AuthorMartin Hladík

Photo: Podbrdsko Encyclopedia

One of the last battles to take place in World War Two Europe occurred south-west of Prague around the town of Milín, several days after Germany had officially capitulated. It was unique in that the combat saw units of the Wehrmacht, SS, Soviet Union, United States and Czech partisans all take part in the fighting. A newly opened exhibition documents the events that took place there and the deaths that may have been avoided had the allies taken a different approach.

South-west of Prague, on the left bank of the Vltava River, lies the small town of Milín. It was around here, specifically in the area of Slivice, that one of the last battles to take place in Europe between Nazi Germany and the Allies was fought from May 11-12.

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Marek Štefek, Czech Surfing Association

For the first time in the country’s history, Czechia is sending its own team to the ISA World Surfing Games – the sport’s world championships. Six contestants are traveling to the upcoming event, which is set to take place in in El Salvador, Central America. For many it is the culmination of a long road towards getting surfing established in the landlocked country.

Prague’s Štvanice Island turned into a mini-California beach earlier this week, as a group of cheerful, fit and remarkably tanned individuals took questions from the media surrounded by surfboards.

A special news conference was held to announce that, for the first time ever, Czechia will be sending its own team to the planet’s premier surfing event – the World Surfing Games.

Organised by the International Surfing Association (ISA), the annual competition brings together the best surfers from around the globe and, for those who are successful, offers the chance to qualify for the Olympic Games, where the sport made its debut just two years ago.

Seven Czechs are travelling to the sandy beaches of Surf City in El Salvador, three women and four men, with one of the latter acting as a reserve in case his teammates get injured.

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Tereza Kunderová, Czech Radio

Czech Radio’s youth and alternative station Radio Wave lost its FM frequency not long after its launch. But that didn’t stop the channel finding sustained success online, thanks to clever marketing and pioneering use of podcasts.

The Czech Radio youth and alternative station Radio Wave was launched to some fanfare in 2006.

However, only a year later the fledging channel lost its FM frequency.

Though that may have seemed like quite a setback at the time, the station’s operators quickly switched to becoming an online only broadcaster – and have tried to stay ahead of the game ever since.

This includes being a pioneer of podcasting and on-demand in Czechia.

Barbora Šichanová is the head of the station.

“For Radio Wave it demands a lot of effort to figure out new ways of distribution, smarter strategies, promotion using new tools and so on. So I wouldn’t say I see linear broadcasting as a limitation. For me it’s more crucial to be able to recognise and follow upcoming trends and also new habits of young people. We need to be creative and think outside of the box of traditional radio.”

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Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Khalil Baalbaki, Czech Radio

A radio receiver used by the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk or the microphone into which the very first radio announcer spoke. These are just some of the rare exhibits that are currently on display at the National Technical Museum in Prague as part of an exhibition marking the centenary of Czech Radio.

The exhibition, entitled One Hundred Years is Just the Beginning, got underway in the National Technical Museum on Prague’s Letná on Wednesday, on the eve of Czech Radio’s 100th birthday.

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Authors: Ruth Fraňková, Josef Kaňka

The President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, spoke at the summit of the Council of Europe in Reykjavík, where he supported the establishment of a Register of Damages Caused by Russian Aggression. Its establishment also became the main output of the summit. The registry will be based in The Hague and will collect claims for compensation from both Ukrainian citizens and legal entities such as the state, municipalities, hospitals or schools. The register should start functioning during the autumn. Within three years, the Council of Europe should also create a compensation mechanism for damages.

“I am glad that this is happening, because it is the first time that, on the basis of a solid legal basis, there will be an inventory of the damages caused by the war, whether to individuals or the state, and based on this, a mechanism will be set to compensate the damages, from which sources. The Czech Republic actively participated in this and I am glad that the Czech footprint will be visible in this process,” said Petr Pavel at the end of the summit.

The summit took place after eighteen years, the last time it was held in Warsaw in 2005, and its renewal was a clear signal that the Council of Europe still has an important role to play.

“The topic of this summit is Russian aggression against Ukraine. It resulted in the loss of countless innocent lives, widespread destruction and the displacement of thousands of people. We stand in solidarity with our Ukrainian friends,” the president said in his speech.

In his speech, President Petr Pavel also supported the creation of a special criminal tribunal for crimes in Ukraine.

Photo : Zuzana Bönisch

The President of the Czech Republic Peter Pavel was received by Her Majesty Queen Margaret II at noon. & His Royal Highness The Crown Prince Frederik at Amalienborg Palace.

The President was accompanied by the Minister of Immigration and Integration Kaare Dybvad Bek.

Upon receiving the president went to the royal family stable at Christiansborg Palace, where the white Kladrubia horses of the royal family are housed. Horses are bred in the Czech stallion Kladruby nad Labem, which is about 80 kilometers from the capital Prague.

The Czech stallion is one of the oldest in the world and at the request of Prince Henrik, he has been breding cladders for the State Royal Branch since 1994. President Pavel is in Denmark in connection with the Copenhagen Summit on Democracy 2023, which takes place in the Danish capital today and tomorrow.

Photo : Zuzana Bönisch

Photo: Festival Pražské jaro

Perhaps the most anticipated event of the 78th Prague Spring takes place on Wednesday night, with rising classical star Klaus Mäkelä making his debut appearance in Czechia, conducting the Czech Philharmonic and viola player Antoine Tamestit. Ahead of the concert, featuring works by Schnittke and Mahler, I asked Tamestit what it meant for him to also be the music festival’s artist-in-residence.

“This is a fantastic honour, of course, because of the historic reputation of the Prague Spring festival.

“But it’s also a fantastic chance for me as a musician to express myself in different contexts.

“And also as a viola player, where in the last 200 years we have not necessarily been given the same exposure as a violinist, or a pianist or an opera singer to appear as a soloist or an individual.

“But as the artist-in-residence I was given the choice of repertoire, of partners. “Really, it’s a fantastic chance, for me and the viola.”

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Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Kino Ponrepo/NFA

Ponrepo, the Prague cinema administered by the National Film Archive, will be screening a very special film this Tuesday evening. Arsenal is a revolutionary epic that depicts the January workers uprising in Kyiv in 1918. Directed by the famous Ukrainian-Soviet director Oleksandr Dovzhenko, it is considered to be the most prominent expressionist film in Ukrainian cinematography and was voted one of the best films of the year by the American National Board of Review when it came out in 1929.

When the average film fan is asked about early-Soviet cinema, the first name they are likely to come up with is Sergei Eisenstein. However, there were also other key proponents of what is commonly known as Soviet montage theory. Among them was the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleksandr Dovzhenko, who made several critically acclaimed films during the inter-war period.

It will be his film Arsenal that viewers will be able to see at a screening at Prague’s Ponrepo cinema this Tuesday from 8:30pm. The 58-minute-long film recalls an episode from the Russian Civil War. Specifically January 1918, when an uprising of workers in Kyiv aided the besieging Bolshevik army against the forces of the Ukrainian national Parliament who were in control of the city at the time.

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Lasvit

Lasvit is Czechia’s leading exporter of high-end glass and light installations, producing often stunning creations for luxury hotels, residences and retail outlets around the globe. The company was co-founded in 2007 by Leon Jakimič, who was initially based in Hong Kong but is now back in his native North Bohemia. We spoke at Lasvit’s exquisite showroom – packed with wonderful lighting creations and glass pieces – in Prague’s Holešovice district.

I’d first like to ask you about your family background. You’re from Liberec but of course your name, Jakimič, isn’t Czech.

“Jakimič is a Serbian name. But it was in the 18th century that my many times great grandfather moved from Serbia to Kyiv.

“Then in 1920 my great-grandfather reached Příchovice u Tanvaldu, so North Bohemia, and married Marie Swarovski from the Swarovski family – from the branch that did not move to Austria but stayed in Bohemia.

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Author: Ian Willoughby

A very special exhibition of the Czechoslovak born painter Nicholas Egon was open today ( 18.11.2023 ) at GALERIE JAKUBSKA – Thunovská 183/18, 118 00 Malá Strana.

The exhibition will be open for the public until 1.6 , every day from 11 – 17:00.

Nicholas Egon was born in Brno, then Czechoslovakia, in 1921, only son of Count Kornel Vranov and his Hungarian wife, Olga Apponyi. From a loving home and exquisite education with private tutors, he was to leave the family castle aged 16 to pursue a career as a fine artist, with only a silk dressing gown and seven pounds in his pocket.

Working his way through Europe, including as a bell boy in Cannes, by 1939 he was living in England, designing cinema posters and saving pennies to buy books and gramophone records. He was commissioned as War Artist to the Czech Army in Exile, but resigned after disagreements with the regime about his ‘unpatriotic’ drawings. Then he was recruited as War artist for the British army and by 1947 was painting scenes from the Civil war and famine in Greece for a War Memorial commissioned by General Papagos, a bottle of Indian ink attached to his belt.

From 1946-50 he worked as Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of London – the youngest ever in that post – and concurrently lectured weekly at the National Gallery. His early work included a number of abstract paintings, mainly oils, inspired by scientific subjects such as the discovery of DNA.

In the London of the 1950’s and ‘60’s, he became an acclaimed ‘society’ portrait painter, numbering Helen Mirren, Somerset Maugham and L.S.Lowry amongst his many sitters, and members of the aristocratic and royal families of Britain, Greece and Saudi Arabia. The author Maurice Collis was to write: ‘There is no one to my knowledge in England at present who can produce portraiture of such exquisite quality’.

The 20 paintings of flowers are from a much later period, 2007-2017 – the last decade of his life. They were selected for a tribute exhibition at the Benaki Museum, Athens in May 2019, and are representative of the ultimate stage of his ‘Nature and Landscapes’ period, which had commenced after moving to Greece in 1996. From his studio in the hills surrounding Corinth he had wonderful views of the sea and mountains, a natural panoply bathed in that Greek light which he considered unequalled in the world and a source of his greatest inspiration.

They combine watercolour and pastel chalks and are of Greek flowers, except two which are of autumnal trees inspired by a visit to South Korea in 2009. Well-represented are poppies, ubiquitous in Greece in Spring, and geraniums, a ‘signature’ flower of the Egons which overflowed perenially from terracotta pots in the main entrance of their home. Almond blossoms from orchards on our mother’s home island, Chios; Peloponnesian fields of wild flowers; and wilder bushes on mountain crags against blazing summer skies bear witness of his travels around his adopted country.

We see the culmination of his artistic endeavours, far removed from war memorials or high society, yet conceived along the same principles of excellence and truthfulness, and devoid of affectation. They are elegies to Nature, miniature hymns of praise to the natural world, swan songs, perhaps, with their deceptively simple style.

Nicholas Egon remained in contact with his parents until their communications were to cease abruptly without explanation. Affected deeply by their loss and the appropriation of the family estate, he was never to return to his homeland. He would have been amazed and grateful that his works have been brought to Prague by his good friend, H.E. Jan Bondy, and displayed under the kind auspices of the Galerie Jakubska. The family would like to thank them greatly.

One of the first challenges foreign students in Czechia face after arriving in the country is finding accommodation. While most universities offer places in dormitories, many foreign students prefer to stay in private housing. How difficult is to find a place to live in Czechia when you are a foreign student? And what are the advantages of living in a shared apartment? Find out more in the next edition of our miniseries dedicated five top Czech universities.

Some 20,000 students on average arrive in Czechia every year to study at one of the country’s universities. Most of the foreigners head for Prague, but many of them also study in other cities, such as Brno, Olomouc or Liberec.

Finding a temporary home may prove to be a challenge, especially for those staying in the capital, where the demand for housing has been steadily rising in recent years, and so have apartment rental prices.

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Authors: Ruth Fraňková, Amelia Mola-Schmidt, Daniela Honigman

Photo: archive of Czech Radio

It was exactly a hundred years ago, on 18 May 1923, that listeners in Czechoslovakia were first able to tune in to regular radio broadcasts. Much has changed since then. Today Czech Radio has ten nationwide stations and fourteen regional studios, based in towns and cities around the country. And of course, there is also Radio Prague International, broadcasting in seven languages around the world. Back in 1923 there was just one station, which in those early days broadcast for a few hours every day from a scouts’ tent on the edge of Prague. To mark the anniversary, we take a journey through the radio archives.

We start with an unforgettable moment from twenty-five years ago. It is 22 February 1998 and Czech Radio’s Aleš Procházka is commenting the ice-hockey final at the Winter Olympics in Nagano. In the 49th minute Petr Svoboda scores what proves to be the winning goal against Russia, bringing the Czech team gold in a tournament studded with NHL stars. That moment is etched into the memories of many of us who were watching or listening, but what about the radio’s beginnings, seventy-five years earlier?

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Author: David Vaughan

Photo: Nachtigall Artists

Bass-baritone Boris Prýgl ranks among the most talented Czech young opera singers. One of the finalists of Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, Prýgl has performed at the Slovak National Theatre and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He is now a guest singer at the National Theatre Opera.

Boris Prýgl studied in Bratislava with Zlatica Livrova and first appeared on stage at the Slovak National Theatre where he performed Leporello in Don Giovanni. He later performed at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (2017 to 2021), where he appeared as Morales (Bizet: Carmen), Ping (Puccini: Turandot), Prince Ottokar (Weber: The Sorcerer), The Hunter (Dvořák: Rusalka) and Marco (Puccini: Gianni Schicchi). In March 2022 he took part in a rendition of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Semyon Byčkov at the Musikverein in Vienna and the Elbe Philharmonic in Hamburg.

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Author: Daniela Lazarová

When I left my office to watch the couple of hamerkops that were tirelessly carrying material to their already gigantic nest in the aviary under the cliff, Helena Růžičková’s replica from the well-known Czech comic film Sun, Hay and Strawberries came to my mind: “If you build an extension, we´ll add a whole floor!” Except the hamerkops added two floors straightaway.

Having about a half meter in height, hamerkops are birds which I often used to see in the company of our black storks on their wintering grounds in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, usually it is said (1) that they were named after the shape of their head, which resembles a hammer in profile, then (2) that in Africa they are surrounded by many superstitions and legends, and finally (3) that they build really large nests. After all, Emil Holub has already written about them: “The nest is 50 to 95 centimetres high; you can measure the upper circumference of 2 to 2.5 metres; however, at the bottom it protrudes to a point, therefore it is not unlike an inverted truncated cone. The nest itself, into which a square hole wide and high from 20 to 26 centimetres leads, the hamerkop builds from brushwood and soil.”

Our hamerkop couple started building last year. At the “ground floor” they first raised a chick, but then they continued the construction and built the “first floor”. That was not surprising, hamerkops are passionate builders that build regardless of the necessity of their structures; perhaps it helps them to strengthen the relationship in the couple. This year hamerkops continued in the aviary under the cliff with a third floor. Currently they have stopped working and their cone-shaped nest has the upper diameter of about 160 cm and a height of two metres. It is really a mega-nest that you should not miss!

At the same time as hamerkops other birds were building their modest nests in the aviary under the cliff, so that the hamerkops would not dismantle them immediately and carry the material on their own construction, the keeper Aneta Kratochvílová took care of the supply of material. She carried to the aviary about twenty bags of dry grass, moss and other building material – but she still did not protect everything, for example, the visitors’ reed shelter from the hamerkops. There are serious holes in it.

I have consulted my colleagues from the construction department about how much the hamerkops’ nest might weigh. They estimated it at 300 kg. When it is dry. It will be much heavier when it gets wet. Therefore, I had supports added to it and I will wait anxiously if hamerkops continue with its construction after finishing nesting this year. After that, it may be worth entering in the birds’ book of records.

The Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in cooperation with the United Nations Office in Prague, National Museum of Agriculture in Prague and Apiculture Museum Radovljica, Slovenia organizes the commemoration of 6th World Bee Day (20 May) which will take place on 16 May 2023 at National Museum of Agriculture. The guest of honour will be Czech Minister of Agriculture Mr. Zdeněk Nekula. World Bee Day was declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization in December 2017 following the proposal of the Republic of Slovenia. Nowadays, it is celebrated globally to raise awareness about the importance of bees and other pollinators for food security, climate change mitigation, environmental conservation, and human well-being. World Bee Day provides an opportunity for governments, organizations and concerned citizens to promote actions that protect and enhance pollinators, improve their abundance and diversity, and support the sustainable development of agriculture. Since 2018, Slovenia has co-created more than 300 pollinator projects with partners on all continents. Under the theme “Bee engaged in pollinator-friendly agricultural production”, World Bee Day 2023 calls for global action to support pollinator-friendly agricultural production.

General reflection on World Bee Day and its results (2018-2022)

In December 2017, following an initiative by the Republic of Slovenia and with the unanimous support of all Member States, the United Nations General Assembly declared 20 May as World Bee Day. The date was chosen to honour Anton Janša, a Slovenian pioneer of modern apiculture, who was born on 20 May 1734.

World Bee Day has contributed significantly to raising awareness of the importance of bees and other pollinators, and to promoting international cooperation to protect them. Thousands of actions have been realised worldwide since 2018. Pollinators have made their way in many more school curricula, policy debates, research agendas, business plans and agricultural practices. Above all, World Bee Day has contributed to general reflection on the environmental crisis and pollinators’ importance.

The observation of World Bee Day encourages every concerned citizen and environmentalist to help protect bees and their habitats. It is important to support beekeeping and conservation efforts in order to maintain a healthy and sustainable environment for both humans and other species.

General reflection on the environmental crisis and pollinators’ importance

Ecosystem crises has critically worsened since 2018, pollinators included. The latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report and the recent UN Water Conference were a strong reminder that the world remains massively off track in preventing ecosystem degradation.

The bee population has been declining in recent years due to a variety of factors, including habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change. Intensive monoculture production and improper use of pesticides pose serious threats to pollinators by reducing their access to food and nesting sites, exposing them to harmful chemicals, and weakening their immune systems.

Pollinators are key to global food security. Every third spoon of food we eat depends on them. Pollinators are key to global ecosystem health. Nearly 90% of wild plants depend on them for reproduction. Pollinators are our key allies in addressing the major global challenges. Humanity will therefore stand or fall on its ability to protect and support them.

Pollination has a positive impact on the environment in general, helping to maintain biodiversity and the vibrant ecosystems upon which agriculture and humanity depend. A wide variety of plants critical to human well-being and livelihoods require pollinators. In fact, bees and other pollinators provide the important ecosystem service of ensuring out-crossing (that is, crossing genes) and, thus, reproduction of many cultivated and wild plants.

World Bee Day 2023: “Bee engaged in pollinator-friendly agricultural production”

Under the theme “Bee engaged in pollinator-friendly agricultural production”, World Bee Day 2023 calls for global action to support pollinator-friendly agricultural production and highlights the importance of protecting bees and other pollinators, particularly through evidence-based agricultural production practices. Pollinators are under threat – sustainable agriculture can reduce risk to pollinators by helping to diversify the agricultural landscape and making use of ecological processes as part of food production.

Slovenian bee diplomacy

Slovenia is particularly committed to actively contributing to raising awareness about the importance of bees and other pollinators for humans and nature, and the need to take measures to protect them. The so-called bee diplomacy has become part of Slovenia’s environmental diplomacy efforts, which are inseparably connected to climate and water diplomacy. Since 2018, Slovenia has co-created more than 300 pollinator projects with partners on all continents.

Against the backdrop of the intense environmental and social challenges, Slovenia upgraded its pollinator diplomacy this year and aligned it with its development cooperation. Environmental protection and social inclusiveness are our two big missions. We primarily support pollinator activities, which help restore the ecosystem and empower vulnerable communities. Slovenia’s flagship pollinator projects, for example, empower mine victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, support social inclusion of female Afghan refugees in Iran or livelihoods of indigenous communities in the Amazonia, who take care of endangered autochthonous pollinator species.

Slovenia strongly believes in beekeeping’s unique potential to address social and environmental vulnerability. It has become, for example, an ever more popular means of climate adaptation in water scarce regions, where people are losing their main livelihood source and have to turn to other activities.

In 2023, Slovenia has been preparing more than 30 pollinators project all over the world.

Bees are also at home at the Embassy of Slovenia in Prague

Bees also have a very significant role at the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Prague, as they have lived in a traditional Slovenian beehive in the garden for over two years now. More specifically, it is Carniolan bees, from Slovenia, which are housed there.

Each year, the Embassy organises several events to raise awareness of the importance of bees and pollinators. In the past few years, it has also become a tradition to celebrate the Slovenian Traditional Honey Breakfast, which consists of fresh bread, butter, milk, apples and, of course, honey. Every year it falls on the third Friday in November. The Embassy has been educating children about the importance of bees for the world through the medium of the honey breakfast in different schools in Prague. These are our small but important steps for the protection and well-being of bees.

Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia
Pod Hradbami 15, Prague 6

The Press Release was prepared with support from the United Nations Information Centre Prague.
Prague, 15 May 2023

Prague City Hall has commissioned a new copy of the Old Town Square astronomical clock calendar that will replace the heavily-criticised version that was created in 2018. The artist who created the copy was lambasted by art historians and heritage enthusiasts for changing elements of Mánes’s 1866 original, to give it a more modern look.

The controversial copy of the astronomical clock calendar was commissioned as part of a broader overhaul and renovation of the Old Town Hall tower, on which the clock is mounted, and was finished and unveiled in 2018. For a few years nothing was said about it, but in 2022, Milan Patka from the Club for Old Prague filed an 18-page complaint about the copy to the National Heritage Inspectorate.

“I noticed it sometime before last Christmas when I was walking past the astronomical clock. Although I had seen the calendar many times before, it suddenly struck me that the pair of lovers were sitting not by a flowering bush, but by a pile of straw. I have a copy of Mánes’s calendar from 2002 at home which luckily I hadn’t thrown away. So I started comparing and found 10, 15, 20 mistakes which I wrote down and sent to the National Heritage Inspectorate.”

See the rest here.

Author: Anna Fodor

In Czechia, as well as in most Central and Southern European EU states, still wines are not subject to consumption tax. However, with the ongoing need to balance the budget, government experts have suggested introducing precisely such a tax, arguing that it could bring CZK 2 to 5 billion crowns into state coffers. This has angered the country’s winemakers who say that it would not just hit them hard in times of crisis, but also place a long tradition under threat.

Along with sparkling wine, still wine is currently the only alcoholic beverage in Czechia that is not subject to the so-called consumption or excise tax. In practice, this means that winemakers are not charged by the state if they produce fewer than 2,000 litres of wine per calendar year.

See the rest here.

Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Miloš Turek, Radio Prague International

Some of the most beautiful views of the Vltava River are at the river’s turn near Úholičky, an area linked to the rulers of the Přemyslid dynasty – Prince Bořivoj and his wife Ludmila.

This trail is ideal for day trip for cyclists and hikers. All you need to do is hop on a train from Prague to Úholičky, get off at Sedlec and you will find yourself surrounded by nature and history. The lookout at Stříbrník is a wonderful photo location from which the trail will lead you to the Řivnáč settlement site dating 2,000 years ago.

One of the highlights on this tour is St. Ludmila’s Lookout built on a historic site used by the rulers of the Přemyslid dynasty – Prince Bořivoj and his wife Ludmila. St. Clement’s Church, in its close vicinity, was built on the foundations of a rotunda dating back to those days.

See the rest here.

Author: Miloš Turek

Photo: Svět knihy

The annual international book fair and literary festival Book World Prague got underway on Thursday at the city’s Výstaviště grounds, featuring over 350 exhibitors from 30 countries. I spoke to Radovan Auer, the head of Book World Prague and asked him to tell me more about the choice of this year’s main theme, which is “Authors without Borders”.

“For the last two years we had very strong guest countries with very strong cultures, France and Italy, and we realised we didn’t give enough space to authors representing countries which stand a little bit on the borders.

“This is why we chose the theme Authors without Borders. But we are not talking just about geographical borders, we are also crossing the borders of genres and literature itself. And I must say that while Book World has always been very colourful, this year it will be more colourful than ever.”

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

Photo: Aerofilms

The Czech opera singer and actress Soňa Červená, who gained worldwide fame for her rendition of Carmen in the world’s leading opera houses, has died at the age of 97. Červená started her career in the early 1950s but had to flee the country due to communist persecution, only returning to her home stage after the fall of communism.

Soňa Červená was born in 1925 and started her career in the interwar avant-garde Liberated Theatre, where she starred alongside the legendary actors Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich. She went on to perform with famous actors such as the comic Vlasta Burian before becoming an opera singer first in Brno and then at the National Theatre in Prague.

However, her promising career was cut short by the communist takeover in February 1948. Her husband, the owner of a chocolate factory, was forced to flee the country, while her mother died under unclear circumstances after police questioning.

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

Soňa Červená also received a Lifetime Achievement Trebbia Award in a ceremony covered by our magazine some time ago. You can see the coverage here.

Located just below Prague’s Vítkov Hill, the Czech Army Museum is one of the places to check out if you are into military history, thinking of honouring Victory Day, or just generally into great exhibitions. It features more than 7,000 exhibits displayed in various fashion. The largest exhibition hall covers the period encompassing the Second World War, including the Prague Uprising.

Czech military history is divided into seven segments within the four-floor museum. These range from prehistoric times, through the Habsburg period and the world wars, all the way to the present.

I met with historian Tomáš Plesl who works in the museum specialising in the period around the time of the Prague Uprising in May 1945. The exhibits covering this specific period of the Second World War are located in the upper part of a large hall that he says was originally used to store documents.

See the rest here.

Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Archive of Martin Nekola

Bohumil Pospíšil, a native of Přerov, was once a famous Czechoslovak traveller and adventure. The man, who spent five years on a journey around the world in the 1920s, was known as the Moravian Marco Polo. His estate, including thousands of photos, was thought to have been lost until recently, when it was discovered in the attic of his house in Auckland, New Zealand. Some of the unique photos are now on display as part of an exhibition in Břeclav.

I discussed the incredible life story of Bohumil Popíšil with Czech historian Martin Nekola, who is now in charge of his estate and I started by asking him when he first came across the name of Bohumil Pospíšil:

“Some three years ago I was working on a book about Czechs in New Zealand, and I had a chapter about Czech travellers and adventurers, who visited the country, including Josef Kořenský, Jiří Daneš and also Bohumil Pospíšil.

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

The coronation of King Charles III is taking place at Westminster Abbey on Saturday. Although it has been 13 years since his last visit to Czechia, the former Prince Charles took a huge interest in the country during the 1990s and 2000s, visiting a total of five times, and even setting up a charity fund with Václav Havel to preserve Prague’s architectural heritage.

See the rest here.

Author: Anna Fodor

Photo: Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary

The organisers of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival have announced that Hollywood star Russell Crowe will attend the 57th edition. A previous star guest, Johnny Depp, is set to appear in this year’s trailer.

Antipodean movie star Russell Crowe, who is 59, will receive Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic direction to world cinema at the opening of the festival’s 57th edition, the organisers announced on Friday.

In a treat for fans, the actor will also perform to thousands of people at the outdoor opening concert with his rock group Indoor Garden Party.

In addition Crowe will introduce one of his best-known films, Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), to audiences at the region’s biggest cinema event.

See the rest here.

Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Musical Instrument Museum/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Prague music lovers can look forward to a treat on Wednesday. The US contemporary classical greats Kronos Quartet are set to celebrate half a century of existence alongside the Czech ambient artists the Havels, who are themselves marking 40 years together. The venue is a 17th century church.

The US-based string group Kronos Quartet have been on the go since 1973. Over the decades they have played with such well-known artists as David Bowie, Tom Waits and Bjork, as well as performing works by leading contemporary composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley.

Wednesday’s concert in Prague is being organised by Václav Havelka from the venue Meetfactory.

“Kronos Quartet are one of the most famous avant-garde groups on the American music scene and they’re celebrating 50 years of existence with the concert this Wednesday in Prague.

“They will be playing pieces by people that they worked with through their career, for instance Laurie Anderson: there will be a piece by her performed during the performance, called Flow.

“There will be a piece by Michael Gordon, called Clouded Yellow. And also a piece by Terry Riley called One Earth, One People, One Love, from the cycle Sun Rings.”

See the rest here.

Photo: Petr Zmek, Česká zemědělská univerzita

The Czech University of Life Sciences is a place where an education rooted in science and agriculture is merged with other subjects like economics and business; a place where students from all over the world can get a truly unique and well-rounded education, grounded in multiple subjects.

24-year-old Taine Rose from New Zealand, a student of the Faculty of Economics and Management, says it’s the diversity in his education that he loves most about the study culture at CZU.

“One may think that it doesn’t make sense to study economics and management at an agriculture university, but I think the school has found a pretty good balance between having business basics but also integrating agriculture into it. A lot of people may not realize that there are a lot of business and economic careers that have to do with farming and agriculture. It never occurred to me before that if I wanted to start my own business that I could use agriculture, it doesn’t have to be something cool with technology, there are plenty of farms in New Zealand that are developing new technology, or working out better ways to do farming. That’s all a possibility with an economics and management degree from CZU.”

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Author: Amelia Mola Schmidt

Czechia is second on the crony capitalism index compiled by The Economist, after Russia and just ahead of Malaysia, Singapore and Mexico. According to the paper, the Czech share of crony capitalism wealth is over 15 percent of GDP. I asked political scientist Jiří Pehe to explain why cronyism thrives so well in this country.

“There are several reasons for the rise of crony capitalism in the Czech Republic. The first was the way that the privatization process in the 1990s took place. It was basically done by the political elite in cooperation with selected economic actors who, as a result of this political protection, became very rich, very quickly and that created the foundations of this system.

“There was a chance that this could be changed when the Social Democratic Party took over in 1998, but then the party decided to sign the so-called “opposition treaty” with the Civic Democratic Party which had presided over the privatization process in the 1990s. And so all of these new economic actors who became very rich by having political cover were cemented in their positions.

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Author: Daniela Lazarová

Photo: René Volfík, iROZHLAS.cz

The Fiala government has unveiled an austerity package aimed at reducing the country’s deepening state deficit and plans for a radical reform of old-age pensions. To understate the gravity of the situation the package titled “Czechia in Good Shape” was unveiled at a press briefing scheduled for five minutes to twelve – signalling the lateness of the hour.

For months now, the government had made it clear that the country’s public finances were heading for trouble and the public must prepare to shoulder the burden of far-reaching consolidation measures that would impact each and every member of society. At a press briefing on Thursday, Prime Minister Petr Fiala told Czechs the fat years were over and the lean years were ahead.

“Our main goal is to stop the spiraling deficit in public finances, to turn around the negative trend that was established by former populist governments. The deficit in public finances has been rising at a horrifying rate. If we do not hit the brakes now the situation will get out of control and our children and grandchildren will have to pay the price.”

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Author: Daniela Lazarová

Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13768, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Czech-American community in Chicago will be marking 150 years since the birth of Anton Cermak, a Czech immigrant who became the mayor of Chicago and was assassinated in 1933, after only two years in office. Two such events are planned for the coming days.

The Czech-Canadian singer Lenka Lichtenberg will travel to Chicago from Toronto this Saturday to perform Bohemian, Moravian and Slovak folk songs on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Anton Cermak, the famous Czech-born mayor of Chicago.

The first event, organised by the T.G. Masaryk Czech School in Chicago, is due to take place this Saturday at the Bohemian National Cemetery and will be attended by members of the Czech community as well as by Cermak’s grandson Anton Kerner. Another, more official, event is scheduled for Tuesday May 9, Cermak’s actual birthday, at the Chicago Cultural Centre.

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Author: Ruth Fraňková

Group photo from the visit to Altyn Dala. Photo Miroslav Bobek

“200 km straight, then a mild curve to the left, again 200 km straight, right turn and after another 50 km we will stop for the night,” I wrote home with only a little exaggeration when we were heading by cars to the “Golden Steppe” Altyn Dala after the afternoon flight to Kostanay in northern Kazakhstan. The following day I lost the humour somewhat, as we crossed over from tarmac roads to dirt roads on which we drove within one day about the same distance as if driving from Prague to Ostrava. When fording a river, I shut the side window of Landcruiser so the water rolling over the bonnet would not splash inside.

Our five-day long journey to Kazakhstan, during which we travelled over two thousand kilometres by air and almost three thousand kilometres on the ground, immediately followed the visit of the Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala to Astana. At the occasion of the Prime Minister’s visit, on 24 April 2023 Nurlan Kylyshbayev, the Chairman of the Committee on Forestry and Wildlife of Kazakhstan, and I signed the Memorandum on Cooperation on the Return of Przewalski’s Horses to Kazakhstan. We had been discussing this cooperation for long time with the great support of Roman Vassilenko, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan. By signing the Memorandum in the presence of the Prime Ministers of both countries the agreement had reached the very highest level.

Przewalski’s horses. Photo Miroslav Bobek

The organization of our journey to Kazakhstan, thanks especially to Daniyar Turgambayev, the Deputy Chairman of the Forestry and Wildlife Committee, was not in the least inferior to the organization of a State visit. Our common goal was to assess the localities pre-selected for the reintroduction of Przewalski’s horses. From the beginning, most of our attention was focused on two localities: Altyn Emel (Golden Saddle) in the south-east of the country, and the abovementioned Altyn Dala (Golden Steppe) in central Kazakhstan.

Saiga antelopes in the steppes of Altyn Dala. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

There are already Przewalski’s horses in Altyn Emel; two in the wild and three in a pen. These are remnants of the Kazakh-German project from the first decade of the century. However, its organization suffered from significant shortcomings and above all – as we together with Bára Dobiášová and Tomáš Hulík could see with our own eyes – the area of Altyn Emel is not suitable for Przewalski’s horses. It has vegetation of low nutritional value, a completely insufficient area for a viable population, not quite optimal terrain profile and, furthermore, domestic horses roam nearby. The only advantages are mild winters and very good accessibility.

Aerial view of the landscape surrounding the reintroduction centre Alibi in Altyn Dala. Photo Tomáš Hulík

On the other hand, the Altyn Dala area impressed us despite the demanding journey. It is an area of almost 7,000 km2 of fertile steppe without domestic animals, with a sufficient supply of water and a suitable terrain profile. As well as in Altyn Emel, also in Altyn Dala the basic infrastructure for the reintroduction project is already there. It has been built several years ago for the purpose of reintroduction of Przewalski’s horses, and when the project was cancelled due to insufficient legislative protection of the horses, it was used for reintroduction of kulans. Besides the difficult accessibility possibly only the harsh winters can be problematic in Altyn Dala, and perhaps also poachers. However, the winters in Altyn Dala are more favourable than in Mongolian Gobi B, where we have already successfully returned many horses, as well as in the Monastery Valley in the east of Mongolia, where we prepare their reintroduction. And regarding the poaching, the Przewalski’s horse has recently been added to the Red Book of Kazakhstan and very severe penalties have been set for its hunting; even so it will be necessary to strengthen patrolling in the area of Altyn Dala.

Kulans in the acclimatization pen. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

Although we still must answer many questions and resolve many issues, Altyn Dala seems to be very promising for the return of Przewalski’s horses to Kazakhstan. And this return can happen much earlier than we had thought, given the extraordinary interest and professionality of our Kazakh partners. Let’s hope that in the next few years the Kazakh Golden Steppe will become another promised land for Przewalski’s horses.

Miroslav Bobek, Director, Prague Zoo

Photo: Ian Willoughby, Radio Prague International

Pilsner Urquell was created in Pilsen in the 1840s and is today the best known Czech beer around the world. Its producers Plzeňský Prazdroj run a fine museum in the West Bohemian city. Now, however, visitors to Prague can also learn a lot about the classic pale lager at the Pilsner Urquell Experience, which is intended to be analogous to the likes of the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

The new attraction is located on 3,000 square metres across three floors in a magnificent Art Nouveau building just off the bottom of Wenceslas Square.

Nick Penny is the general manager of Pilsner Urquell Experience, which is operated by his Original Experience Company in cooperation with Plzeňský Prazdroj. We meet at the entrance, just days after the opening of the attraction.

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Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: APF Czech Radio

Czechia was the place where the last shots of World War II were fired in Europe. The generally accepted narrative is that, with most of the country liberated by the Soviet Red Army, the former Czechoslovakia was inevitably headed for the communist Soviet bloc. Vít Smetana from the Prague Institute of Contemporary History dispels some deeply-rooted myths perpetuated by the communists about what happened in the very last days of WWII in Czechoslovakia.

For many decades under Communism, the official storyline was simple: the Czechs with the help of mostly Communist-led resistance decided not to wait for their liberation and in many places started disarming the retreating German troops hard-pressed by the Red Army from the East. The regular Wehrmacht and elite SS troops were trying to flee to the West so as to be captured by the Western Allies rather than the Soviets because they rightly expected that the treatment would be better in their prisoner-of-war camps.

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Author: Vít Pohanka

Photo: Patrick Marek, Czech Radio

This week marked the 50th birthday of one of Czechia’s best-known violinists. Pavel Šporcl, often recognised for his signature head-scarf, has had a rich career filled with both domestic and international successes. He has performed with renowned singers and orchestras such as Karel Gott, Vojtěch Dyk, Ewa Farna, the Prague Philharmonic, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, or France’s Orchestre national.

Pavel Šporcl was born in the South Bohemian metropolis of České Budějovice on April 25, 1973. He took part in many competitions during his childhood and his teacher was the legendary Václav Snitl a highly accomplished soloist who was himself trained by preceding Czech violin great Jaroslav Kocian as well as the modernist composer Vítězslav Novák. Šporcl also studied in the United States, for example at Brooklyn College and the Juilliard School in New York.

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Photo: Západočeská univerzita Plzeň

Russia’s war against Ukraine has had widespread negative impacts outside the country’s borders. Among them is a drop in interest in Russian studies at Czech universities and a gradual loss of academic contacts.

More than fourteen months after the war in Ukraine started, Czech universities report a drop in the number of people interested in studying Russian language and literature, a loss of academic contacts with universities in Russia, cancelled internships and fewer study materials. However, schools of higher learning consider it important to maintain the high quality of education in the department of Slavonic studies for those interested in the field. Václav Hanáček is one of the Russian language students at the University of West Bohemia in Plzen.

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Authors: Daniela Lazarová, Martina Klímová

Photo: Viktor Daněk, Czech Radio

Czech President Petr Pavel arrived in Ukraine early on Friday morning, shortly after Kyiv and other cities were hit by Russian missiles. Accompanied by his Slovak counterpart, Zuzana Čaputová, Mr. Pavel visited the sites of atrocities and criticised Moscow’s attacks on civilian targets.

The Czech and Slovak presidents set off by plane on Thursday to Rzeszów in Poland, from where they were taken by car to Przemyśl, close to the border with Ukraine. They then boarded a train and from there continued their overnight journey to Kyiv together.

After arriving at the railway station in Nemishaieve, 38 kilometres northwest of the capital, the two presidents were welcomed by the Czech ambassador to Kyiv, Radek Matula, and the former Ukrainian ambassador to Czechia, Yevhen Perebyinis, among others.

Mr. Perebyinis said Mr. Pavel’s presence in Ukraine is significant for the country.

“Czechia is a significant partner for us, a country which supports us and provides us with aid, including of the military kind. Of course, this is President Pavel’s first visit to Ukraine and I know President Zelensky is very much looking forward to meeting him in person.”

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Author: Anna Fodor

Photo: Natálie Flajžíková, Czech Radio

Archaeologists from the Moravian Museum in Brno have announced a unique discovery. During a survey near the city of Ostrava they discovered a stone with an engraving of a mammoth and a horse, which dates back about 15,000 years ago. According to experts, the artefact has immeasurable historical value.

The engraved black stone, which measures roughly five by seven centimetres, was discovered at the archaeological site Holý vrch near the village Hošťálkovice on the outskirts of the Moravian-Silesian capital of Ostrava. It depicts a mammoth and a horse on a river mound.

Zdeňka Nerudová, curator of the Centre for Cultural Anthropology at the Moravian Museum, says the stone was most likely brought to the site by prehistoric reindeer and horse hunters, who found it in the gravel of the Odra or Opava Rivers.

“Stone is a fairly durable material that can survive almost anything. At the same time, it is relatively soft, so it was possible to carve into it with another stone, most likely a flint stone, thanks to which the engraving survived until the present day.”

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Authors: Ruth Fraňková, Tomáš Pancíř

Photo: Vít Pohanka, Radio Prague International

Mrs Palermo’s Cottage is a novel by AR Parker, inspired by the Czech borderlands. Vit Pohanka spoke to the author about what brought him to Czechia and what led him to set his latest novel in the town where he bought a house and settled.

“The storm had raged the night Eva was born. The world around witnessing fierce winds smashing through the forest, twisting trees from crown to root and ripping away rotting limbs, sent crashing through the canopy to thud down on earth, obliterating all in the way.”

These are the opening lines of AR Parker’s new book. Mrs Palermo’s Cottage is a story full of nostalgia and sadness, but also quite a lot of humor. Nevertheless, there is a sinister and even tragic turn of events, when the change of government brings a new mayor and capitalism to the town of Boz (Krásná Lípa). As the publisher Europe Books puts it: “The tranquil environment of Boz is shattered and everything is put up for sale, including society’s soul.”

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Author: Vít Pohanka

Photo: Tom McEnchroe, Radio Prague International

As of this week, commuters in some of Prague’s busiest metro stations are seeing photographs of war-stricken Ukrainians sheltering in their own underground. The images were captured by Ukrainian photo journalists and were first displayed in the Berlin metro last year under the title “Next Station Ukraine”.

One of the key movers in the effort was Klára Jiřičná from the NGO ACT Alliance. I caught up with her in the Muzeum metro station, one of the locations where the photographs are being displayed, to find out more about it.

“They had this exhibition in the Berlin metro last November. I saw it through a colleague at ACT Alliance who is based in Germany and I was intrigued and said that we have to have this in Prague. So I got in touch, they agreed to it and here we are.”

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Jean-Francois Badias, ČTK/AP

Last year, the non-profit Centre for Civil Liberties was one of three recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize – the first time ever that a Nobel Prize has been awarded to a Ukrainian citizen or organisation. Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk started working for the organisation, which she now heads, in 2007. She has been involved in a number of activities relating to the protection of human rights, including the collecting of evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, so when Czech Radio’s Jan Bumba interviewed her recently, he started by asking her what specifically she is focusing on right now.

“I want to find answers for the people we are documenting all these crimes for. Who will provide a chance for justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of this war? It is not an abstract question.

“The Ukrainian national system is overloaded with an extreme amount of crimes and the International Criminal Court will limit its investigation only to several selected cases. So we need to change the world’s approach to war crime justice in order to achieve this goal.”

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Authors: Jan Bumba, Anna Fodor, Ruth Fraňková

A new iRozhlas.cz report has found a sharp rise in the number of single-occupant homes in Czechia, from 32 percent in 2011 to 39 percent a decade later. The jump is attributed to an increase in single people in major cities and more seniors, often widows, living by themselves. I discussed the findings with the report’s author, Jan Boček of Czech Radio’s data journalism team.

“There are two main causes. One of them is the increase in single-person households in the Sudetenland, which is probably mostly older people, especially ladies, because they live a bit longer than men – so most of them are widows.

“And then the other trend is the increase of single-person households among young people living in the big cities, like in Prague and in Brno and Ostrava, who are single people.”

But why are there so many? In Prague it’s 47 percent single-occupancy households – why is it so high?

“In the large cities you’ve got a lot of different lifestyles and people are using to living single, so it’s easier in bigger cities to live like this.

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Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Alex Brandon, ČTK/AP

The Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský made it clear during his meeting with his American counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington on Tuesday that Czechia is aligned with the US on important issues such as support for Ukraine, mutual defence, and relations with China.

The foreign minister made Czechia’s stance towards Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine clear when talking to his American counterpart, Antony Blinken. He stressed the importance of standing up to dictators, saying appeasement has been shown not to work, and that it is not enough for Ukraine to take back the territory lost since 2022.

“I said that it is crucial that Ukraine is able to restore its borders from 1991, for it to regain Crimea, and thus to put an end to Putin’s imperialistic dreams.”

The war in Ukraine and how to continue supporting the invaded country was the main topic of discussion on the table. Lipavský stressed that military aid was crucial for Ukraine’s defence, including the expected upcoming Ukrainian counter-offensive.

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Author: Anna Fodor

Photo: Zdeňka Kuchyňová, Radio Prague International

Good Soldier Švejk creator Jaroslav Hašek, who was born on 30 April 1883, is closely associated with the small town of Lipnice nad Sázavou in Moravia.The writer was allegedly brought to Lipnice by the painter Jaroslav Panuška, and the famous writer, humorist and bohemian fell in love with the place.

Today there is a plaque on the house he bought near the local castle. In connection with the 140th anniversary of his birth its restored kitchen is being presented to the public. It is one of a number of events held around the county celebrating the author of The Good Soldier Švejk, the most translated of Czech books, who died aged just 39.

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Photo: Public Domain

What was life like in the Gulag camps, how many of these camps were there in the Soviet Union, and how could a person end up in one? These are just some of the questions explored by a new educational project designed for primary and secondary school students. It was created by the organisation Gulag.cz and is now being tested in one of Prague’s schools.

Ninth graders in a primary school in Prague’s district of Karlín are discussing what they know about the Gulag camps, the infamous Soviet labour camps where approximately 1.6 million people died under the Stalin rule.

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Author: Ruth Fraňková; Lucie Korcová

Photo: Jiří Ryszawy, ČVUT

Renowned for its technology focussed programs, CVUT gives students with a technical mindset the chance to learn from some of the best professors in the field, while gaining hands-on work experience in practical internships.

Walking through the campus of CVUT in Prague 6, one might forget that they’re just outside of the bustling city centre. Tucked in the north western end of Prague, CVUT offers the campus feel of a student city, with a 15 minute public transport trip to the heart of downtown, giving students the best of both worlds.

Ernesto, a Masters student from Mexico City, says he fell in love with CVUT and the campus life a few years back during an exchange program.

“I came here four years ago for a few months on a winter exchange program. I was able to meet one of the professors at the school, he gave me a tour and I absolutely fell in love with how beautiful the campus is and how smart the students are. From then on, I decided to make it my life mission to come back to Prague to study my Masters program.”

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Author: Amelia Mola Schmidt

It was an unbelievable paradox. During my journey to Cameroon, I received news about the progress of the pangolin female Šiška and at the same time I was daily seeing pangolins in street stalls and on markets or cooked in local restaurants… Pangolins have been strictly protected in Cameroon for many years, however the trade in them is still extremely widespread.

The entire trade chain begins with country hunters, or rather poachers. Near the town of Somalomo I had the opportunity to watch two schoolboys preparing snares. Every week they catch in them four to six pangolins and sell them to traffickers for 2,500 CFA (3.8 EUR). Having seen the conditions in which these boys live, I can hardly judge them.

In Yaounde the pangolins are sold in street stalls or on markets for 17,000 – 20,000 CFA (26 – 30 EUR) per piece. Especially the marketplace Nkol-Ndongo, where the pangolins are offered quite publicly, is infamous. According to our informants the officials, who should ensure the law is enforced, do not dare to enter this marketplace alone. Any inspections must be done with the assistance of soldiers.

No less shocking is the preparation of pangolins in restaurants. For instance, small restaurants in the town of Mbalmayo have them on their menu quite regularly. The owner of one of the restaurants, smiling widely, showed me a pot with pangolin meat. She sells one portion for 1,500 CFA (2.3 EUR) and according to her it is the most popular item on the menu.

Miroslav Bobek

In their hey-day Czechia’s many spas attracted royalty and celebrities from around Europe. To this day many of them have mementos of their famous visitors. The Teplice spa boasts the Beethoven Spa House where music lovers can book their stay in the luxury suite he occupied, eat the food that he loved and listen to the music he composed.

Teplice is the oldest spa in Czechia and one of the oldest in Europe. Nestled in a valley between the Central Bohemian mountain range and the ridges of the Krušné Hory Mountains it offers healing thermal springs, attractive historic buildings, parks, gardens, fountains, a colonnade and a Baroque Marian column.

In the 18th and 19th centuries it was dubbed the “little Paris of Bohemia” visited by emperors, artists and scientists, among them Austro-Hungarian Emperor Francis Joseph I, Peter the Great and the famous composers Beethoven and Wagner.

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Authors: Daniela Lazarová, Eva Bucharová

Photo: Anifilm

The annual Anifilm festival of animated films kicked off in the north Bohemian town of Liberec on Tuesday. Over the next six days, dozens of films, as well as music videos and computer games, will be screened in numerous venues all over the town. I discussed the event with programme coordinator Radek Hosenseidl and I started by asking him why they decided to focus on Japan this year:

“Actually, we had been considering focusing on Japanese animation for some years now, because Japanese animation is one of the most prolific and most important productions in the world.

“I think many people know a lot of Japanese anime but not so many people know the independent part of Japanese animation. That’s why we decided to show both the independent section and some anime classics.

“We compiled six programmes of short films, starting with pioneers from the 1930s until the present day. We also have feature films like Akira or Howl’s Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki, Neo Tokyo and experimental films like Belladonna of Sadness.

“So these represent a bit more mainstream, but not so mainstream part of anime, but we also have an extensive programme of shorts from independent authors.”

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

Photo: Ondřej Tomšů, Radio Prague International

Brian Jakubec was born in South Africa and is a successful IT manager at Lenovo. But his life was shaped by events that took place in far-away Czechoslovakia when his father, still in his teens, joined the Bata shoe empire, where he would one day become a senior official. Fate would have it that, almost a century later, Brian’s work took him to Slovakia and opened a quest of discovery about his Czech roots and the Bata school of work ethics that he himself adopted. Brian joined me in the studio to talk about his journey into the family past.

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Author: Daniela Lazarová

85 years ago, on April 24, 1938, Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten German Party voiced a list of demands commonly known as the Carlsbad Programme. They opened the way for Hitler’s Third Reich to annex the Sudetenland and rob Czechoslovakia of its vital border defences.

More than 3 million Germans lived in Czechoslovakia at the time. Only around a third of this number lived on the territories of Bohemia and Moravia. The majority resided in the Czech borderlands which were commonly referred to as the Sudetenland. This area was hit especially hard during the economic crisis of the 1930s and brought much of the local German population into the hands of the pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party which was led by Konrad Henlein at the time.

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Photo: Ian Willoughby, Radio Prague International

Czechia’s most important classical event, the Prague Spring International Music Festival, will kick off, as every year, on May 12. But this time out there will be a new director at the helm – 38-year-old Pavel Trojan. Ahead of the 78th edition I sat down with him at the cramped but cozy offices of the Prague Spring festival in the Malá Strana district.

Tell us something about your family background.

“My family background is quite musical.

“My father is a composer and for many years served as director of the Prague Conservatory.

“And my mother is a doctor but at a young age she was a super pianist.

“She comes from Slovakia in her teenage period she attended many Slovak competitions and usually was first or in second place.

“So I have some family background with musical roots.”

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Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Elpida Foundation

Suicide themed phone calls among seniors rose twofold between the years 2021 and 2022, according to Czechia’s helpline for old age people Linka seniorů. I asked the head of the helpline, Dr Kateřina Bohatá, why this is the case.

“Our helpline, which is free of charge and anonymous, receives approximately one to two calls from seniors with suicidal thoughts every day.

“We see the increase in suicide-themed calls as a result of the long-term burden on society. After two years of the pandemic there followed the war in Ukraine and the economic crisis. They have all highlighted the difficulties that seniors face in their everyday life. Their burdens simply became unbearable.”

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Kateřina Šulová, ČTK

President Petr Pavel has repeatedly said this week that Petr Fiala’s coalition government is poor in communication with the public, echoing a commonly heard assertion. But is the head of state correct on this point? I spoke to political scientist Jiří Pehe.

“I’m afraid that President Pavel is right, because the government really does not communicate well with the public.

“There are some steps that would really need much more explaining, if the government wants to convince the public that its policies are correct.

“But unfortunately what we see is that individual ministers quite often make statements about particular steps which are not coordinated with the rest of the government.

“Then we often see that other ministers often criticise those proposals – and that creates a lot of confusion in the public.

“It seems to me that the main problem is a certain lack of leadership on the level of the prime minister.

“Mr. Fiala was very productive and very good during the big international crises of 2022, but he has sort of disappeared in the last few weeks.”

It this poor coordination within the cabinet, as you see it, in part at least due to the fact it’s a five-party coalition?

“Yes. Unfortunately this current coalition suffers from what could have been expected, and that it is that consists of too many parties, which, on top of that, are not really ideologically on the same wavelength, so to speak.

“On the one hand we have conservatives, such as the Civic Democratic Party and the Christian Democrats, and on the other we have progressivists in the form of the Pirates.”

Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Olomouc’s Palacký University

Palacký University located in the Moravian city of Olomouc is a multicultural hub for students from countries the world over. Of the university’s 23,000 students, over 4,500 are foreign nationals.

Hugo Fonseca, from Colombia studies international development and environmental studies and he says the student life and community in Olomouc is second-to-none.

“To be honest, I love Olomouc. I always say to my friends that I love studying in a small city, because we have a student community that, if you were living in a capital city, you wouldn’t have. In capital cities, people tend to be more individualistic, but here in Olomouc it’s like a community. If you go out for groceries, you meet people from your school and we recognize each other even if we aren’t close friends. We’re all living in the community and we try to be nice, the people here really care about others.”

Palacký University Olomouc is the oldest university in Moravia and the second oldest in the country, just behind Charles University in Prague. The history of Palacký University dates back to December of 1573, when it was given the rights to confer degrees at the former Jesuit College in Olomouc. Today, it’s a bustling hub for international students like Hugo, who are seeking quality higher education.

Colombia is a long way off from Czechia, and before deciding to make the move to Olomouc, Hugo considered universities where they speak his native Spanish. But he says he’s loved the challenge of living in a new place like Czechia, where the language is foreign to him.

“I know it’s really far, but they had a cooperating program with my home university. A year ago when I decided to come to Czechia, I only had two options: Spain or Czechia. You could ask why I didn’t choose Spain, where I can speak my mother tongue. To be honest, I wanted to fight with the language because if I was in Spain, it would be really easy for me. I didn’t know a word of Czech when I first came here, but fortunately in Olomouc, everyone speaks English, and I can say that all my friends speak English perfectly.”

Yael Romero is an economics and managerial studies student at Palacký University originally from Mexico, and he says, the location of the university, and the affordable cost of living in Czechia were significant factors in his decision to cross the globe for his studies.

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Author: Amelia Mola Schmidt

Czechia’s king of castles, Karlštejn, ceremonially opened new spaces for visitors this Friday after a major CZK 164 million reconstruction. They are the result of three years of work, which included the reconstruction of the imperial residence and the castle’s gothic cellars. An enclosed visitor’s centre has also been built and there are new exhibitions detailing the construction of the castle as well as the history of wine growing in the surrounding countryside.

Karlštejn was built during the mid-14th century by the order of Bohemia’s most famous ruler, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. It was marked out as special from the beginning, as it was intended to house the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire itself.

The appearance of the castle today is the result not just of its original construction, but also of late gothic, renaissance and even 19th century additions. Its historical importance, beautiful architecture and relatively close proximity to Prague mean that it ranks among the most visited cultural heritage sites in the country and it is popular among both domestic and foreign tourists.

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Authors: Thomas McEnchroe, Naděžda Hávová

Photo: Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary

Two months before it kicks off, the organisers of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival have just revealed the first details of this year’s programme, including a retrospective of Japanese director Yasuzo Masamura and a restored version of a neglected Czechoslovak New Wave drama.

A swarm of photographers captured the unveiling of the poster for the 57th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival at a news conference on Tuesday.

The image presents the numbers five and seven as colourful, retro-style lines against a black background and is the work, as every year, of Studio Najbrt.

It was specifically created by studio founder Aleš Najbrt and his colleague Jakub Spurný, who said the poster itself was just the beginning.

“It’s like an experimental game with legibility and also movement, because on social media and in the cinema you will see an animated version of this poster, where the number will transform into other forms and so on.

“So we not only have this version of this number – we’ve also got many others, which you will also see in print and so on.”

See the rest here.

Author: Ian Willoughby

Sit-ups, push-ups, long jump and beep test run — these athletic disciplines were used by the Czech School Inspectorate to measure the physical fitness of schoolchildren across the country. Compared to the same tests carried out 30 years ago, the results have shown a dramatic drop in children’s endurance.

Tests to ascertain the physical fitness level of Czech schoolchildren were carried out last autumn among pupils from 3rd and 7th grades of primary schools, and among students in the 2nd year of secondary schools.

The results showed that compared to their peers from other countries, Czech children do quite well in the long jump discipline. However, when it came the 20 metre shuttle run test, which is commonly used to measure maximum running aerobic fitness, they performed significantly worse than their peers abroad.

However, children’s endurance has also dramatically declined when compared to that of the same age group 30 years ago. Interestingly in the long jump and sit-ups, the children’s results have remained more or less unchanged for decades.

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Authors: Eva Mikulka Šelepová, Ruth Fraňková

The project “RocketRoll” – illustration of NEP tug, Photo: ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking for ways by which its future spaceships and probes could use nuclear-powered engines in order to travel across the extreme distances of outer space. Scientists at the Czech Technical University in Prague are among the many institutions involved in the effort, specifically a project called “RocketRoll”. I spoke to Jan Frýbort from the university’s Department of Nuclear Reactors to find out more.

“There are essentially two technologies that we can use for the utilisation of nuclear reactors when it comes to space missions.

“One of them is based around thermal propulsion. That means directly heating a medium such as hydrogen in the reactor. This method works in a similar way to that in which chemical propulsion is used in rockets.

“Our study focuses on the other method. Namely, that of using electric engines or thrusters that use the nuclear reactor to produce the electricity that propels them.”

Could you tell me what the benefits of nuclear propulsion instead of the currently used chemical propulsion for rockets are? I understand that it would, for example, enable us to travel further than is currently possible.

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: Personal Archive of Anna Šebestová/annanemone

Sloths, slugs, and starfish – those are some of the unlikely patterns that young textile designer Anna Šebestová draws as the basis for the prints on her clothes and accessories, which she markets and sells under her brand annanemone. Her bold designs have won her the attention of Prague Zoo and even the former mayor, Zděněk Hříb. I met her recently and started by asking whether she had always been drawn to the weird and wonderful.

“Looking back, when I was a kid I always liked drawing sea creatures and sea weed and weird stuff like that.

“I definitely also drew princesses and things, but I’m quite an empathetic person and I remember when we were at the beach with my brother, I always felt really bad for the dead things.

“So we played this game where he would find dead animals, like little fish or random sea things, and we would bury them. I wanted to make them little graves.

“I remember just feeling so bad for all these dead things, and I think that kind of connects to the philosophy behind my brand – that I want to give even the weird things a chance.”

See the rest here.

Author: Anna Fodor

Photo: Tomáš Vodňanský, Czech Radio

The film festival in Cannes has revealed its La Cinef school film selection and two films from students at Prague’s FAMU film school have made the cut. The 2019 student Oscar winner Daria Kashcheeva will be competing with her master’s thesis movie Electra. Meanwhile, fresh FAMU bachelor Petr Pylypchuk got into the nominations with his film Osmý den (Eighth Day), which explores the story of a sect runaway.

For Daria Kashcheeva this is far from the first major nomination. Her 2019 production, Daughter, which revolved around a woman remembering her relationship with her father, made a big impression on the international animated film scene winning several awards.

See the rest here.

Author: Thomas McEnchroe

The Czech cabinet recently approved drug policies that include introducing a strictly regulated cannabis market. The details of the plan, which its architects say will deliver major tax revenues, are still being fine-tuned – but there already obstacles in sight.

Earlier this month Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala told reporters that ministers had approved an “ambitious” drugs action plan to run until the end of 2025 that includes the introduction of a strictly regulated market in cannabis.

The exact rules are now being drafted by an expert group.

The state’s drugs policy chief, Jindřich Vobořil, said previously that taxation on legalised cannabis could bring no less than CZK 15 billion into the state coffers annually.

Jan Martin Paďouk works in the field of medical grade cannabis and is an advisor to Mr. Vobořil.

“The team of Jindřich Vobořil, the team from the governmental office, has been preparing this for many, many years and it’s a result that came from Jindřich’s place as national anti-drug coordinator.

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Authors: Ian Willoughby, Alexis Rosenzweig

For many years I had a wish, which I rather did not want to tell anybody about. It seemed so immodest and unrealistic to me.

The wish was to get pangolins to our zoo, and also to live to see their baby and watch it how rides on its mother’s tail. This week my wish came true. After coming back from Africa, where I already was on tenterhooks, I went to see the morning weighing of our pangolin baby female Šiška (Cone). After the weighing ended and David Vala returned Šiška to the exhibit, she climbed on her mother’s tail for a while. This was the moment I took this photo. I think I will have it framed as a keepsake.

Even just getting the pangolins to Prague was a great success; after all, we are one of the only two zoos in Europe which has them. We owe them to the great reputation of our zoo as well as the effort of then Mayor of Prague Zdeněk Hřib during his negotiations in Taiwan. Our current breeding of the Taiwanese pangolin couple brough from Taipei Zoo last year is the result of the work of our keepers, particularly of the abovementioned David, but also of all who created favourable conditions for them in our zoo. The first pangolin baby, bred in Europe, is an enormous success of our keepers, the veterinary Roman Vodička and last but not least, of our “friends on the phone” at Taipei Zoo. Šiška is already eleven weeks old, she weighs 870 grams, and not only does she ride on her mother’s tail, but she started tasting the special formula which we prepare for her parents. Nevertheless, I must point that it is too early to declare victory, we can consider her reared only when she stops drinking mother’s milk, i.e., around the turn of July and August. But we have already come a long way.

I began to wish for pangolins some ten years ago, when I had seen in Sub-Saharan Africa how they were massively poached and how the trade in their scales was increasing. When I began writing about them and how threatened they were, only a few people knew what kind of animals they were. This has changed a somewhat since then, but only thanks to our “Prague” pangolins and especially Šiška has the wider public learned about these fascinating mammals. Šiška riding Tang’s tail is with no exaggeration the ambassador of pangolins living in the wild and she helps us to work on their conservation.

The small town of Vysoké Mýto, in north-east Bohemia, has been named Czech Historical Town of the year for 2022. The award, which comes with a one-million-crown cheque, honours those towns and cities that have excelled in preserving and renewing their cultural and architectural heritage.

The Historic Town of the Year competition is organised annually by the Association of Historic Settlements in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia along with the Ministry of Regional Development.

The mayor of Vysoké Mýto, František Jiráský, says the town earned the title thanks to long-term and conceptual care of its historical centre and monuments:

“I think that we have been very successful in using the Ministry of Culture’s regeneration programme fund. In fact, we have been drawing money from the programme since its inception in the 1990s. We have also been successful in cooperating with all the owners of buildings listed in the urban conservation area.”

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

Photo: Zuzana Machálková, Czech Radio

Czech scientists are collaborating on an international project, SMELLODI, which aims to digitise human scent. At the moment it is not yet possible to record a smell, send it halfway around the world and then regenerate it, but SMELLODI is trying to make that possible. And it could have real and beneficial applications in medicine.

The power of smell for diagnosing disease has only started to be recognised in recent years.

The incredible case of Joy Milne, a Scottish woman with a heightened sense of smell who, using only her nose, is able to detect Parkinson’s disease in people many years before they develop symptoms, helped scientists at the University of Manchester to develop a simple diagnostic test for the disease – something which hadn’t existed up until then. Smell has also been used to diagnose cancer and even Covid, with dogs trained to sniff out the diseases in people early, before other kinds of diagnostic tests are able to pick anything up.

See the rest here.

Authors: Anna Fodor, zuzana machálková

Photo: Vít Šimánek, ČTK

President Petr Pavel and the First Lady received a group of Romany high school and university students at Prague Castle on Thursday. In an unprecedented gesture of support for young members of the Roma minority, he encouraged them to follow their dreams and inspire others.

One of the first events the new Czech presidential couple, Petr Pavel and his wife Eva, organized at Prague Castle was a meeting with a group of talented young Romanies. It was a message to the Roma minority that the head of state was aware of their problems and believed in their potential. President Pavel congratulated the group of students on having overcome one of the greatest threats to their personal development -prejudice.

“Prejudice often comes from a lack of information, from imbedded stereotypes and an unwillingness to listen to each other. You are bright examples that show it is possible to break out of this vicious circle.”

Fourteen young Romanies – future historians, economists and police officers – spent an hour and a half chatting with the presidential couple, talking about their problems and hopes for the future.

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Author: Daniela Lazarová

Photo: The Museum of South East Moravia in Zlín

Ploština was a small settlement in the Zlín region of Moravia. On April 19, 1945, close to the end of World War II, it was set on fire and many of its inhabitants were massacred by the Nazis for having supported the anti-Nazi resistance. A new monument has now been erected on the site of the tragedy.

“My grandfather was burnt alive here, with one of his sons who was just 21 at the time, together with a young child. My mother lived through this horror when she was just 16 years old. The Nazis set their house on fire and interrogated her. It’s really hard for me to talk about it.”

Vlastimil Hušt is one of the descendants of the Ploština community massacred by the Nazis on April 19, 1945.

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Authors: Daniela Lazarová, Roman Verner

Photo: Masaryk University in Brno

Founded just a year after the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Masaryk University bears the name of the country’s esteemed co-founder and its first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.

Over a century later, the university has established itself as one of the most reputable and distinguished higher-education institutions in both Czechia and Europe as a whole.

Masaryk University has ten different faculties, and over 200 departments with an extended range of studies for students to choose from in bachelor, master’s, and doctoral programs. It is no surprise that thousands of international students end up choosing Masaryk University to achieve their academic goals, making Brno a melting pot of diversity and open-mindedness.

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Authors: Jakob Weizman, Amelia Mola Schmidt

Photo: archive of Czech Radio

Harry Macourek, who would have turned 100 this month, was active in various musical genres and styles, scoring pop hits as well as working in the jazz, film score, classical and other fields.

He was born Karel Macourek on 11 April 1923 in Banská Hodruša in Slovakia but studied at the Prague Conservatory and spent much of his life in the Czech lands.

Macourek wrote Socialist Realist songs following the Communist takeover of 1948.

He later worked at Czechoslovak Radio, where he was involved in the establishment of a number of ensembles, including string orchestras. He left the station in 1969.

See the rest here.

Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Hradec Králové, Photo: Patricie Polanská, Czech Radio

Kotěra was an internationally-recognised practitioner of modern architecture, straddling the boundaries between contemporary art nouveau and modern functionalism. He left an indelible mark on many towns and cities across Czechia.

Born in Brno, Jan Kotěra left at the end of the 19th Century to study architecture in Vienna, where he was heavily influenced by his professor Otto Wagner, a pioneer of modern architecture. Thanks to Wagner, Kotěra also met his contemporaries Jože Plečnik, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Joseph Urban, and another famous Brno native – Adolf Loos, who all went on to become well-known architects.

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Photo: Tomáš Roček, Czech Radio

Russian journalist and politician Vladimir Kara-Murza received a 25-year jail term on Monday on charges linked to his criticism of the war in Ukraine. It is the longest sentence Russia has handed down to an opposition figure since it launched the invasion. Mr. Kara-Murza, who also has UK citizenship, won the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize last year and I discussed his case with Michael Žantovský, head of the Václav Havel Library in Prague.

“I think it’s a typical Stalinist type trial, with a draconian punishment for verbal statements that are the human right of every citizen, every individual, in a normal country.

“It’s disgusting and it cannot go unnoticed and unpunished by people in the West, by Britain, which is a country of his citizenship, by the United States, where he was a resident for a considerable amount of time, and everywhere, including this country.

See the rest here.

Author: Ian Willoughby

Ann Altman brought a painting of her grandmother Anna to Brno, Photo: Tomáš Kremr, Czech Radio

A portrait of a Jewish woman called Anna Wotzilkova, who was born in South Moravia and died in the Holocaust, has been donated to the newly planned Mehrin Moravian Jewish Museum by her descendants, who now live in the United States. The painting was brought to Brno this week by her granddaughter Ann Altman:

“This picture is very important to me. It’s a portrait of my grandmother Anna Wotzilkova, who came from Znojmo. She married my grandfather Emil Löwy. The Wotzilkas owned the brewery and my grandfather owned the mill.

“They were very important citizens of Znojmo and almost all the family members were murdered by the Nazis. My parents were able to escape and the portrait was rescued by my mother’s governess, whose name was Jana Fukačová. In the 1960s, Jiří Fukač, a professor of music in Czechoslovakia, brought this portrait to my mother.”

Ann Altman, the grand-daughter of the woman portrayed says the painting hung in the dining room of the house in England where she grew up.

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Author: Tomáš Kremr; Ruth Fraňková

Reprophoto: Radio Prague International

Roadside hotels, run-down gas stations and snack stands, second hand bookstores but also vast forests, volcanoes and indie rock music. That is the Pacific Northwest seen through the eyes of Czech illustrator Jindřich Janíček in his latest book called Na západ severozápadní linkou or West by Northwest. The unusual travel journal is based on the memories of his and his wife’s two-week trip to Washington, British Columbia and Oregon and reflects his long-time fascination with North American culture and geography. Indeed the title itself refers to the famous film by Alfred Hitchcock called North by Northwest.

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

Vojtěch Hynais is one of the lesser-known Czech artists, at least abroad. But recently a painting of his aroused the interest of the world-famous Pompidou Centre in Paris.

The Vysočina Regional Gallery in Jihlava isn’t used to international attention. The last time they received a request from abroad for the loan of a painting was at least ten years ago, says curator Jana Bianovská.

“Usually when we loan paintings it’s to other galleries within Czechia, so we are pleased that a painting which we have in our permanent exhibition has significance for our whole collection and for the entire history of Czech art, I would say. We are happy to loan it so that people abroad can also see it.”

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Authors: Anna Fodor, Anna Kubišta

Czechia is sitting on the proverbial “roof” of Europe. All the rivers and streams flow out of the country, none into it. Thus, Czechs are literally losing the ground under their feet because erosion takes away tens of millions of cubic meters of fertile soil each year.

Green grass, rolling hills and meandering streams – the picturesque landscape of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands is a sight for sore eyes. Agriculture in this hilly area is not as profitable, and so not as intensive, as it is in other parts of Czechia. There are no big industrial complexes that would pollute the air and contaminate the land. But, surprisingly, there is another problem: that of erosion.

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Author: Vít Pohanka

On average, every Czech throws away roughly 70 kilograms of food a year. In an effort to get them to stop, economists have now calculated just how much money they are throwing away.

Food banks are close to empty and surveys suggest that many families are having trouble making ends meet, yet the problem of food squandering has not gone away. Vaclav Pitucha head of one of the country’s food banks says food waste remains a widespread problem.

“Food is still being wasted at all levels, from food producers to retailers and chains, distributors and restaurants. But it is households that account for the largest share of food waste. Naturally, this has far-reaching impacts. It is an economic problem, an environmental problem and a social problem as well.”

Read more here.

Authors: Daniela Lazarová, Iva Hadj Moussa

Photo: Andrea Brtníková, Czech Radio

For 85 years, a monument in Orlová to the fallen Czech soldiers of the 1919 Polish–Czechoslovak War has been a plain list of names on slabs of stone. But it used to be dominated by a huge statue of a Silesian eagle with soldiers at its feet, which was torn down by Polish troops after the 1938 Munich Agreement. Now a five-metre copy of the statue is being crafted and will soon adorn the monument in the east Moravian town once again.

The statue of the eagle, which from old photographs looks like it is sitting proudly atop a rock and looking out regally into the distance, was torn down by Polish troops in 1938 following the Munich Agreement, 10 years after it was constructed and almost 20 years after the war which it commemorated.

See the rest here.

Source: Brno Expat Centre

‘Giving birth in Brno’, ‘Five easy tips for passing the A2 Czech test’, and ‘How to leave your lover but stay in the Czech Republic’ – those are some of the kinds of workshops you can expect at the Brno Expat Fair on Saturday 22 April, along with a whole host of stands and exhibits showcasing what Czechia’s second-largest city has to offer international residents. I spoke to Marie Lungová of the Brno Expat Centre, which organises the event, about why it’s worth a visit.

“The highlight is that we are bringing everything that makes Brno international into one place and one day. So you can explore, discover and enjoy all the opportunities that a life in Brno offers – and also you can enjoy them with hundreds of other foreigners who live there. So it’s not only about the fair itself and the opportunities you see there, but also about meeting lots of people who are in the same situation as you.

See the rest here.

Author: Anna Fodor

Thirteen films, which found their way to us from the Austrian Film Museum, provided us with a great deal of information about the look and functioning of Prague Zoo in the 1930s. Even more exciting is the discovery that there probably were – or still are – many more of these films. Perhaps up to twenty-one! We know that thanks to the search done by the historian Dr Kateřina Jíšová from the Prague City Archives, who succeeded to find a surprising amount of information about Col Eng Josef Zelinka (1893-1948) and his wife Helena (1892-1952).

I immediately found very interesting one of her first findings, namely that the bride’s brother-in-law dentist Dr Jaromír Křečan was the best man at Zelinkas’ wedding. He became a recognized specialist at the dentist clinic of Prof Dr Jan Jesenský, while Prof Jesenský often visited the renowned salon of Jarmila Klatovská, the daughter of the founder of Prague Zoo Prof Jiří Janda. Dr Křečan himself enjoyed spending time in society, particularly in artistic society. These links might probably shed some light on how the Zelinkas became friends with Prof Janda and established a rather intimate relationship with him – as can be seen in the film footage. At the same time, however, it is necessary to add that the Zelinkas themselves were in the centre of social life. Their residence at Salvátorská 8 was also the home of both brothers-in-law of Helena Zelinková: already mentioned Dr Křečan and above all the publisher Jan Štenc, at whose place the best artists and other eminent celebrities of the time were meeting.

Dr Jíšová’s research also revealed many other interesting facts and connections, but from my point of view the most important is the number twenty-one, mentioned in the introduction of this column. Thus, the fact that the films, made by Col Zelinka, might not have been thirteen, but twenty-one. This follows the property inventory that had been compiled after the death of Helena Zelinková in October 1952. Besides many other items these are listed in it:

13) 1 projector brand Pathé Vox 9/5 mm………… 8,000.-
14) 21 rounded boxes per 200.-………… 4,200.-
15) 1 wall screen for the projection device………… 120.-

All evaluated items were taken over by Ms Jarmila Výborná

Thirteen out of twenty-one rounded boxes undoubtedly contained thirteen films, which are now in the Austrian Film Museum. Inside the remaining eight boxes there were perhaps eight more reels – and of course we would be enormously interested in them. Are they in some collection? Are they owned by descendants of their heiress, the sister of Col Zelinka, Ms Jarmila Výborná? Are they on sale somewhere? Or have they been irretrievably lost?

Of course, we would be grateful for any information. The films were most probably in Pathé format, with a width of 9.5 mm and with perforation between frames. And they would probably be introduced by the logo of Col Zelinka: Z in a circle.

Miroslav Bobek

Photo: ČT

Czech military chiefs have moved to quell public alarm sparked by the fact civilian doctors will take part in an exercise call-up drive next month. Top brass say the conscription readiness test is in fact a routine matter.

May 18 will see the Czech Army hold an exercise conscription drive aimed at making sure that it is capable of effectively calling up potential soldiers in the event of a conflict situation.

Unlike in previous years, the call-up drill will take place in all 14 regions of the country simultaneously – and will involve civilian doctors.

See the rest here.

Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Petra Kasperová, Archive of Abhejali Bernard

Abhejali Bernardová is only the tenth person in the world, and the first from a landlocked country to complete the so-called Oceans Seven, a marathon swimming challenge consisting of seven open water channel swims, including the English Channel and the Strait of Gibraltar. The Brno-based swimmer recently published a book describing her adventures and completed another challenge, the English Channel Triathlon from Dover to Prague.

What attracts her to long-distance swimming? How does she adapt to the freezing cold waters? And what goes through her head during the hour-long swims?

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

Photo: JOtruba, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

While delicious, Czech food is heavily reliant on meat and animal products. But as society gains more and more awareness about the health and environmental impacts, more support for restaurants purveying locally sourced or vegetarian options is growing.

We all know Czechs are proud of their cuisine, from goulash to the national dish “svíčková” or sirloin with cream sauce and dumplings. But the traditional Czech diet is based heavily around meat and animal products, posing both health and environmental risks. So what are the implications of eating the traditional Czech fare?

Registered Nutritional Therapist Blanka Judova has noted the health risks associated with traditional Czech food – with the impacts ranging from high blood pressure, to an increased risk of cancer.

See the rest here.

Author: Amelia Mola Schmidt

Photo: Andrea Brtníková, Czech Radio

For 85 years, a monument in Orlová to the fallen Czech soldiers of the 1919 Polish–Czechoslovak War has been a plain list of names on slabs of stone. But it used to be dominated by a huge statue of a Silesian eagle with soldiers at its feet, which was torn down by Polish troops after the 1938 Munich Agreement. Now a five-metre copy of the statue is being crafted and will soon adorn the monument in the east Moravian town once again.

The statue of the eagle, which from old photographs looks like it is sitting proudly atop a rock and looking out regally into the distance, was torn down by Polish troops in 1938 following the Munich Agreement, 10 years after it was constructed and almost 20 years after the war which it commemorated.

See the rest here.

Authors: Anna Fodor, Andrea Brtníková

A recently published Time Out survey placed Prague second in the world, behind Berlin, when it comes to how convenient locals find its public transport system. But in reality how good are the city’s tram, underground and bus services? I jumped on a tram in the downtown area with experienced travel writer and Prague resident Mark Baker.

Generally speaking, how do you view Prague’s public transport system?

“I think Prague has a really fantastic public transport system.

“It’s very comprehensive and you can more or less rely on it.

“When you’re going out or coming home from some place, you can pretty much always assume that the tram or the bus is going to come at the time it says it’s going to come.”

See the rest here.

Author: Ian Willoughby

Photo: Archiv hlavního města Prahy

The “U Pinkasů” pub, founded by Jakub Pinkas in 1843, was the first Prague pub to serve the bottom-fermented lager Pilsner Urquell on tap. It has remained one of the city’s most popular establishments throughout its more than 180 years of continuous operation.

The U Pinkasů pub and restaurant is located in the centre of Prague on Jungmann Square, in the neighbourhood of the Franciscan Monastery and the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. Its first owner was Jakub Pinkas (1805-1879), originally a tailor. In the spring of 1843, Jakub Pinkas asked Pilsen coachman Martin Salzmann, who sometimes stayed with him when he came to Prague with goods from Pilsen (later founder of the most famous Pilsner beer hall U Salzmannů), to bring him the new lager from Pilsen to taste. On April 8, 1843, Salzmann brought two buckets of the tasty lager from the new brewery in Pilsen for him to sample. Jakub Pinkas left the tailoring trade and established the now famous pub.

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Author: Petr Lukeš

Passion plays, in which people dramatically re-enact the trial, suffering and death of Jesus Christ at Easter, have a rich tradition in the South Bohemian town of Hořice na Šumave. The settlement was once the site of some of the largest passion plays in Europe. With the tradition having been revived over the past three decades, the town is now set to host a Europe-wide festival for passion reenactors and is even applying for its plays to be listed by UNESCO.

Lying on the foothills of the Bohemian Forrest, between the picturesque city of Český Krumlov and the Lipno reservoir, lies the small town of Hořice na Šumave. Its Gothic church, stone fountains and beautiful natural surroundings are likely to charm passersby, but those who take the time to get to know Hořice more closely will find that this municipality is far more special than its outward appearance suggests.

The town was once the site of one of the most important passion plays in Europe and, at its height, attracted tens of thousands of visitors from across the world. Ivo Janoušek, a native to the region who began to be interested in the local passion plays’ history while he was a student, explained to Czech Radio where the origins of this tradition began.

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Authors: Thomas McEnchroe, Ivan Studený

Photo: Supraphon

In today’s Easter Sunday music program we’ll be listening to an excerpt from the only Italian oratorio by František Xaver Richter, an 18th century Czech composer, musician and teacher, and one of the main representatives of the so-called Mannheim School.

František Xaver Richter was born in 1709 in Holešov near the town of Zlín but spent his entire life abroad, studying music in Vienna and Italy. In 1746, he became a member of the famous Mannheim orchestra and found himself at the very centre of the progressive European music scene.

Although his chamber and orchestral works significantly contributed to the newly developing classicist style, he never gave up his traditional baroque technique. His oratorio, called La Deposizione dalla croce di Gesú Cristo, combines the achievements of the early classicist style with the baroque composition principles.

See the rest here.

Author: Ruth Fraňková

Photo: Lukáš Žentel, Post Bellum

One of the foremost opponents of the former Czechoslovak communist regime, Dana Němcová, passed away early on Tuesday morning at the age of 89. Despite years of persecution by the secret police, she never let up in her quest for freedom.

Dana Němcová was born in January 1934 and, in her own words, came from humble beginnings. Indeed, she had exactly the kind of working-class credentials that might have endeared her to the communist regime, had she not been such a committed supporter of truth and human rights.

“I was born in Most. Both my parents came from mining families – they were Czechs, and they were poor. My mother lost her parents during the First World War and my father was a teacher.”

See the rest here.

Authors: Anna Fodor, Anna Horáčková, Kateřina Bečková

Photo: Tomáš Kremr, Czech Radio

Czechia has a vast number of cathedrals, churches and chapels from centuries past and it is only rarely that new houses of prayer are built. One such endeavor is close to completion. The small Moravian village of Nesvačilka, which lacked a house of prayer for over 300 years, will soon have its own unique wooden chapel.

The village of Nesvačilka, south-east of Brno, established in 1715, never had its own chapel and the locals would have to walk to the church in neighbouring Moutnice to attend mass. Ten years ago, the parish priest of Moutnice, René Václav Strouhal, launched a public collection for a chapel to be built on the outskirts of Nesvačcilka village. He had a clear idea of how it should look.

“I wanted the chapel to reflect the character of this region –to grow up from it, so to say – and as you can see it is made from God’s divine gifts of Nature- clay, stone, wood, glass and light.

Donors from near and far contributed funds as well as wooden beams and other materials needed. The cornerstone for the chapel was blessed by the late Pope Benedict and work on it got underway in 2014.

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Authors: Daniela Lazarová, Tomáš Kremr

Photo: Aidan Whitley, Fruit Juice Collective

Art can be expensive, but three expat artists who go by the pseudonyms Vinny Bonger, Big Kill, and Kilo Blimp, are partnering with local Prague businesses to make art more accessible for the city’s residents. The founders of the Fruit Juice Collective joined me in the studio to talk about their art philosophy, their current exhibitions, and the importance of art being accessible for everyone.

[Vinny] “We met about a year ago through Instagram funnily enough, and we came together because we all just wanted to create and make art, by ourselves. All three of us are artists and painters, and we were fed up with trying to go to galleries and have them take a fifty-percent commission. So we thought, hey – let’s do it all ourselves!”

Tell me about your art work and how you’re fighting inflation with your work.

[Kilo] “That is one specific concept we had for a show called Cheap Art Supermarket. We have a pre-existing pricing structure that we try to keep our art as low in cost as possible, because we really believe in art being accessible, we don’t like the idea of pricing people out of being able to purchase a painting. But for the Cheap Art Supermarket, we wanted to go even further with that idea, so we decided to price every painting at the cost of the physical item that we painted. So each painting was 67 crowns, or 120 crowns. And it was mostly trying to allow more people to buy more paintings and hear about us, but also about inflation and how everything is getting more expensive, so we wanted to turn something that is usually very expensive, like art, into something as cheap as possible, and really flip it on its head.”

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Author: Amelia Mola Schmidt

Photo: Kristýna Maková, Radio Prague International

The government has nodded to the planned closure of 300 post offices around the country. The state-owned company Czech Post is in the red, due to a marked drop in demand for its services, but critics argue that the state must continue to meet the needs of the thousands of elderly citizens who depend on postal services.

Czech Post is undergoing the biggest overhaul in its history. The once mammoth organization has been unable to compete with the new courier services and has been something of a black hole for state funds.

Interior Minister Vít Rakušan said there was no other option on the table that to make this painful cut.

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Author: Daniela Lazarová

Photo: ČT

Czech military chiefs have moved to quell public alarm sparked by the fact civilian doctors will take part in an exercise call-up drive next month. Top brass say the conscription readiness test is in fact a routine matter.

May 18 will see the Czech Army hold an exercise conscription drive aimed at making sure that it is capable of effectively calling up potential soldiers in the event of a conflict situation.

Unlike in previous years, the call-up drill will take place in all 14 regions of the country simultaneously – and will involve civilian doctors.

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Author: Ian Willoughby

Czechia is one of the last countries in the European Union which still lacks a Children’s Ombudsman. The respective amendment to the law is currently being finalized and the post should be established early next year.

Children’s rights issues are now handled by the Office of the Public Defender of Human Right’s, the national Ombudsman for adults. Deputy Ombudsman Vít Alexander Schorm says that last year, they received about 60 complaints from minors.

“For instance, we get complaints from children in children’s homes. They complain about the in-house rules, the treatment they receive or the living conditions there. We either deal with this on a case by case basis or we go to the home in question for an unannounced visit as part of the national maltreatment prevention program. “

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Authors: Daniela Lazarová, Iva Vokurková

Photo: Archive of magazine Forum/www.cuni.cz

Established in 1348 by Emperor Charles IV, Charles University is the oldest university in Central and Eastern Europe. The university enjoys international prestige and 20 percent of its students are from abroad.

The year was 1348, the monarch on the throne was Charles IV, and the goal was to establish a university that was similar to those in Bologna and Paris and gain international attention and recognition.

Charles University quickly became a flourishing institution for higher thinking, and maintains its high reputation to this day. The university ranks in the top five Erasmus+ destinations, and is ranked amongst the Best Global Universities for many of their programs.

Home to 17 faculties and 50,000 students, 20% of Charles University pupils are internationals. The institution offers quality education, with an affordable price tag attached.

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Authors: Amelia Mola Schmidt, Jakob Weizman

Photo: CAMP

Prague is currently home to one of Europe’s hottest real-estate markets. Real estate prices have soared, subsequently triggering higher rent prices for those who can no longer afford house ownership. An exhibition in the Centre for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning highlights the housing crisis that many residents are facing.

CAMP (Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning is a multimedia gallery and urban planning hub funded by the city of Prague that focuses on the future of urban planning. In their current exhibit titled Prague Tomorrow? Houses and Apartments, CAMP is working to put emphasis on the fact that the city’s housing situation is far from ideal, and addresses the housing crisis that many residents are facing. Štěpán Bärtl, head of CAMP, says it’s a complex problem, with no easy solutions.

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Author: Amelia Mola Schmidt

It was a bit of a provocation from me. I let people vote on Twitter on whether to release nephilas in the jungle in our new gorilla house – The Dja Reserve. What an idea! Although the voting ended in a tie, otherwise reasonable people were writing angry posts in the discussion about toxicity of these spiders or neurotoxicity of their nets. Both are true, however the level of danger should be related to the insect, not to mammals of human size. I once spent a calm night in Cameroon with a nephila roly-poly, during which my companion didn’t move away from the door frame.

In the zoo you don’t have to be afraid. The nephilas (the golden orb-weaver spiders), namely the red-legged golden orb-weaver spiders (Trichonephila inaurata), are in the Dja Reserve safely locked in one of the vivaria. However, the stormy reaction was on my mind. Lots of people are afraid of spiders, but this was beyond my previous experience. Only after some time did I figure out why. There was a comics, Pavouk Nephila (Nephila, the Spider), published in 1970s in the magazine Ohníček, which had been characterized on one of the fans’ websites in this way: “A giant, extremely dangerous spider, of the size of a car, capable of holding a trolleybus in its legs, with fangs as long as sabres enabling it to cut a human’s head off in a second? Yes!” Well… if I read this before my night with the roly-poly, perhaps I would have gone to sleep somewhere else. And I am not mentioning the impressive illustrations of Nephila by the later Oscar winner for costumes for the film Amadeus, Theodor Pištěk.

By the way, in the plot of the comics the effort to get large volumes of spider silk plays an important role. The same effort, however, exists for decades in the real world and nephilas are one of the groups of spiders, which are in the centre of interest in this regard. After all, do you know why “our” nephila from the Dja Reserve is called golden orb-weaver spider? Because it spins golden webs. Even an entire cape has been made from very similar Madagascar golden orb-web spider silk. Dozens of people worked on it, and they used fibres from one million of nephilas. The cape is beautiful; however, I did not understand the purpose of it. On the other hand, I understand very well the efforts to get spider silk in a large amount. It surpasses steel by some of its mechanical properties, Kevlar by others, and in the combination of these various properties it is simply unbeatable. Unfortunately, spiders, unlike the silkworm caterpillars, which just calmly chew the mulberry leaves, can’t be bred on a mass scale. They would eat each other. Therefore, other ways to get their silk are explored. Especially through genetical engineering, which has come into play recently. The relevant spider genes are inserted by researchers into various organisms, starting with bacteria, tobacco plants, and silkworms, and ending with goats…

Well, I started thinking about what today’s version of Nephila, the Spider would look like. Maybe it is better not to think… Anyway, you definitely don’t have to be afraid of the nephilas in the vivarium of our Prague Dja Reserve.

There have been a number of reports of wolf sightings in the Krkonoše Mountains over the past few weeks, either in small packs or lone individuals. As the wolf population has steadily grown and become more settled there since they first began returning to the area in 2018, encounters between wolves and humans will only continue to become more and more commonplace.

Miroslav Kutal of Brno’s Mendel University is the Czech coordinator for the new international LIFE WILD WOLF project. Involving eight European countries, the project aims to understand human-wolf interactions in the European cultural landscape and prevent potential critical situations from occurring by developing, testing and evaluating procedures for managing encounters between wolves and humans. I spoke to him about the project and what the return of wolves to Czechia means for us.

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Author: Anna Fodor

Czechia’s main tourist season starts on April 1, with the country’s myriad castles and chateaux opening their doors to visitors. The National Heritage Institute which manages around 1,000 sites of cultural and historical interest in the Czech Republic also has some novelties in store – new sightseeing routes, exhibitions and a number of themed events.

If you had to pick one thing Czechia can be proud of, it might well be the hundreds of stunning castles and chateaux dotted about the country. These are often the destination for Czechs going on ‘výlety’ or excursions – on the whole, Czechs are great explorers of their own land, and this trend only increased during covid, according to Czech Tourism figures. While foreign tourists visit some of the better-known sites, many are neglected.

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Author: Anna Fodor

Photo: Praga

Seventy years ago, on 2 April 1953, the first Praga V3S multi-purpose, all-terrain truck rolled off the production line in Prague’s Vysočany. The military vehicle was one of Czechoslovakia’s best-known postwar products.

The Praga V3S was produced between 1953 and 1990 in Czechoslovakia and was exported to over 70 countries.

The designers were given only four months to get from development to prototype stage and were mainly inspired by America’s Studebaker US6 and Russia’s similar ZiL vehicles.

Over the decades around 130,000 units were manufactured. It was among the best off-road cargo vehicles of its time and was used by the Czechoslovak army for many decades, serving for a wide variety of purposes.

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Photo: Jeff Roberson, ČTK/AP

Boston Bruins forward David Pastrňák scored a milestone hat-trick in the team’s 4:3 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins at the weekend. With a total of 56 goals and 47 assists Pastrňák thus became only the second Czech ice hockey player after Jaromír Jágr to score more than 100 points during the regular NHL season. I asked Czech Radio’s sports journalist Petr Tomášek about the significance of the achievement.

“It’s a big milestone because, as you said, only Jágr managed it before him. It is also a mark of quality. He now belongs in the ‘100 club’, so he can call himself a superstar.”

How exclusive is this “100 club”?

“There are only 5 players in this season who made it and in some seasons there are no players who breach the three digit point score.”

Pastrňák is still just 26 and has much of his career in front of him. Where would you place him among Czech hockey stars overall?

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe

Photo: National Gallery Prague

A new exhibition marking 200 years since the birth of Josef Mánes, one of the pioneers of modern Czech art, is currently underway at Prague’s National Gallery. The retrospective, entitled Josef Mánes: Man – Artist – Legend, features more than 400 items, including the original Calendar Plate from Prague’s Astronomical Clock.

“People dream at night…I dream in the day.” A quotation from Josef Mánes’s sketchbook has become the motif of a new exhibition currently underway in National Gallery’s Wallenstein Riding School. It is the first show dedicated to the famous Czech artist since 1971, says one of its curators, Veronika Hulíková:

“We thought it was time to present the collection of Mánes’s drawings, prints and paintings from the National Gallery’s collection again, as the gallery manages the largest collection of his works.

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Authors: Ruth Fraňková, Karel Oujezdský

Photo: Moravian Library Brno

The keenly awaited Milan Kundera Library had its grand opening this weekend on April 1, the day of the celebrated writer’s 94th birthday. The collection, which includes around 4,000 of Kundera’s publications, is being housed on the first floor of the Moravian State Library in Brno, the author’s hometown.

The news that Kundera’s private library and archive would be transported from his Paris home to Brno and donated to the Moravian Library was first announced almost three years ago. The idea came from the writer’s wife, Věra, says the head of the Moravian Library Tomáš Kubíček.

“The Milan Kundera Library came about thanks to a brilliant idea by Věra, when we were preparing an exhibition of Kundera’s works in, I think, 2018. While we were going through that huge pile of books, Věra came and said ‘Wouldn’t it be better if one day you took care of this and took it to the Moravian Library?’”

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Authors: Anna Fodor, Magdalena Hrozínková