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 Don’t they see how painfully outdated the design is?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

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.

On the Subject of Referendums

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As you may have heard, the Montenegrins voted for their formal independence from Serbia in a referendum that was held on May 21. Why am I mentioning this on a Czech Republic blog? First of all, Jeff and I are going to be vacationing in Montenegro this summer, so we’re keeping an eye on what’s happening in the country. Aside from this purely selfish reason, I also wanted to reminisce briefly about the split of Czechoslovakia (or then The Czech and Slovak Federative Republic) back in 1993. There’s a difference between the two separations. The Montenegrins voted. We, the Czech and Slovak people, had no say in the division of the country. We were not asked whether or not we wanted to be divided from each other at all. The politicians decided for us. I will forever wonder if things would have turned out the same had a referendum been held.

You Milk Snob!

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     Why is it that things that are meant to be substitutes for the real stuff are considered “the default” in the Czech Republic?

     I’m at a party and the hostess comes out of the kitchen to take orders for coffee. The question each guest is faced with is “normální, nebo zrnkovou?” where normální refers to instant coffee from a plastic jar and zrnková means coffee made from ground coffee beans. Everyone asks for normální and I feel strange.
     When it’s my turn to be the hostess, I buy fresh Brazilian coffee beans and make sure there’s enough cream and sugar for everybody. When the time comes to serve coffee and the guests find out there’s no instant coffee in the house, one of them opts for tea instead. (As a side note, I was visiting with friends once and was served normální coffee creamer, which came in the form of a white powder.)
     I was in a grocery store with a couple of Czech friends. They wanted to help get stuff, so they asked what all I needed. I said I needed butter.
     “You mean margarine?”
     A minute later they noticed me looking around helplessly, so they inquired what I was looking for. I said I was looking for milk.
     “Why, it’s right here!” and they pointed to the boxes of trvanlivé mléko, a nearly non-perishable, strangely tasting white liquid with an expiration date several months in the future. I specified that I was looking for normal milk. They didn’t understand and I quickly realized my mistake. The perception of what is normal can be very subjective. So I explained that I was looking for fresh milk. There was none to be found in the store and again, I felt strange.
     I have been called a beer snob by my American friends who drink nothing but Bud Light. I have been called a coffee snob after I fell in love with Hawaiian Kona coffee and wouldn’t want to drink any other kind for a year. I must be perceived as a tea snob since I buy specialty loose teas, store them in airtight tin cans and brew them through a cotton filter. Now I can safely add two more categories to the list. I’m also a butter snob and a milk snob.