My Czech Republic Blog

Blog written by two Prague residents about life in the Czech Republic.

Back from the U.S.: My Observations (V)

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Care for Some Water?

You won’t find a Czech restaurant that will serve free water and you won’t find a Czech restaurant that will serve tap water. At the same time, basically every Czech restaurant offers at least one brand of mineral water, which often comes in several varieties: still, lightly sparkling and sparkling. Mineral water, even Czech made, is usually more expensive than Czech beer, sometimes almost twice as much.

If you ask for mineral water at a U.S. restaurant, you may get a confused look from the waiter. Your large glass of iced tap water will arrive free of charge as soon as you sit down and it will be refilled throughout your meal, but mineral water or simply bottled water seems to be an exotic product at many establishments.

We’re on Summer Time!

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The Czech Republic switched to Daylight Saving Time last night. Let’s enjoy the longer, brighter days of spring!

An evening update: It got dark around 7:45. Not bad. 🙂

Josef Day

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Today was the name day of Josef, historically one of the most common Czech first male names. It is an old name and it used to be extremely popular in the past. For example, the village of Josefovice used to have at least one Josef living in every one of its houses (I wonder how the village got its name…). Today, only four Josefs and one Josefa (the female version of the name) are registered in Josefovice.

The name is not on the top of name popularity charts anymore, having given way to names like Filip, Tomáš, Adam, Jan or Lukáš. Out of the 4,700 boys born in January 2007, only 66 were named Josef compared to 320 boys named Jan. According to TV Nova however, there are currently 266,000 Czech men named Josef, which still makes it the fourth most used Czech male name in general. It is no wonder that the Josef name day is still celebrated across the nation and mentioned on the news every year.

And what’s the deal with Pepa, one of the most common diminutive versions of the name Josef? Well, according to linguists, “Pepa” came to us from Italy where the diminutive version of “Giuseppe” (= in Czech “Josef”) is “Beppe”. Who would have thought?

Source: TV Nova

Back from the U.S.: My Observations (IV)

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OMG, Those Commercials!

All of a sudden, I found American network TV almost impossible to watch due to the irritatingly frequent commercial breaks. I somehow got used to the commercials when I lived in the U.S. a few years ago, but it seems to me that they came on even more often this time.

For example, I watched an episode of Desperate Housewives and I swear the program was interrupted every 10 minutes. That’s five commercial breaks in a one-hour show. Needless to say, I didn’t try watching another episode. If I’m not mistaken, Prima TV that airs the Desperate Housewives in the Czech Republic interrupts each episode only once, approximately in the middle, for about seven minutes. TV Nova shows commercials every 20 – 25 minutes for about three minutes per break, so a one-hour show is interrupted twice. I can pretty much live with that. Now if only they would stop bothering me with laundry detergent, yogurt and free calling minutes over and over again! A bit more variety wouldn’t hurt, guys!