My Czech Republic Blog

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

The Žižka Monument

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The Žižka National Monument sits atop Vítkov Hill in the Žižkov district of Prague. The large statue that dominates it was built to commemorate the Hussite warrior Jan Žižka (1360? – 1424) and was completed in 1932. It is supposedly the largest equestrian statue in the world. From this area, there is a great view of Žižkov and other parts of Prague.

The communists made their mark on the complex. At one point it contained the mausoleum of Klement Gottwald, who was the first communist president of Czechoslovakia.

Zizka Monument

Zizka Monument

Zizka Monument       View of Zizkov

Photos © jeffshanberg.com

Welcome to My Server

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I read an article in the Prague Daily Monitor this week that was overflowing with the word server. There would be nothing wrong with that had the article been about servers, or at least one server. But the article wasn’t about servers. It was about a website. Here are a few excerpts from the text:

“Many mistakes on server promoting Czech Republic”
“The newly-launched internet server www.czech.cz, aimed to promote the Czech Republic…”
“The server is mainly designed for foreign tourists…”

I’d probably leave the article alone had it not become the proverbial last straw. For some reason, Czechs seem to have a particular liking for using the word server when referring to a website, so I read or hear about a server www this or www that or about someone “running a server about something” a lot more often than I’d like to. And now this article comes along…

To rtj/dr with the Prague Daily Monitor and to everyone who doesn’t know what a server is: A server (in Czech server) is a computer that sits in a room somewhere with a bunch of connectors and cables coming out of it. It’s a machine. It doesn’t promote anything, it can’t be launched unless it’s shot into space on a space shuttle, and it’s usually not designed for foreign tourists. The term you want to use is website (in Czech internetové/webové stránky), i.e. an online collection of pages with content.

Definitions of both terms can be found in dictionaries and encyclopedias all over the internet. Such as on that handy server called Wikipedia.

Great Moravian Slivovice in Prague

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The other day I had the pleasure of enjoying excellent, genuine Moravian slivovice at a Prague café. If you like slivovice or would like to know what the traditional Moravian plum brandy tastes like when it’s top notch, try Slivovica Žufánek. You can find it at many Prague restaurants and bars. The plum brandy and other products such as pear brandy, walnut liquor or mead are made by the Žufánek family in Southern Moravia.

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