroom Dancing (See Dancing Schools)
- Balkans – in July Holiday season, 10% of population drives to Croatia (and other Balkan regions) to camp out and drink. Belittling attitude towards Balkans for the Sarajevo assassination, and 1990s war in Yugoslavia.
- Battle of White Mountain: one of the biggest disasters in the country’s history, triggering 3 centuries of darkness. 1620. Protestant Czech nobility broke into Prague castle and defenestrated the Catholic Emperor’s governors. Vienna reacted with fury. Final battle where Czech forces lost 9000 men and Catholic League only 2000. The then-king, elected by nobility, had fled the country at the same time. Viennese emperor then decided to execute 27 prominent Czechs in Old Town Square, and then gave the choice to the population to either convert to Catholicism or leave the country. between 10 to 30% left. Because Catholic Church let itself be used by the Hapsburgs in the aftermath of the 30 yr’s war asa political tool, Czechs now have a rather chilly relationship with religion.
- Beauty Contests: not considered to be politically incorrect nor humiliating to women. Obsession for Czech males and females. Each year there are more beauty contests arranged in Bohemia and Moravia than in all other European countries combined. The cultural highlight of every Czech region is the election of a local “Miss”. This “Insensitivity” attributed to isolation under communists.
- Becherovka (See Carlsbad English Bitters)
- Beer: Vasil Bilak 1968: “Beer is bread to the Czechs!” Statistically, every single inhabitant in this country pours down 322 half-litres of pivo annually. People are convinced it was invented here by Jan I (Jan Primus = Gambrinus) but it was actually invented by Sumerians 5000 years ago. But it was they who first mixed “barley water” with hops. And Pilsner beer was the first to be mass-produced. In the 16th century beer was “improved” with the bones of executed criminals, dogs faeces, sawdust from dug-up coffins, splinters from scaffolds or other delicacies. Desitka and dvanactka: 10 degree and 12 degree beer. Not alcohol content: its % extract of the original young beer. Thus Czech beer is relatively weak in alcohol but is compensated by its rich flavor. Some Czech spas recommend a bottle of beer daily to fight coronary disease. Jara Cimrman: “A warm beer is worse than a cold woman!” Czechs consume about 160 litres of beer annually.
- Blava: Bratislava – dull and interesting to the Czechs.
- Bohemia: from Celtic Boiohaemum tribe which settled there.
- Bolsheviks (See Communism)
- Brod, Max (See Kafka, Svejk)
- Bureaucracy: red tape – formal details are often much more important than substance. There are only two ways to fix it: Either you pay somebody to fix the formalities or you arm yourself with tons of patience, and a copy of Jaroslav Hasek’s Good Soldier Svejk.
- Cabins and Cottages (See Fridays, Golden Hands)
- Carlsbad English Bitters: sold under the name Becherovka, its a brand of herbal liquor that Czechs worship like Russians with vodka and French with Champagne. Any visiting foreigner is advised to conceal his/her dislike of it, because it is a bitter mixture that is hard to get used to (to water it down with tonic order a “beton”). After Emperor Franz Josef tasted it, 50 litres of it were delivered to the court in Vienna every month. But one sticking point is that it was actually invented by a German.
- Carp: No ocean, so little seafood. But a foreigner may be surprised by the fact that the Czech relation to fish can be reduced to one single species – carp. Easily reared in artificial ponds. In the reign of Charles IV in 14th C, construction got so big that Bohemia and Moravia could boast fish ponds coverin g a total of 160k hectares, almost 3 x the size of Balaton, Central Europe’s largest lake. Today the republic’s fisheries deliver more than 21000 tons annually, of which carp represent 90%. Why so important? It has a mythical role in Czech culture – children’s fairytales, because of its looks. Christmas dinners with carp. A big carp show every December. Christmas dinners – under your plate you may find a carp’s scale – good luck tradition.
- Celts (See Bohemia)
- Central Europe: There are few things that enrage a Czech more than foreigners speaking about the Czech republic as a part of Eastern Europe. Just because Czechoslovakia was ruled by Moscow for 40 years and the language is similar to Russian, its harsh to rub out Czech history of 600 years of independence, and 300 years as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In school, Czech children learn that their country has been in the very locus of European history since the Middle Ages. The Reformation was not triggered by the German Martin Luther, but by Czech priest Jan Hus. The Thirty Years War was started in 1618 when protestants threw the Catholic king’s counsellors out the window in Prague castle (they survived the defenstration, thanks to the latrine in which they landed). Two Czech kings Charles IV and Rudolf II were even elected emperors of the HRE (although neither actually spoke Czech as their mother tongue) It’s a question about national identity. Eastern Europe is portrayed as the mafia-infested, vodka drinking part of Europe that is still mired in its communist past.
- Charter 77: Vaclav Havel’s dissident group published this in Jan 1977 modeled after the Magna Carta, reminding Russian rulers of their agreement in Helsinki to respect basic human rights. It never became a mass movement, but was a society of people united only by a common adversary: the Bolshevik tyrants. The regime responded by summoning every actor, musician, composer, writer and painter to a mass rally (7000 people) to sign an “Anti Charter” defending the regime and holding a concert on TV to show their support of the regime. But it was plagued with biases – Pragocentricism, personal connections to Havel, intellectual elitism. Today, Vaclav Havel’s successor Vaclav Klaus openly questions whether Charter had any political impact at all.
- Cibulka’s List (See Lustration)
- Cimrman, Jara: Czech folk genius who did everything, created in in a radio program in 1966 and popularized in 1967 with Zdenek Sverak’s play The Act. Cleverly located in the Austro Hungarian Empire making him able to make political jokes wihtout angering communist regime.
- Communication: doing things other than what they are told, being polite and modest when they actually want something done, etc. Duplicity.
- Communism: Czechs often say that the communists came to power through coup d’etat, which implies that it happened against most people’s will. Thats not exactly true. In 1946 the communists won 38% which was more than any other party. But eventually they were able to take total control of the govt from 1948 because 12 government members resigned in protest against an Interior Minister, not thinking that their resignation would be accepted. Tactical blunder by opposition parties. What about Prague Spring? Not really an anti-communist uprising. Even Alexander Dubcek and his supporters didn’t question the Communist Party’s constitutional right to lead society. The Prague Spring reformers also worshipped Marxist-Leninist dogma and believed in the command economy. Most Czechs today regard the Prague Spring as a battle between two factions of the Communist Party, or a failed attempt to introduce perestroika and glastnost 17 years before Gorbachov (in its effort to “normalize” society back to Soviet style communism, the new Sec Gen Gustav Husak kicked 50,000 members out of the party and then dissolved every organization that had shown the slightest sympathy to Prague Spring reforms). He then worked to promise the Czechs a great standard of living, so that by 1978 there were 1000 Bolsheviks for every person who signed Charter 77. But collaboration ended when the economic stagnation became evident to everyone.
- so far only one of the hard liners who formally “invited” the Soviet Union to invade his country has been tried and sentenced for sabotage.
- Corruption: When a Czech, in the communist era, went to see the doctor it was not entirely unthinkable that he broughta bottle of liquer with him discreetly hidden in his pocket. As a result, the chances that the doctor would brush aside your problems as being “mere nerves” were considerably reduced. Now its slightly better. Transparency Intl deemed the Czech Rep to be the world’s 54th least corrupt state in 2003, putting it between Bulgaria and Belarus, which most Czechs take as a deep offence.
- Cursing: As in English, religious curses are regarded as the mildest ones in Czech, especially thanks to the declining role of religion. F*** is totally absent in Czech (except Czech Roma). The ultimate star among Czech curses: prdel (ass) – influenced by anal-fixated German and Austrian neighbors.
- Curtains: Iron Curtains.
- Czech Cuisine: he says its bad. the Czechs are the ultimate meat-eaters. Cheap and fatty meat was one of the main carnal delights with which the former regime bought itself the people’s acceptance. By 1990, the Czechs consumed more pork and beef per capita (50kg and 28kg) than almost any other nation on the planet. Their risk of dying from a cardiovascular disease is still double the Western average. With 16% of Czech men and 20% of women categorized as obese, this nation places itself in the forefront of Europe’s lard league. Why is Czech food so drab? the explanation: beer. The ultimate Czech specialty though, is the knedlik (dumpling)
- Czech Language: Czech is the Rolls Royce of the Slavonic languages; it is so rich, precise, and complicated that a foreigner may be driven to suicide. Its spoken version can be hard to understand for the other Slav peoples bar the Slovaks. Jan Hus had an impact by teaching the students a version of Czech not based on literature but as it was actually spoken in Prague’s streets, chucking out tons of German and Latin loanwords and introducing a phonetic spelling, inventing diacritical signs (e, s, a and r). The Battle of White Mountain was also a literary disaster as their defeat led to the almost destruction of all czech literature by book burning. Czech lit was treated as a demonstration of heresy. Czech is the only Slavonic language that allows its speakers to utter an entire sentence without using one single vocal: Strch prst skrz krk! (put a finger down your throat!) It also divides male and female very explicitly. THere are three quite distinct versions of czech: Literary, Spoken, and Common.
- Czech Macho Men (see Feminism)
- Czechoslovaks (See Slovaks)
- Dancing Schools – a very bourgeois thing that was tolerated by communists. Every kid learns it. From Nov to March, every thinkable Czech organization from the govt to the Union of Fire Fighters down to the village’s Stamp Collectors Club organizes a ball. This is an event of huge social important where any image-conscious person should turn up, and it is widely recognized as a perfect place for a man to make advances towards a woman.
- Danes: one of those few nations that have never in history done a single bad thing to the Czech, yet has found itself in the saying “to drink like a Dane”.
- Defenstration: Latin de fenestra means “out of a window” – somebody thrown out of a window. Defenestrations took place in Prague and all of them had a tremendous impact on political developments in Bohemia and Moravia. Hussites stormed New Prague’s town hall at Charles Square and threw out 14 municipal bureaucrats from the top of the tower 70 metres high. They even erected lances and spears where the landing would take place. The second defenestration took place in Prague Castle when the protestant nobility threw out Catholic governors in 1618. The third defenestration – Jan Masaryk’s heralded the start of a 41 year communist tyranny.
- Dogs – the Cz Rep is the ultimate dog country. Everybody regards it as his or her human right to keep a husky of a St. Bernard in a flat of 20 sq m. People incl children are regularly killed by fighter dogs, but every attempt to prohibit the rearing of aggressive races has been firmly and so far blocked by the Cz Canine Association.
- Don the Brain (See Mogilevich, Semyon Yudkovich)
- Dress Code (see sandals and socks)
- Driving a Car: you are 8 times more likely to be killed by a Czech car driver than a Czech criminal. Auto density is on eof the highest in Europe but the average car is older than modern inventions like airbags or ABS brakes.
- Eastern Europe (see Central Europe)
- Egalitarianism – can be explained from history, wehre everyone was homogenous after the elites left in 1620. its less egalitarianism than wishing everyone else is doing worse than you.
- Emigrants – two big waves: in 1948 after the communist takeover and then in 1968 when the Warsaw Pact invaded.
- Fast Arrows (See Homosexuals)
- Feminism: is an insult to a Czech woman – attributed to communist era. Story of Princess Libuse, who founded Prague, and ordered her guards to find Premysl, but Czech is actually an undercover monarchy. In the Czech Republic, a man can even risk praising a woman’s beauty in public without being called a sexist monkey, or as in Scandinavia, being knocked down on the spot. It seems that young Czech women are trying harder and harder to combien the cool self-confience of a Western feminist withthe proud womanliness of a South European sex bomb.
- First Republic – golden era: Czechoslovakia from foundation in Oct 1918 to tragic Munich agreement in 1938. 1918 marked the end of 300 years of Austro Hungarian oppression. Czech economy became the “worlds tenth largest economy”, bigger than Austria. Eruption of creativity. Jaroslav Seifert (poet; 1984 Nobel). Movies, Dramas, tolerance, Svejk. 1938 was when UK and FR threw Czech to the Nazi wolves.
- Foreigners: not welcoming. Foreigners have ruled Czech for 400 years. Every culture can be seen as a defence system; the more you try to change it, the more defensive it becomes. This has not made the Czechs overt nationalists in the ludicrous Scandinavian way (“We are simply the best!”), but on the surface many Czechs will accept things imposed onthem by their foreign master, but eventually they’ll do whatever suits them (Svejk). Learning Czech is a requirement for breaking the ice; many foreigners live here and never learn more than a few phrases in Czech. To many Czechs only two types of foreigners exist: either those from the Third World who have come to the Czech Republic to learn how to become a civilized human being, or “businessmen” from Western Europe or America who have come to exploit the country’s economic wealth. But the xenophobic revival of the 1990s seems to have passed its peak.
- Franz Josef – forced the Czechs to a war they never supported. Stiffed his Czech coronation. When Franz Ferdinand married a lady from the Czech gentry, he was pressed to accept the condition that the children of such an “unequal” marriage woul dhave no rights to ascend to the imperial throne. but Diligence was one of his virtues that became a tradition in the Czech rpublic. Because many work jobs start at 6 am most pubs close at 10pm.
- Fridays – technically a normal workday but they like to start the weekend early. If you need to sort out an urgent matter in a public office, pray to God its not Friday Afternoon.
- Gastarbeiter (see Ukrainians)
- Germans: On the one hand, the Germans have played a totally irreplaceable part in the cultural and economic development of the Czech nation. On the other, no other country has caused the Czechs greater trauma. If you look at the map, between Austria and Germany the Czechs have formed a Slavonic wedge in German territory for almost a millennium. The Cz word for German – Nemec – derives from -nemy- which means mute (indicating language barriers). Many Czech cities were often of germanic origin. The Czech landmarks Charles Bridge and St. Vitus’ Cathedral were designed by a German, Peter Parler. St. Nick’s Cathedral at Mala Strana were built by german architect Christopher Dientzenhofer after the Battle of White Mountain. Sculptures of Charles Bridge are by German artisit Ferdinand Brokoff. German relationships warmed after the Cold War, as they became the largest foreign investor and Volkswagen took over the Czech Skoda (today German Skoda accounts for 10% of Cz’s total exports). Envy plays a part though: At home, a Czech’s purchasing power is about half that of the common German’s, but once in Germany their purchasing power has shrunk to one fourth of their neighbours’.
- Golden Hands: the perception that Czechs are so handy and nimble-fingered and good at improvisation that one might believe they are equipped with golden hands. Have you ever wondered why many Czech house-owners keep a shack stuffed with scrap and rubbish in their gardens? Simply because it works as an inexhaustible stock of materials and spare parts when dad needs to get something fixed. When Austrian specialists some years ago warned that the cooling system of the newly erected Temelin nuclear power plant might be unsafe, thousands of Czech kutils (men) brushed the warnings off angrily, because they had all installed something similar in their kitchens and it had worked perfectly!
- Karel Gott: Czech pop music’s most mega-super, long-lasting and brightest star. Used for the Anti-Charter reading. Survived the Velvet Revolution. He has been closely connected with the group of people who have run the Czech music business for 35 years (“Gott-father”). He is familar, safe in a fast-changing world.
- Gypsies (See Roma)
- Hasek, Jaroslav (See The Good Soldier Svejk)
- Havel, Vaclav: Czechs can be sorted into four groups according to their views on the ex-president: the largest and least vocal who deeply respect him, the group of Havel-fans who agree with him but criticise some shortcomings, the ordinary Havel-bashers who are fed up with his “constant moralizing” against consumerism, cheap architecture and widespread atheism, and finally the extremely vociferous, hard-hitting Havel-haters, who are rightwingers led by Vaclav Klaus using the lowbrow, popular TV Nova.
- Hedonism: Beer. Meat, Sex (tolerance to infidelity), 60% atheists.
- Heroes (Charter 77, Jara Cimrman, Karel Gott, Vaclav Havel, Milada Horakova, Jan Hus, Ice Hockey, Macha, Karel Hynek, Tomas Masaryk, Jan Palach, Good Soldier Svejk)
- Homosexuals: very broadminded. During the first years post WW2, the Fast Arrows, a homoerotic serial about a group of boy scouts, even became some of the best-selilng books in Czech literary history.
- Milada Horakova
- Hospoda
- Hungarians
- Jan Hus
- Ice Hockey
- Intruders (See Foreigners, World)
- Irone Curtain (See Curtains)
- Jews
- Franz Kafka
- Jiri Kajinek
- Vaclav Klaus
- Knedlik (Czech Cuisine)
- Milan Kundera
- Czech Princess Libuse (Feminism)
- Lustration – 1991 Lustration Law, rules that any body who holds a senior position in the civil service, army, judicial system, police, public broadcasting, National Bank, must prove that he or she is Stb negative. To kick out the old members of the StB (Czech gestapo) lustrum was a cleaning ceremony of the Romans. Both the Council of Europe and ILO condemn this law as it discriminates against the part of the population that allowed themselves to be used as tools for the totalitarian regime.
- Karel Hynek Macha
- Jan Masaryk (Defenestration)
- Tomas G Masaryk: Slovak father, Czech mother, first president of Czechoslovakia.
- Matriarchy (Feminism)
- Miniskirts (Sandals and Socks)
- Mogilevich, Semyon Yudkovich
- Moravia
- Munich Agreement: O nas, bez nas (about us, but without us) – Sept 1938, words of utter despair. Czechoslovakia concealed the 3.2m germans compared to 2m Slovaks living in it, called Sudeten Germans. Did not enjoy the status as one of the country’s official nationalities. Hitler made it clear to Chamberlain and Daladier that the annexation of the Sudeten areas into Germany was his final demand – appeasement. Churchill: “They had the choice between dishonour and war. They chose dishonour, and got a war.” Czech President Edvard Benesh fled the country. “I have a plan, or more precisely, a plane.”
- Mushrooms
- National Identity
- National Sport (See Beer, Beauty Contests, Ice Hockey)
- Nobility
- Absence of Ocean
- Ostrava
- Jan Palach
- Pepa From Hong Kong
- Personal Connections
- Poles
- Politicians
- Protection (Personal Connections)
- Premysl (Feminism
- Religion
- Rhombus – with an I drawn inside, is a profanity.
- Roma
- Russians
- Ruthenians (see Ukranians)
- Sandals and Socks – Sandals is icon of Czech culture, like Beer. But they want comfort, so socks. Women: Miniskirts.
- Sarajevo Coup (see Vaclav Klaus, Pepa from Hong Kong)
- Scepticism of noble ideals
- Service-mindedness (see Future Generation)
- Sex: enormous number of “erotic clubs”. Liberal attitude towards moral issues. Center of sex tourism. in 1995 TV Nova became the first in Europe to introduce naked broadcasters. Hordes of female viewers bombarded the station with angry letters – because the presenters were all women.
- Slovaks: somebody we are fond of and can lean on for support in bad times, but generally an impulsive indivudal who behaves immaturely and sometimes downright stupidly (younger sibling). Czechs refer to Slovakia as a nation without history. Less sophisticated, more emotional. Catholic vs Czech atheism. “A trip to Slovakia was almost like a safari to an exotic and picturesque country, where the natives happened to speak a Slavonic language they understood very well.”
- Sokol – “Falcon” gymnasiums. Prague Gym Union founded in 1862. There is one in every town and city in the Czech republic. Turned physical education into a mass movement.
- Sudeten Germans (See Munich Agreement)
- Surnames
- The Good Soldier Svejk
- Tourists
- TV Nova
- Ukrainians
- Urination: in public places.
- Values
- Velvet Revolution in 1989 – “collapse of a rotten regime” instead of a true revolution? Berlin wall had fallen a week before and Russia didnt lift a finger.
- Weltschmertz (Sex)
- World
- Milos Zeman (Carlsbad English Bitters)
- Czech Republic in Figures
- Life expectancy (Men 71.4yr Women 78.1)
- Pop Density 131/kmsq
- Pop 10.28m (81.2% Czech, 13.2% Moravians, 3.1% Slovaks, 2.5% Roma/Poles/Germans/Hungarians)
- Births per 1000 people: 9
- Deaths per 1000 peopple: 10.9
- GDP per capita (Nominal): USD 6815
- GDP per capita (PPP): USD 15797
