What's close to the Czech heart?

We probably won't strike you as the most emotional of nations, and yet there are some things we ARE very fond of and emotional about. Only we don't express it very easily. And we only realize ourselves when someone says something negative about them and we find ourselves not agreeing with that.

Here goes:

Beer (and wine, and Kofola) This is the stereotypical one that's actually true. We love our beer. It's cheap and good and almost every town has its brewery. 120 years ago, my town had 7,000 inhabitants, 80 pubs and inns and all of them had their own breweries. Imagine?

I myself am not exactly an alcoholic drink lover, and yet have a beer or a glass of wine from time to time. For the taste, not for the alcohol. Did you know that the word "Budweiser" is Czech? It's the German name for the town of České Budějovice.

But few non-Czechs know that it's not just beer with us. We have several wine-making regions, too, where you can insult beer till your throat gets sore and nobody will mind, but say one word against their wine and you'll get punched in the face. Even when visiting the Trója Chateau in Prague, you'll see some vineyards. We don't make enough wine to export, but still are proud of it. Ask your Czech friends to recommend a Moravian wine.

And even fewer non-Czechs know that we have our own version of Coca Cola, called Kofola, that contains licorice and less sugar than Coke. It isn't a general thing like with beer and wine, but many Czechs drink it and love it.

Film fairy-tales. Have you watched Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella (Tři oříšky pro Popelku, 1973)? If not, I recommend you do. It's one of the rare cases where Czechs were able to communicate to the world what they feel strongly about.
Together with this, there goes a certain fondness for the leading actress, Libuše Šafránková. She's in her 60's now but still kind, beautiful, playful and graceful. And a decent person. Some people say they like her sister, Miroslava Šafránková, more - she's kind, beautiful, graceful and decent, too :-) Watching film fairy-tales and liking the Šafránková sisters is very much a Czech thing.

But there are heaps and heaps of other film fairy-tales to choose from. I'm not sure about the numbers but I'd hazard a guess that there've been at least 5 film fairy-tales made every year since 1968. And almost everyone watches them at Christmas.

The plots are very specific - in fact, a Czech film fairy-tale is a specific genre that's difficult to describe. They don't have many supernatural elements, they're more like romantic-poetic-adventurous comedies. Some of them lean more towards romantic, some towards adventurous, some towards comedy.

If you understand some Czech or have someone to translate for you, here are the most famous ones:

Pyšná princezna (a beautiful romantic film, which holds the record of being the film that the biggest number of Czechs saw in cinemas)
Byl jednou jeden král (sort of a serious, deep comedy)
Hrátky s čertem (comedy)
Princezna se zlatou hvězdou (romantic, comedy)
Šíleně smutná princezna (romantic, comedy)
Princ Bajaja (romantic and adventurous - by the same author as Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella)
Zlatovláska (romantic and adventurous)
Jak se budí princezny (romantic and adventurous)
Princ a večernice (romantic and adventurous)
Třetí princ (adventurous, dark)
S čerty nejsou žerty (adventurous, comedy)
Lotrando a Zubejda (comedy)

Charity. I've read somewhere that Czechs give more money to charity organizations every year than Poles, and I mean more - not just in relation to the number of inhabitants. When you realize that there are 10,5 millions of Czechs and 38,5 millions of Poles, this is actually quite impressive.

My personal theory is that fairy-tales and charity donations are what makes up for the lack of religion in the CzR. Poles are Catholic, so they don't need any fairy-tales or charity donations to fulfil their need of order and hope.

Saturnin. There was a popular poll "Book of my Heart" a couple of years ago. And this book won. It's a humourous novel, written during WWII by Zdeněk Jirotka, who isn't very well-known as a writer but will live forever in this brilliant book. It's been translated to English but unfortunately, most of its charm is in the Czech language. (As I wrote in "Understanding Czechs" - "Being friendly", it's all about words with us.)

But I think you could very well enjoy the miniseries that was made in 1994 and is pretty close to the book. It was also shortened to a film, but when you don't know the book, the film is hard to understand because there are some things left out. So I recommend the minisieries.

What is the book about?

A 30-year-old guy in the 1930's who works in an office and isn't exactly what you'd call imaginative or adventurous. But one day, on a whim, he hires a servant who is the exact opposite of him. This servant's name is Saturnin and his hobby is persuading everyone that his master is a lion- and crocodile-hunter who lives on a houseboat. Then he actually makes him move to a houseboat.

Most of the book takes place during a summer holiday where the young guy, his grandpa, his extremely annoying aunt who only speaks in proverbs (and is actually a prototype of an annoying woman now), her son, Saturnin, and a beautiful girl get stuck in a house in mountains that's been cut off from the rest of the world by a flood. But rest assured that Saturnin will make sure nobody is bored...

Some 1930's personalities. Our first President T.G. Masaryk and writer Karel Čapek - not everyone likes them, but most Czechs admit they were brilliant.

Whatever famous Czech you may have learned about abroad - Božena Němcová, Václav Havel, Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Jaroslav Hašek and his Švejk - please realize that those are perceived as famous Czechs by non-Czechs. They have a huge place in our history, but Masaryk and Čapek (whose brother coined the word "robot", by the way) - these are the ones at the core of Czech identity itself.
The 1930's are perceived as a sort of a Golden Age of Czechs - perhaps subconsciously now, but probably more and more expressed as such in future.

Alfons Mucha's Art Nouveau posters. It's not like we love them to pieces, but they're everywhere and we get offended when it turns out someone doesn't know Alfons Mucha was Czech.

History: Middle Ages, castles and chateaus. Most Czechs have a weird love-hate relationship with history. They're convinced that learning about it is boring, and yet are willing to listen to 80-minute guided tours of castles and chateaus. And when a foreigner visits their town, they suddenly turn into experts on its history. I'm not exactly a historian, and still know that the town I grew up in was given the official town status in 1134.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 860 -1620 were the years of our glory - we had Reformation before Martin Luther, we were the first country in the world to have a Protestant king, the whole of Bible was translated to Czech before it was to English, Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire for some time, Charles University (1348) was the first university east of Germany to be founded, etc. etc.

Now, after 350 years of having other countries telling us what to do, this is obviously something to remember. We love our battle re-enactments, "mediaeval" markets and workshops, castles, archery, fencing, historical costumes, mediaeval music...

Some Germans say that CzR nowadays isn't big on modern art, architecture or science, but it's good for learning about history from. I'm afraid they're right.

Hiking & canoeing (& swimming), mountains & forests. At an English lesson that was to be the last one for the teacher before going back to the U.S., we asked her what she's looking forward to seeing again. She said: diversity. People are much more similar to each other in the CzR than in the U.S., and she likes it, but she's a bit tired of it.

"You Czechs are all white and if I ask you to go hiking with me in a forest next Saturday, you will all react in the same way." And she was right! At the moment when she was saying "hiking with me in a forest", I realized we ALL had exactly the SAME expression on our faces! "Yeah, OK, let's go!" I felt like we were brainwashed!

Nobody forced us to like hiking and canoeing, but we still do. I only have a vague idea why this is so. I don't know whether you've heard about the Canadian author Ernest Thompson Seton, but he was the one to influence our Boy Scout movement by his books about Canadian nature and First Nations people.

And because Boy Scouts were pretty big here in the 1930's and even more so during the Communist era (though secretly and under different names), this was something that influenced us.

Why especially during the Communist era? Because learning how to hike in forests and generally how to survive and live in harmony with nature (how to cooperate, help others, now the names of all kinds of plants and animals, save someone from drowning etc.) was one of the few apolitical things you could do and feel free in.

Also, Czech forests are safe. There are only lynxes and wolves in two mountain ranges and they're afraid of people. The forests are usually small - in several hours' walk, you always reach a village. And there are no swamps in them. Hence the subconscious feeling that forests are friendly, and we don't understand why forests are portrayed as mysterious and dangerous in British whodunnits like Midsomer Murders or New Tricks.
Take the Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella - such a big part of it takes place in a forest!

And also, hiking in a forest is the best thing you can do for your health. Walking is the most natural movement for the human body, breathing in oxygen is good for cancer prevention, and the aerosol trees produce contains anti-oxidants. And if you live in a busy city, the silence is great. I can guarantee that if you venture a 5 km walk in a forest, you'll feel like ten times happier and healthier the next day.

And last but not least... Jára Cimrman. This Czech genius won the BBC poll that took place in many EU countries: "Who was the greatest Czech / German / French / Italian / whatever?" The French voted for Napoleon, Brits for Winston Churchill, etc. etc.

We voted for the guy who advised Eiffel on the shape of his tower, discovered a Yetti in the Arctic, invented absolute rhyme, bikini and dynamite ten minutes after Alfred Nobel, found out you can't make gold by making tobacco smoke react with water, wrote a seven-hour operetta and the "Conquest of North Pole" play I mentioned here in "Understanding Czechs". And has streets named after him all over the CzR.

But the same BBC that organized the poll cancelled its result in the CzR because guess what... Jára Cimrman never lived! BBC had this weird notion that a fictitious character can't be considered a greatest person in a nation's history. Our response is: Who the bloody hell cares! Jára Cimrman was the greatest Czech in history, and that's it!

Czech humour. Not able to describe it, come and see for yourselves :-)
It's best illustrated by Jára Cimrman and the fact that there is the event "Total eclipse of the Sun in the Czech Republic in the year 2081" created on Facebook, and 55,000 people are planning to attend!
And those who declined the invitation are commenting "Sorry, but that's the day the Czech astronauts are returning from Mars, I'm probably going to welcome them instead" or "Unfortunately it's on Sunday and I'll just be returning from my night shift".

Understanding Czechs

Improvisation, hobbies and clubs

Several expats have asked me, how come Czech economy is quite stable and we generally do well, when we're not the most hard-working of nations, almost everything is closed on weekends, and due to the bureaucracy it takes forever to arrange something?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure.

One of the reasons could be the advantage of the position in the centre of Europe.

Or the fact that we're quite good at telling what is most important at the moment, and when we realize something is an emergency we're willing to sacrifice our favourite "pohoda" (relaxed atmosphere) and start acting very quickly and effectively.

And actually, some administrative stuff has become quite simple and effective these last years. Thank God for that.

Also, we're very good at improvisation. The Socialist regime has taught us not to rely on authorities and find alternate ways to arrange or produce something that needs to be arranged or produced. If the only available car repair service is overworked and your turn will come in 3 months, it's better to fix the car yourselves. Perhaps you'll need to call two of your friends and travel to two different towns to get the spare parts. It's going to be hard, but also exciting and you'll learn to rely on yourself as well as on your friends.
It's not 100% like that anymore because we have excellent services now, but until recently, when a woman was getting married she automatically expected her husband to know how to decorate walls, how to fix the toilet, the cooker, everything. And if he didn't know how, he was expected to call his friends and discuss it with them.

You can see the remains of this system in the laws on individual entrepeneurs that are actually quite loose (if you don't reach certain sum per year, it's very easy to be e.g. a translator, a potter, to make extra money knitting sweaters etc.) And there are various part-time jobs you can do while studying, jobs you can do from your home, etc. If you're lucky and want this sort of lifestyle, you can have two 1/3-time jobs and also work from home as an entrepeneur. We're actually a really weeeeiiird combination of strictness and freedom :-)

And because the number of possibilities what to do with your life was extremely limited in 1948-1990 (I remember the world being much, much simpler and smaller then, and also much less colourful). Life was pretty much predictable, and so many people found refuge in hobbies.

Here, the possibilities were much greater. Bird-watching, hiking, biking (and tinkering with bikes), train-spotting, sewing, gardening, amateur acting, football, local history... There were excellent books published on various styles of weaving, historical gingerbread baking, on how to recognize specific kinds of birds in nature, how to repair your bike etc. etc. They were written by scholars and specialists, and still perfectly understandable to "common folk". This way, many people became specialists in fields they didn't study, and passed it on to their children.

This blog actually exists thanks in part to my father, who earns his living as a railway car technology specialist, but because he needed something to do in his free time and he couldn't travel, he started studying the excellent books on languages and linguistics published in those times. He was also asked to enrol in a course of Tibetan language, because a tibetology professor was sacked from university for his not-enough-Communist opinions, and needed a job. So my father visited a course on Tibetan language for 13 years, and thus helped the professor survive. After the revolution, the professor became a famous and respected authority on Tibet, deservedly.
That's why my father knew so much about languages and passed it on to us, and all three of us are now translators, translating books and films for the Czech Television.

We Czechs still make less distinction between jobs and free-time activities than some other nations. I don't mean we work from home during weekends (although of course some people's jobs require that), but with many people, it's like: "I'm interested in the subject, so I simply spend a lot of time with it, and I'm lucky I got a job in that field. My friends at work are the same way, too, and we spend a lot of time chatting about the subject."

Also, it sometimes happens that people have a job with an IT company or so but they're crazy about their hobby, and they spend so much time with it and form a club together with their friends, then start organizing regular events, then create a webpage... and then find out they can actually get a job in that particular field, or found a company of their own.

There's a great many official and unofficial clubs related to various hobbies and activities, and they're doing a world of good for local communities. I admire them for going public with their achievements - local history clubs publish articles and organize guided tours, film enthusiasts organize public film evenings, railway enthusiasts collect money for 10 years to re-open a local historical railway etc. etc. I think it's clubs like this that keep the Czech society alive and well.

If you're an expat and need to make Czech friends, I recommend you try finding a club of people with the same hobby you have. Be it archery, hot-air balloons, battle re-enactment, entomology or Monty Python silly walks - I guarantee there's a club that will accept you and invite you to their events.

Information

I don't think we even realize it ourselves, but our culture is based on the concept of GIVING AND RECEIVING INFORMATION.

It's like an iceberg - most of the time, you only see the tip and don't realize that it's everywhere beneath your ship, but if you're foreign and meeting some Czechs for the first time, you'll probably feel like a Titanic.
You'll get showered by questions asking not about your feelings, impressions or thoughts, but about facts. Where are you from? Why have you come to the CzR? What's the capital of your country? Does it have any mountains? Where do you work? What did you study? What music do you listen to?

And then you'll get showered by information. These and these cafés are the best to go to; these and these places are the most interesting to visit; these and these Czech products are worth taking home with you.

This is where many non-Czechs decide whether they like Czechs or not. Some will interpret this as interest in themselves and conclude that Czechs are friendly. Some will find it too nosy. Some will find it emotionless, overwhelming or lacking in purpose. But for us, it's neither of these. It's simply the way we function.

Unlike most other education systems, ours is based on memorizing immense amounts of data. Since the age of 6, we're taught to receive, memorize and exchange information, information and more information. Until recently, "intelligent" had been widely understood as "having excellent memory". This way, information has become the keystone of our society.

No wonder we excel in areas that require processing heaps of terms, dates and names, like medicine, law, history, biology and chemistry (we gave the world genetics and soft contact lenses). And no wonder Czech Wikipedia is so large for such a small country. We love hiking and biking in foreign countries because it gives us the opportunity of first-hand experience with the places whose exotic names were forced down our throats at school.

When you ask a Czech about Africa, he'll probably have a tendency to get nervous and then start shooting: the Nile, Victoria Falls, Rwanda, Burundi, Antananarivo, Cameroun, Ghana, Timbouktou, Chad, Addis Abeba, Kenya, Kilimanjaro, Oranje, Johannesburg, Niger, Mali, Senegal... and then apologize he doesn't know more. Placing lots of names on a blind map, that's how we were taught geography.
We had to know every country's capital by heart at the age of 13. I still have the reflex: Chile... Santiago de Chile! Nepal... Kathmandu! Indonesia... Jakarta! Thailand... Bangkok! Mongolia... Ulanbatar!

Of course when we chat with friends, we tell stories, make jokes, express support and give advice like anyone else. But underneath that... there's the one to rule them all and in the darkness bind them: INFORMATION EXCHANGE. We were sort of taught it's even more important than people, and it takes some growing up to realize this isn't true.

The only things that are above information exchange is expressing interest in your well-being, jokes and film quotes. That's the one where we're being friendly.

Coming to terms with this concept pretty much determines how you'll feel speaking to Czechs.

So next time Czechs will shower you with questions or facts, remember... we're not being friendly or nosy, we're just being ourselves...

Being interested in the well-being of others + joking + quoting = Being friendly

We're not the ones to say "Love you" at the end of every conversation. If you don't want to make your Czech friends feel awkward, don't tell them that - say this only to your immediate family.

We're not very good at expressing respect, either - but you're welcome to try :-)

But definitely try expressing interest in the well-being of others. That's what most of our polite phrases say:

Měj se! = Take care! By this, we mean something like "May your next few days be without unpleasant events!"
Hezký večer / den / víkend! = Have a nice day / evening / weekend!
Ať se daří! = May your next few days be successful and without unplesant events or failures!
Se srdečným pozdravem... = With a nice, sincere greeting... (i.e. Regards... Yours...)

You can see that the words "nice" and "pleasant" are the all-time favourites :-)

It's not uncommon for passengers on a train to try and be nice to the conductor by saying "Have you had a long, hard day?" "The passengers are so unpleasant today, aren't they?" Allowing someone to complain or show they're stressed out is considered to be very polite and nice.

When you come back to work after an illness, be it only a couple of days' cold, expect everyone to ask you "How are you feeling?" or "Are you feeling better?" 

Want to make everyone laugh in an awkward situation? Want to cheer up your friend? Tell a joke or quote a Czech film.

Anecdotes are very popular here, funny things that happened to someone you know are even better, and film quotes are the best. That's because our culture is very words-oriented. We aim to nail it by finding the perfect funny line to describe the situation. People who can express themselves well are deeply respected. If you can't express yourself well, use someone else's words = quote a film :-)

I don't know what is this type of humour called. Perhaps "absurd". It's allusions to reeaaallly weird and funny scenes in films.

Here's an example:

Someone mentions your alcohol problems, and someone else tries to defend you but manages to mention your broken marriage in the process.
You say, a bit sarcastically: "Thank you, chief, for standing up for me." (For Czech speakers: "Děkuju ti, náčelníku, že ses mě zastal.")

This is an allusion to a theatre play called "Conquest of the North Pole", where the Czechs trying to reach the North Pole suffer from depression and one of them tries to cheer them up by dressing up as a penguin.
But they're so exhausted and confused that one of them shoots the "penguin" in the "wing" with a rifle. The guy inside the penguin suit gets mad, obviously, and starts yelling "it's me, you moron, penguins live in the Antarctica, not here!" And the leader of the expedition argues "when you're so exhausted, do you think about zoology? I didn't realize it was you, myself, let alone such a simpleton as this guy!" And "this guy" proves that he IS a simpleton by saying sincerely "Thanks, chief, for standing up for me."

Makes no sense?
That's the whole point...

We call these wry, funny sentences and film quotes hlášky. The translation would probably be "lines".

If you speak some Czech and like the idea of film quotes, I recommend a book called Neber úplatky, nebo se z toho zblázníš - aneb Hlášky z českých filmů. If you want to make your home in the CzR, becoming familiar with the lines mentioned in this book is the ultimate tool to achieve that :-) Here are the films that are most popular sources of quotes - and also very good, so I can also recommend them for mere entertainment purposes :-)

Cesta do hlubin študákovy duše (1939)
Limonádový Joe (1964)
Jáchyme, hoď ho do stroje (1974)
Na samotě u lesa (1976)
Marečku, podejte mi pero (1976)
Kulový blesk (1978)
Postřižiny (1980)
Vrchní, prchni (1980)
S tebou mě baví svět (1982)
Slavnosti sněženek (1983)
Vesničko má, středisková (1985)
Dobytí severního pólu (filmed theatre play)
Dědictví aneb Kurvahošigutntag (1992)
Lotrando a Zubejda (fairy-tale, 1996)
Pelíšky (1999)
Samotáři (2000)

If you want a "crash course" in quotes, just watch Limonádový Joe, Jáchyme, hoď ho do stroje, Marečku, podejte mi pero, Vesničko má, středisková, Dobytí severního pólu and Pelíšky.

It's not a coincidence that most of these films were written by Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak (two of the people behind the Oscar-winning Kolya, by the way) - IMHO these two are the key to the Czech soul.

About Central and Eastern Europe

Central Europe - Has a Czech person hurt you and you want a revenge? Call them Eastern European and watch them get furious.

The thing with Central vs. Eastern Europe is:
We're taught at school that the Czech Republic is in Central Europe. And then we grow up and find ourselves being called Eastern Europeans by foreigners, much to our unpleasant surprise.
I confess to getting furious at being called Eastern European, too. Not just because it places us in the same box with Russians and Belorussians who we have very little in common with - but also simply because of geography. Look at the map of Europe - the Czech Republic is right in the centre.
And I simply relate more to Bavaria, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary than to Belarus. Austria and Hungary felt like "related" countries, while all the Belorussians and Ukrainians I've met seemed like strangers. Some of them very nice, but - different.

Not mentioning that many foreigners think Eastern Europe to include countries like Romania which we have nothing in common with at all - except the fact that some Czechs emmigrated there in the 19th century and it also had Communist regime. Really, anything you can think of - countryside, religion, language, architecture, folklore, history -  everything's different there. If you based the term "Eastern Europe" on the shared Communist history (which is just 40 years out of 2000), then you might as well claim that Cuba is in East Asia because it's Communist just like North Korea, or that USA is in Australia because it's a democratic continent.

The time period when we "shared something" with Romania and Russia was simply too short and forceful to create a cultural region.

Btw, some people seem to think we were part of the Soviet Union. We were not.

I was thinking about this a lot, and came to the conclusion that this "CzR-not-being-in-Eastern-Europe" thing isn't just my impression.

I mean, what DO we have in common with Russia, Ukraine or Belarus? 
1) The fact that the Cyrillic alphabet was invented on our territory (but we've been using the Latin alphabet instead for 1000 years now).
2) The 20 years a small part of Ukraine was part of Czechoslovakia.
3) The 40 years we had to learn Russian at school (mostly doing very poorly, I'm afraid) and the 23 years Soviet tanks were here (which wouldn't exactly be "having something in common" anyway, not mentioning that some of the soldiers were actually Uzbek, Georgian and whatnot).
4) The 80 years in the 19th century when some Czech and Slovak national revivalists were interested in Russian culture.
5) Some traits like impatience or fondness for swear words. (But Italians and Brits are known for swearing a lot, too.)
6) The shared origin of languages.
Can't think of anything more.

And even the languages aren't mutually intelligible. We're only able to understand Slovak after some practice (it's like for a British person learning to understand the English spoken in Louisiana), also Polish and Croatian to some small extent, but not Eastern Slavic languages. That's because there's been a long and heavy German influence on Czech. If you know Russian, don't expect Czech to sound anything like it - to me, the sound of Czech is more like a cross between Scottish English and Italian, rather than Russian. There are also heaps of words that look similar in Russian and Polish and Czech but mean something different, even opposite. Perhaps I'll make them into a separate article here. Just one example: I remember when I got my credit card PIN code by post in Latvia, and beneath it, it was written "Please remember this PIN code" in several languages. I thought the Russian version was telling me to forget the PIN!

And as to the Slavic heritage... I read somewhere that Czech genes are in average about 30% Celtic, 30% Slavic, 30% Germanic, and then some Jewish, Hungarian, Caucasian etc. My father's cousin had his DNA tests done, and it turned out that the person with the most similar DNA is Irish.
And as to our popular legend about Father Czech who was Southern Slavic by origin and came to this territory in search for a new home... turns out there is a mediaeval chronicle telling a story about a Father Czech - who was Celtic and came from France.

And what is it we share with eastern parts of Germany, Austria, Slovakia or Hungary?
1) Beer.
2) The whole history, basically. Many Czech noblemen took Bavarian or Saxon wives, part of Austria belonged to us in Middle Ages, we in turn belonged to Austria for 400 years, and Slovakia and Hungary were part of the same state (Austro-Hungarian Empire).
3) Catholic influence.
4) Music. The folk music in the western parts of CzR is similar to German, while in the eastern parts it's basically Hungarian.
5) Stress on the first syllable.
6) Looks. People in these countries simply don't look like foreigners to me.
7) Architecture.
8) Climate.
9) The kind of bureaucracy that came from Austro-Hungarian Empire (and which I very happily didn't miss while living in Latvia, where most things are arranged simply and effectively). The feeling that offices must open early in the morning, that official language must be less intelligible than the "common" language, that there must be a language board deciding what is correct and what is not. We sometimes call these things "courtesy of Mr. Emperor".
10) History of small industry. Numerous factories, but mostly small ones.
11) No sense of... largeness. "Why make something big when it can be small." Food is packed in small packages. You'll find very few skyscrapers in Prague, Vienna, Bratislava or Budapest. The motorways are only as broad as really necessary. Old houses and farms are smaller than in Northern Germany or Poland. Basically, anything that seems on too large a scale - be it long military parades, loud speech, long limousines, city parts consisting of high-rise buildings - looks unimportant to us, like "created by a megalomaniac just showing off". I think it's because the density of inhabitation has been high for quite some time now, so we're used to the fact that we can't afford to waste space or disturb other people. We tend to be loud, but not very loud.

Are you asking yourself "Why is she telling us all this?"

I actually have two points - one is that the Czech country is in the centre of Europe and therefore it's had many influences. Various tribes came and stayed, merchants and soldiers from various countries (even France or Sweden) kept crossing it, staying and/or making babies. So IMO it can't be described simply as "Slavic" or "Celtic". Nor as "Eastern European". The only term I feel describes us is "Central European" because it's based on geography, history and culture - things that constitute our identity - rather than on genetics or language or 20th century events.

The second point is that European history is long and complex and it's created many cultural regions. There are regions many non-Europeans don't know about.

Just like U.S. isn't just the East Coast, the South, the West and California, but there are regions like the Appalachians or New England; just like Canada consists of the Pacific Coast, the Maritimes, Quebec, Nunavut etc.; just like Africa is so diverse that there are countries with more than 100 languages spoken; just like there isn't one Chinese language; there isn't just Southern, Western, Northern and Eastern Europe.
If you, say, create four affiliates of your company based on this simplified four-fold division of Europe, there will always be inconsistencies and difficulties. For example, the region that I consider to be Eastern Europe (Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) isn't homogenous at all - it's divided into many smaller cultural regions, too, as Ukraine has been very proudly trying to prove these past months.

Lysice - a small / big surprise

Description: Chateau with unusual objects of daily use, unique chateau garden, in a beautiful countryside.

Themes: Chateau, chateau garden, colonnade, Renaissance, Baroque, weapons collection, chateau chapel, Chinese art, Japanese armour.

Distance from a city: About 50 km to the North-West from Brno, about 200 km to the South-East from Prague.

Transport, level of difficulty, orientation: This trip is best for situations when you want to visit a beautiful old place but aren't able to walk far, or don’t feel well, or the weather isn't very good. It doesn’t involve much walking and the orientation is simple.

You can get here by train and coach. Use www.idos.cz to find out which train and coach to take (see the article Travelling by train here). Trains run every hour, coaches every hour or every two hours. Go by train to Skalice nad Svitavou, then use the bridge over the platforms to get outside the railway station. (If it happened that you needed to stay in this railway station for some time, the ticket office and the waiting room with vending machines are behind an inconspicuous-looking door with a "Vestibul" sign.)

The bus stop is on the opposite side of the road from the railway station, and your line number is 257. Don't be misled if the coach is very small. The transport company has started to use small vehicles for less frequented lines. Say "Lysice" to the driver (pronounced "Lissitseh") and the ticket machine will show you the price. It was 20 CZK when we went there. See what the driver does - some drivers are very particular about handing the tickets to the passengers themselves, some, on the other hand, are very particular about the passenger taking the tickets from the machines themselves. So just wait a second or two and if he doesn't give you the ticket, take it yourselves.

Your best bet is to sit on the right-hand side of the coach because then you can see the white signs saying which village you're entering. Wait for the sign "Lysice" but if the coach stops immediately after that, don't get off - there're several stops in the town and the first one (called "Lysice, škola") is too far from the chateau. The coach stops there sometimes, sometimes not. Wait for it to go downhill to what obviously is the town's centre. The name of the stop is "Lysice, pohostinství".

You can see the chateau steeple from the bus stop. Just follow the stream that runs across the town.

Beware, the entrance to the chateau can be easily missed - the front building probably used to be a stable and looks quite ordinary. Look for a broad gate with a small, but important-looking sign. If you peek through the gate and can see the chateau - well, here you are.

There are several tours possible in the chateau - the first one, as usual, is in the representation part, with all sorts of salons, a dining room, the armoury and the chapel. The second one is in the gentry's bedrooms.

Don’t go here on a Saturday! – the website says the chateau is usually booked for weddings on Saturdays.

Time required: If you go from Brno, it's an easy afternoon trip - it requires about 5-7 hours, depending on how long you want to walk in the garden. If you go from Prague, it's a one-day trip.

Suitability for handicapped people: Good. The mentally handicapped needn't go to the chateau interiors tour and still enjoy the interesting gardens; those on wheelchairs can go to the chateau interiors tour because there's a lift for wheelchairs - quite a rarity when it comes to Czech chateaus. I've heard some chateaus organize tours for the visually impaired, too, but I forgot to ask whether this is the case with Lysice.

Suitability for children: say, 40% :-) The chateau tour is shorter than in other chateaus, only 45-50 min., and the rooms are small so there's something new to look at all the time. Plus, there are some interesting objects of daily use, as I mentioned, so the tour isn't very boring. But - still, it's a chateau tour where they're supposed to be quiet and walk slowly. The garden is suitable for children, though, with its many levels and mysterious corners to explore.

Facilities: Prepare a 5 CZK coin for the toilet. (If you don't have one with you, the slot-machine that lets you in also accepts 1 and 2 CZK coins :-) ). The ticket office is spacious. If there're more people you're supposed to form a queue that goes from the right to the left (along the counter). There're benches everywhere.
There isn't a restaurant in the chateau, only a nice café where you can sip coffee and eat a cake in the chateau courtyard. There are some restaurants in the town but I can't promise they'll be open Sunday evening.

You can buy postcards and booklets in the ticket office, plus there is a souvenir shop in the entrance to the garden.

Languages: The chateau is too off-the-beaten-track to offer interiors tours in foreign languages. But it has a recorded "Audio guide" in English in every room. Arrange in the ticket office for such tour.

Website: www.zameklysice.cz

I’d known about the existence of Lysice for a long time from pictures in various chateaus lists, and also from a TV series (if anyone was interested, it’s the series Četnické humoresky, episode 4-Beáta). It looked like a small manor house with a long and narrow garden. I’d wanted to visit it for a long time, thinking it’d be a small, cute place. Well... I was proved wrong.

First of all, it isn’t in a village as I thought - Lysice is a town. Or rather, Lysice are a town because the word is perceived as plural form in Czech. Furthermore, the chateau is quite impressive with its tall white walls, two courtyards and four gardens. And the aristocratic families that occupied it were apparently far from being narrow-minded regional gentry. One of them founded the first children’s hospital in the eastern part of the country, another one– countess von Eschenbach – gained fame as a poet in Austria, another one was a naval officer who travelled around the world.

We were, of course, shown the chateau interiors by a guide, as is the usual practice in the CzR. My sister had the great idea that I could make notes of the most interesting things the guide told and showed us. Here’s what I scribbled down:

-          colourful, but not too striking, tasteful interiors

-          Doric, Ionic and Corinthian pillars

-          gold and silver ceiling

-          Eschenbach: Ode to a Cigarette (a poem written in praise of cigarettes... by a non-smoker :-) )

-          chateau theatre, burned down, the biggest collection of costumes in the area, used also by theatres in Vienna

-          Classicist salon

-          beginning of the 19th century – local landlord founded a factory for making wires, nails and screws. Went bankrupt later, turned into a lace factory, still working

-          „husband whistle“ (This requires an explanation. The lady of the manor didn’t share a bedroom with her husband – he had his own bedroom upstairs, connected with her bedroom by a staircase. This staircase was so narrow that the lady, in her broad 18th century skirts, wouldn’t fit in. So, whenever she felt like meeting her husband, she blew into a special pipe in the wall that worked similarly to an organ pipe. Her husband heard the whistle and came down the stairs. (She also had a similar pipe-whistle-whatever for calling her servant girl.) Imagine the quarrells back then? „What's the matter with you, darling? I whistled for you yesterday, but you didn’t come!“

-          Captain’s bridge in library

-          Japanese armour and sword, Chinese aquarium

-          13th century sword, Prussian helmets, sword with the blade of saw-fish

I must confess Lysice instantly captured my heart and made it to my TOP FIVE chateaus list. Not just because of the unusual objects listed above but also because of (in no particular order) the very nice and helpful staff, not-crowdedness, Renaissance elements (yep, Renaissance is my favourite style!) and white colour (yep again, white is my favourite colour when it comes to chateaus! :-) ). And being amazingly photogenic, and having several terrace gardens, a colonnade – the only chateau colonnade in the CzR on the top of which you can walk! I understood the garden area is unique in several ways – the colonnade, the preservation of Renaissance terrace gardens system, and the way the moat is made into a pond and incorporated into it.

VOCABULARY of some English and Czech terms

This vocabulary is meant chiefly for people educated outside Europe because, among other things, it explains some aspects of European architecture. But anyone who's interested is welcome to read it, of course :-)


Castle x chateau - Both are residences of local aristocracy.
A castle is a stone fortress built earlier than cca. 1530. A chateau was built after 1530, using bricks. Some chateaus are rebuilt castles. Some chateaus were rebuilt in the 19th century to be made to look like castles.

There are hundreds and hundreds of castles in the Czech Republic - I heard that according to the Guiness Book of Records, the Czech Republic is the most castle-dense country in the world. But I'm not sure about that - it's quite possible that the authorities counted even castles that just consist of one wall nowadays. Honestly, most castles are in ruins.
This is an example of a castle:

The number of chateaus is much smaller - about 120. Most of them have beautiful gardens and parks.
They make for good one-day trip destinations, because it's sort of an unwritten rule in the CzR that chateaus should be made accessible to the public. That's why most of them are furnished with historical furniture and there are guided tours that tell you all about it - how the aristocracy lived, any connections with other European countries' history, and any funny or scary events that might have happened here - be they true or not :-) This way, you can learn about a 18th century mirror that makes you look younger, about a chateau painted red because there's a blood stain on the wall that wouldn't come off (from a man a local landlord murdered), and about a nobleman that was buried alive.
That's why even privately-owned chateaus - by the descendants of the original owners, who got them back from the state (after they were confiscated by the Communists) are mostly like this. If the owners live in them, they only occupy one wing and make the rest accessible to the public. Or, they make them into culture centres or hotels. Chateaus not open for the public are an anomaly here.
Here's a chateau:

Pond (or rybník in Czech) - something between a water reservoir and a natural lake. More precisely, it's a water reservoir built in the 16th, 17th or 18th century. Its purpose was to hold water and to grow fish (Czech ryby, hence the name).
They're often of rectangular shape but because they've been around for some 400 years, they have old trees growing on their banks and fit into the countryside perfectly. And so most foreign visitors mistake them for natural lakes. There are hundreds of them, while natural lakes are much less numerous - there is just a couple of them in the mountains.

Renaissance - The first style in clothing, architecture, music and art that came after Middle Ages (the last style of which was Gothic).
In my country, it was dominant roughly from 1530 to 1630.
Its key word is considered to be "harmony". No extremes. That's why it doesn't make the impression of trying to reach the sky (as the previous Gothic style does - even the clothing with its tall hats), nor to express dramatic emotions (as its successor, Baroque style, does). In architecture, it's more of a style of worldly buildings - like town houses and chateaus. Only a few churches are built in Renaissance style. Although - there are exceptions to every rule:

As to Renaissance chateaus, you'll find them in more remote and less rich areas. That's because they're the oldest ones. Wherever the region was rich, the aristocracy had the money to re-build their Renaissance residence in whatever style was popular at a later time.

If you want to recognize Renaissance buildings as you walk, you can go for the top parts of them - they're usually divided into small "steps" or "waves":

or the buildings are painted with the typical sgraffiti called psaníčka (letters, envelopes):