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Do you like to write, are 35 years old or younger and live abroad? To promote Czech culture abroad the magazine Cesky dialog (Czech dialogue) created a competition with a topic called “What is your relationship to the Czech language, Czech Republic, its culture, identity or its humor?” The winner will not only be showered with prizes but his story will also be printed in the Cesky dialog magazine itself. It has to be no more than 2 pages long and needs to be mailed to the following address no later than the last day of December 2007: Cesky dialog, Sokolovska 179, 190 00, Prague 9 or you can email it to strizovska@seznam.cz or m.fialkova@seznam.cz

PS: the story can be written in English or Czech (more…)

So this is the deal: my blog statistics have been showing I have a lot of Canadian loyal visitors that seem to like my web site. Well as a token of appreciation I wanted to do a post specifically for you guys, regarding the Czech activities in Canada. I searched the internet for quite a while and low and behold, there is not much out there for you guys except the web site of Czech embassy in Canada So I thought to myself: what could I do to help my poor fellow Czech-Canadians?? And I decided to make a new category called the “Czech contacts in CANADA” (on the sidebar) so, please, don’t be shy and enter yourself in if you live in Canada! HOW? Into the “comment” box enter your 1/name, 2/e-mail address and 3/what city in Canada do you live in. Good luck!

Nazdar vsichni (hlavne vy, kdo zijete v Kanade)!! (more…)

So my husband and I had the urge to enlighten ourselves as a couple and went to a marriage seminar called “How To Argue So Your Spouse Will Listen: 6 Principles for Turning Arguments into Conversations” by Sharon Morris May. The class was so great that I decided to write a post about it; true, this post doesn’t have anything to do with anything Czech per say (unless May’s ancestors come from Bohemia, which I wouldn’t be surprised….I swear, if asked, 95% of Americans tell you that their grandma was Czech) but I think that anyone could benefit from these advices…. (more…)

Do you want to hear something crazy? Well, the Radio Praha magazine wrote about this Czech speedway rider, Matej Kus, who got a very serious head injury during one of his races in Great Britain. When he woke up in the hospital he spoke a PERFECT English although he never learned English in his life! The head injury also caused him to think that he was an accent coach at the BBC. He spoke with more of a “posh accent” - as the local Englishmen said - for about 48 hours and after that the magic disappeared….he wasn’t a BBC coach anymore but an average 18-year old Czech kid who didn’t speak a word of English. This little “magic” actually has a name in today’s world: the Susac’s syndrome. It is a disease of the small blood vessels which attacks mostly the brain. This autoimmune disorder - where the body attacks its own healthy tissue - can eventually lead to mental disorders . (more…)

Sign-up for this blog via E-MAIL and receive a full-on professional PDF report called the “Survival Manual for Czechs/Slovaks living abroad”!! Because you simply just cannot survive without it…..

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This may not be the greatest thing EVER but it’s still pretty darn cool. It’s called a ‘reader’ or an RSS feed. Do you still not know what that is? Are you confused? Perplexed? Well, that no longer needs to be the case…

What a reader can do for you is this- Do you have a bunch of websites you check everyday? And everyday you click on each one, wait for it to load, look for something interesting, blah, blah blah… Well what a reader does is provide a way for updated content from your favorite websites to come to you. What we use here at the Czechmatediary empire is a Google reader so that is what we suggest you use as well. Here is a brief video that explains it for you…

Explain please!

So, for all you lovely peoples that love Czechmatediary and whom we also love and want to share Czech love with everyday, sign up for Google reader (or any reader really…) and add us to your reader! Subscribe! Help Bohemian power rise up once again and rule the world!!!!!

Sign me up!

An article from yesterday’s Ceske noviny concentrated on the topic of an increasing influx of foreigners coming to the Czech Republic. Within the last 6 months the number increased in 34,000 foreigners to the total of 321,456 (end of 2006). In comparison to the other European countries the percentage of this group is still very low (3.5%) where in Austria or Germany the percentage of foreign population comes to 10%. Which are the biggest immigrant groups (going in order from the largest group to the second largest…)??

1. Slovaks
2. Russians (Ukraine)
3. Vietnamese
4. Polish (more…)
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Imrich Lichtenfeld is a not a very know Slovak Jew. Yet he was the inventor of one of the best self-defense system ever - the Krav Maga or the “Contact combat” fighting technique. Krav Maga is not a sport; “The attacks and defenses are intended for potentially lethal threat situations, and aim to neutralize these and escape via maximum pain or damage to opponents, as rapidly as safely as possible. Crippling attacks to vulnerable body parts, including groin, eye strikes, headbutts, improvised use of any objects available and maximizing personal safety in a fight are emphasized”. What proned Imi to get into something like that? Well, Imi was happily growing up in Bratislava (SL) when around the 1930’s the anti-Semitic riots began threatening the Jewish population. Since he was an avid boxer (he won numerous wrestling competitions such as the National Boxing Championship) he and his friends would bravely defend his people by attempting to block the anti-Semitic bands from entering the Jewish quarter, thus getting into numerous violent fights. (more…)

The Prague Quadrennial is Prague’s 11th International Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture (try to say it in one breath). The exhibition opened 40 years ago as a memory of a Czech designer Frantisek Troster. The visitors were able to view the best sets, costumes, lights and sounds from all around the world. The Prague Quadrennial was considered during the communism the “must-make pilgrimage for Eastern Bloc designers”. This year one could admire the works of 420 students (from which 40 of them were Americans) and 95 professionals from 52 different countries. The exhibition models varied anywhere from Iceland’s simple small glass house to the Czech aged-wood circular fairground to the USA’s colorful marketplace to Israel’s gray concrete wall with various theatrical props buried in it. The Russian exhibit constructed its models on the waterproof floor, arranged on the heaps of junk under a leaky ceiling (???). All the visitors were given rubber galoshes and an umbrella to protect themselves from any form of water “attack”. (more…)

A Slovak-American Andy Warhol, the key figure in a movement called Pop art is no longer with us; but his older brother John Warhol still enjoys this world and keeps Andy’s legacy going. Not only does he regularly check up on Warhol’s museum in Slovakia (in Medzilaborce) but he also annually gives $15,000 to $25,000 to fund various artistic projects of young talented artists. The museum was built in 1987, 4 years after Warhol’s death. It currently shows about 160 of his pieces. Besides this museum there is another one like it, also devoted solely to Andy Warhol’s works. It is located in Pittsburgh and currently shows about 12,000 (!!) of Warhol’s paintings (that guy kept himself busy…).

Andy Warhol (or Andrej Varchola)was born in the US but both of his parents are “pure-bread” Slovaks from a village called Mikova. (more…)

The first-ever Prague Food Festival is here! Hosted by a well-known gourmet cook, Pavel Mauer, the Czechs will have the opportunity to taste for a low price various cuisines coming from Brazil, Japan, France and other fancy places. Since the tickets to join the festival barely cover the cost of food Mr. Mauer calls this event a “gastronomic charity”. He also reminisces that after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 there were only 3 foreign restaurants in Prague: 1 Chinese, 1 Vietnamese, and 1 Russian restaurant. Today there are about 35 different types of exotic restaurants! The restaurant business has a little problem however: a recent survey shows that 87 % (!!) of Czechs still prefer the Czech cuisine the best over other cuisines. But Mauer stays optimistic: “I think it (the situation) is changing. A lot of Czechs now understand that they should really try other types of dishes apart from just having goulash with dumplings.” (more…)