Magazine Magazine

Photo: CTK Easter in Pelhrimov always brings new records - and this year was no exception. School kids from the town which is known for its museum of records and curiosities gathered together on the square to assemble the biggest ever human Easter egg. 940 kids dressed in different coloured T-shirts clustered together to created the brightly decorated egg which was photographed from a helicopter flying overhead. The red-white-yellow and blue pattern they created was the winning model of several hundred suggestions put forward by the kids themselves and now has a place in the Czech Book of Records.

There's one Easter decoration that you will find in every Czech town or village at Easter time and that's the Easter tree. Unlike the Christmas one this is a birch and is decorated with a collection of brightly coloured eggs. Many villages compete in whose tree has the more Easter eggs which usually means that school kids consume a huge amount of them before Easter. This year the Moravian village of Nahorany won hands down - with a total of 12, 913 eggs on its tree. The entire village helped and its inhabitants say they don't want to see an egg on their plates ever again. Maybe somebody should keep an eye on their cholesterol level!

Of course not everyone was obsessed with Easter traditions last weekend - while some men chased the girls and drank plum brandy others headed for the river early on Sunday morning for the long-awaited opening of the trout season. From now until the end of November an estimated 35 thousand fishing enthusiasts will spend every spare moment on the riverbank. Every year fishermen catch approximately 120 tons of trout in Czech rivers. In the past they'd end up on their dinner table. Today many Czechs have revered to sports fishing, throwing their catch back into the river as soon as they've savoured the moment and taken a picture to show their friends if the catch is worth boasting about. The really big catches are few and far between because Czech rivers are not exactly rich in fish. Experienced fishermen say that trout fishing in the Czech Republic still leaves a lot to be desired. Trout, predominantly.

The town of As, near the German border, made headlines at the beginning of this year when it erected unique traffic style road signs - red lips on a white background - to tell drivers where prostitution is permitted and where it is off-limits. The signs immediately became a collectors' item - and they disappeared as fast as the town put them up. "Yes, a lot of them have been stolen, the town's mayor Dalibor Blazek says, and we are not sure for how much longer we will continue to replace them. Maybe we will try just once again." As installed the signs after the locals protested that prostitutes should not be allowed near schools and children's playgrounds. Although prostitution is not banned many towns have attempted to restrict it to selected areas. As chose the red lips traffic signs as an international language since many clients are from Austria and Germany.

If you are a dog owner and are in the habit of leaving your dog waiting for you somewhere while you take care of your business, then make sure you don't try the dog's patience. A dog waiting for his master, tied to a park bench in Prague's Troja district, got so impatient that he uprooted the bench and damaged a nearby car with it as he dragged the bench behind it in search of his master. The two were happily re-united but the dog owner will now have to pay for the damage to the park bench and the car. I'm sure he'll think twice before tying his dog to something again.

Miluse Hrncirova from the town of Stesti - which translates as Happiness - devotes her time to making miniature ornaments and children's toys made of coloured beads. She probably has the biggest collection of them in the world and she certainly holds the Czech record in the tiniest ornament made of beads: a blue fish made of 130 beads that measures just over two centimetres. She claims that with patience -anyone can do it - because she herself does it with only three figures on her right hand, having lost the other two in an accident.

Cyclists in southern Moravia can now avail themselves of a brand new service - emergency aid for themselves and their bikes. If you are wondering why cyclists in Moravia need more attention than elsewhere in the country then the answer is simple. The local cycle-paths lead past many a wine cellar and few cyclists resist the temptation to go in and try the local wine or brandy. In fact for some cyclists the bike is more a means of transport between one cellar and the next than a healthy outdoor activity. So, the emergency aid service is just a phone call away and prepared to deal with any emergency - be it a broken bike or a broken leg.

Czech students have come up with a way to give blind people and people with impaired eyesight greater freedom of movement. They've invented a special navigation system which would prevent them running into difficulties when there's no one around to help them. The system is made up of a small electronic device which the person would clip on to their clothes or bag and a call centre functioning around the clock. When in need of directions the owner of the device would simply contact the operator who would know his precise position with the help of the electronic device and tell him how to proceed. The electronics device would cost approximately twenty thousand crowns and there's already a great deal of interest in it. This special navigation system is now undergoing a series of tests. If they prove successful - it could be put into operation before the end of this year.