My Czech Republic Blog

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

Český Krumlov Is Finally With It

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A strange thing made my day. It happened when I went to the Český Krumlov website as I occasionally do when I want to look up something in connection with the town.

Český Krumlov is one of the most visited Czech Republic destinations. Its entire historical center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the town is talked about and written about in travel guides, its wealth is closely linked to tourism, the city tourist information center is one of the best in the country, yet the official website through which Český Krumlov has presented itself to the world looked as if it was trying to compete in a bad web design contest. Whenever www.ckrumlov.cz would appear on my screen, I’d wonder in astonishment: Don’t they get it? Don’t they see how painfully outdated the design is? How made-for-free-in-1995 the site looks? Are they never going to redesign it?!? Even the little village where I grew up has a website that looks far better than this!

Today I was about to email the www.ckrumlov.cz link to someone abroad, with embarassment and explanations that this is really not how Czech websites typically look. Just as I typed the URL into the browser and hit Enter, I gasped with excitement. There it was! A beautiful, perfectly presentable, readable site with oh-so-normal navigation was smiling at me in shades of yellow and inviting me to click around.

Welcome online, Český Krumlov! Here’s a toast to whoever finally got it!

 ckrumlov.cz before:

ckrumlov.cz - Before

and after (the new version went up on June 1, 2006):

ckrumlov.cz - After

A Revolution on Czech Roads?

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The Czech Republic has one of the worst accident rates in Europe. According to an article on the Radio Praha website, “Critics say in general Czech drivers drive too fast, don’t keep their distance, take unnecessary risks and are generally very aggressive”. The national goal is to cut the number of road transport fatalities in half by 2010, based on the 2002 level.

On July 1, a new road transport law came into effect. Some important parts of the law are that it creates a point system for driving offenses, establishes when licenses can be taken away, and increases fines.

The articles below discuss the law, including some of the controversy surrounding it. It’s too early to make any final judgement, but so far, so good.

Radio Praha
Czech drivers study new rules as points system approaches
Summary of new rules for driving

Prague Post
Law aims to punish unsafe drivers

ČTK
Fewer die on roads on July’s first weekend as law comes to force

Radio Praha
Fewer deaths on Czech roads as new law comes into force


Update – one week after:

ČTK
Only one person dies on Czech roads during two national holidays

Oooolong, Lapsang Souchong and All the Others

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When I was a little girl growing up in Czechoslovakia, tea was tea. Cheap black tea from China, India or Ceylon was all we could get. The container said “Čaj”. When you asked for tea, you knew what was coming.

Those times are over. Capitalism arrived and brought with it all sorts of new things. Fruit flavored Pickwick teas were some of the first “bourgeois” arrivals that hit the young Czech market in the early 1990s. They woke up the lethargic Czech tea-drinking nation to a brand new, exciting era of a seemingly limitless selection of tea varieties, flavors and brands that now fill the shelves of supermarkets and specialty tea stores.

Asking for tea is no longer simple business. When I’m ordering tea at a Czech restaurant these days, I’m used to being asked, “Black, fruit or green?”, not necessarily in that order. I was recently at a Prague pizzeria and ordered tea. A container full of tea packets arrived at the table. Lemon, orange and spice, green, chamomile, peach, cinnamon, strawberry, mint… Not a single packet of normal black tea. But again, what is normal? Which reminds me, the same pizzeria used to serve tea in large, thick-glass beer mugs. I loved it. To my great disappointment, the beer mugs were later replaced by boring, fancy tea cups. Oh well.

Holiday Makers

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I just finished reading another book by Michal Viewegh, Účastníci zájezdu (Holiday Makers). It’s one of his earlier novels (he wrote it in 1996) and it turns out to be my second most favorite book by Viewegh so far. There has been a lot of talk about Holiday Makers and the fourth edition of the book was published a few months ago, all in connection with the April release of the movie that was based on the bestselling novel. The film was entered into the Tribeca Film Festival soon after it came out and ended up receiving an award and a special mention to the ensemble cast.

I loved the book. I haven’t seen the movie and am a little reluctant to go see it because a film is rarely as good as the book it’s based on. I’m too curious to see all the characters on the screen though, so I probably won’t resist…