Magazine

Martin Bursík Would you like to have the telephone numbers of many of the Czech Republic’s leading politicians, read their private text messages and maybe take a call from the foreign minister? Then shame on you! But you might have been able to if you’d stopped by the right Prague pawn shop last week where, sifting through the text messages of lost and stolen mobile phones, an employee realised he had the mobile phone of some big fish. He promptly sold the phone to the news outlet Mladá fronta Dnes, who in turn sifted through the messages and found the owner (and a top story for their website). It was not former prime minister Mirek Topolának, as the pawn shop merchant had believed, but former minister of the environment Martin Bursík, which they realised not from “hundreds of messages about political meetings” but intimate messages to his girlfriend Kateřina Jacques, also of the Green Party. Now, many a politician would be well distressed by such a finding, but not so the former Greens leader, who did recall having once had a phone like that, but not having lost it. “Things have been returned to me unexpectedly before”, he said. “Thanks very much”.

Illustrative photo It’s hot outside – indeed we keep mentioning it in our programme because it’s hard to think about anything else when you’re outside – but that’s not stopping a group of Silesian highlanders from doing one of the things they like to do, that is, making charcoal. The “Gorolé” or highland people in the Beskids Mountains near the Czech-Slovak-Polish border have been tending a unique structure that harkens back to their woodland roots. A “milíř”, or burning charcoal pile encased in mud, has to be supervised and beaten down to size 24 hours a day to give the proper product, and after all the hard work, the one in Horní Lomná was ceremonially opened this week. The traditionalists who carry out the process admit they still have charcoal left over from last year’s baking, but they say it’s a pity to use it after such hard work. They say for all the compliments over their good charcoal, the main thing is preserving what has been a local trade and custom.

Photo: www.ct24.cz Be it roebucks, ducks or wild boars, police in the South Moravian town of Mikulov say they’ve have their share of dealings with the animal kingdom – they’ve even evicted unruly pigeons from a shopping centre. But the case of the catfish in the fountain in town square, they said, was the most curious of them yet. Mistrustful of the little boy who came to report the intrusive beast (“where could it have come from?!” they told the press), and knowing that seeing is believing, the officers paid a visit to the fountain, only to find, lo and behold, a catfish in the fountain. Being no doubt good police officers, they asked themselves the question that a good police officer would, namely how did that fish get in there? But before the sirens could start wailing, the case was solved before it started when the boy fessed up. The fish had been a gift to a woman who didn’t have the heart to kill it and so gave it to her nephew. He in turn thought the fish too small, and gave it to the boy, who then put it in the fountain and alerted the authorities, who put the fish back in the river. Justice was served. Yes, sometimes stories like this attract national attention; summer is after all cucumber season.

Jiří Kajínek The Czech Republic’s most famous jailbird and escapee might be able to spread his wings a bit again when the movie version of his story premieres next month. The producer of the new Czech thriller Kajínek has a seat reserved at the red carpet event for the real Jiří Kajínek, who is serving a life sentence for two hired killings that he denies committing. So far, say the filmmakers, they haven’t heard back from the prison, which is not particularly surprising. Jiří Kajínek has tried to break jail on four occasions, once remaining on the run for more than a month, during which time the Czech media painted him as an almost mythical figure of great intelligence and pizzazz. Kajínek himself has not seen the film, and was said to be not so interested in the romantic storyline as in sharpening the technical details of his escapes, advising the filmmakers on how to throw a grappling hook, etc.

Photo: CTK But back to animals and the heat wave, which has the staff at Prague Zoo thinking about how to make polar bears happy in 33° temperatures. Their idea was what they call “Greenland ice cream”, a refreshing mixture of ice, codfish and veggies. But the bears found it more a thing to play with, to the delight of the zoo-goers. According to the zoo’s polarbearologists, the furry beasts don’t suffer much in the heat, and if they do they always have the icy cold waters of their swimming pool. The same goes for the penguins, who get cold water jets in their pens in the summer heat. The ones who really suffer from the heat are the visitors, who do not play with their ice cream and who can be found lounging in the zoo’s public wading pools and water sprays.