Section Archive Letter from Prague
Letter from Prague, final edition
In the weekly Letter from Prague, our reporters have been sharing their
views on issues of the day. But now, a day before Radio Prague shuts down
its shortwave broadcasts, here comes the final edition of our regular rant
about all things Czech. More
The delicacies of you and You
English speaking foreigners to the Czech Republic who are interested in the
language are often befuddled or even annoyed by the feature of formal and
informal speech in Czech grammar, called vykání and tykání - that is,
the formal, plural “you” and the informal, singular “you”. Nowhere
is that characteristic more frowned upon than in multinational companies,
where new employees, called “formal you” at the job interview, are
renamed “demotic you” on their first day of work, and told to address
everyone else accordingly. More
The good, the bad & the ugly in the dragon’s den
I have never been a fan of reality TV and would be hard-pressed to watch
any programme where people try to meet a suitable partner or spend weeks
cooped up in a fishbowl of a room trying to see how they get along. But one
show, which has caught my attention is Den D (translatable as D-Day but
known in English as Dragon’s Den). If you’re familiar with the
programme, you’ll know it’s a show where entrepreneurs try to persuade
investors to put money into their start up businesses. More
On track to end Berlin walls
I am writing this letter before I head off into the country on my by now
very familiar train route to Mariánské Lázně. The route has been
plagued now by improvements, read European Union funded optimization as it
is termed, for the last three of four years now. I think the idea is that
eventually the trip to Nuremberg, Germany, will take 20 minutes or a half
hour less. The result for the recent years had been 20 or 30 minutes more
on the travelling time. More
Cat power
Though my flat is wonderful – bright, cosy and quiet – my building is
another story entirely. I swear I invariably get a huge pang of envy on
visits to friends who live nearby, specifically in the
Žizkov-Vinohrady-Vršovice area. More
Gothic winter tale
Winter came early this year, with piles of snow yet again taking Bohemia
and Moravia by surprise. The guidebook Lonely Planet has even placed
Prague’s Christmas market in Old Town Square among the top five in
Europe, calling it a Gothic midwinter fairy tale. But the reality in the
Czech capital over the last couple of weeks has been rather different. More
Making a clean sweep
Chimney sweeps do not usually occupy the front pages of Czech newspapers.
But over the last week or so chimney sweeps and do-it-yourself tips on how
to care for your chimney have been all the rage. The cause is a new law
next year calling for annual safety checks on chimneys amid dire warnings
that there are not enough sweeps to meet the expected demand. Apparently,
sweeps became a rare species in the last decade with only one school giving
lessons but they now seem to be on a comeback. More
It’s nearly yearly pass time once again
Next month thousands of Prague residents, myself included, will be paying
in advance for a year’s travel on the city’s very reliable,
easy-to-navigate integrated public transport network. More
Fresh, please
It’s something that happens every once in a while to all of us: you’re
waiting to pay for items at the supermarket or grocery store and at the
very last second you notice the underside of your egg plant is covered in
mold. Or the ends of the cucumber are soggy. Or something in your cart is
just plain off. It happened to me most recently at a supermarket after
racing through overcrowded aisles I noticed only at the check-out that an
expensive pack of peppers was thoroughly rotted. It’s the kind of moment
that you vow you’ll never go back to the place again. But often, the
choices are limited. More
Tickled black
A Czech, and American and a Russian are stuck on a desert island, lost to
the world, and one day they catch a golden fish. “Put me back in the
water,” says the fish, “and I will fulfil a wish for each of you...”
More
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