The other day I read an article on the American ignorance of the world geography. I completely agree, however, I think that the finger should be pointed on the educational system and the way they teach geography. Isn’t it part of the elective subjects in high school? Also, I am sorry but the Americans do live on a different continent so I would cut them some slack when they don’t know where Slovenia is.
All that said, I do have some pretty funny stories about this whole issue. Most of them come from the times when I was attending a college since that is where you get to talk to a lot of people and they find out you have an accent and then they ask you where were you from and than it goes all downhill from there..:)
Anyhow, my best story comes from one of the parties I went to. I started talking to this friendly all-American girl and as soon as she found out I was from Prague she got really excited, telling me that she had spent 3 weeks there! So we talked for a good 45 minutes about “Prague stuff”, places she had visited, clubs she went to, the food she ate….she then grabbed one of her friends that walked by and excitedly said: “Look I met a girl from Yugoslavia!” I looked at her, waiting for her to correct herself but nothing happened. When she saw my ‘look’ she became somewhat self conscious and said: “ Well, what, you are from Yugoslavia, right? Prague?”.
I tried to tell her as sensibly as I could that Prague was not in Yugoslavia but in the Czech Republic and as far as I can remember, she took it bravely. However, I just couldn’t believe she had actually physically crossed the borders of the Czech Republic, spent three weeks there and thought she was in Yugoslavia (former Yugoslavia)!!!!!
Other questions that people – mostly American students – would ask me were: 1. Do you guys have traffic lights? ( I would answer: “No, we just dance naked around the fire”) 2. Czechoslovakia is (I gave up correcting them on that one) next to Turkey, right? 3. You guys speak Russian? 4. Oh yeah, that’s by the sea, right? And the list goes on…
Instead of insulting them and making them feel stupid I chose to have a more of a “Jesus-like” attitude and I look at it as an educational opportunity and I patiently, non-judgmentally try to correct them. Although at times it may be a challenging task I feel like that is part of my purpose in life….
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The real question is not who’s the smartest or the dumbest, it’s who has hotter chicks? Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia?
In my opinion, since you’re discussing two countries that don’t exist anymore, “Czechoslovakia” has the “hotter chicks”, because the ones from “Yugoslavia” tend to be a bit on the tough side. The “Czechoslovakian” girls can be whiners, but they’re generally nicer. Just one man’s perception.
Jamie,
i am sure I can’t change your mind about Czechs, but there is one example of my cousin. He could have been one of your students:) He has recently applied for scholarship at university in U.S. He is a great ice-hockey player – playing for junior league back home(only 18years old); and let me tell you he sees U.S and its people as a cool place to go and have such a fantastic opportunity to live there. He definitely does not consider Americans stupid.
I just want to put light why some people think that Americans are stupid – for example your former president Mr Bush, representing American people, wasn’t really a smart cookie was he? So here you go…
On the other hand Mr Obama is really clued on and a fantastic leader. People really love him in the Czech Republic. There is a big change of perception about your country by other nationalities – and I am not talking just about us – Czech people.
When Obama started to be Mr President people really changed their views about U.S. In the middle of a deep recession something amazing happened; somebody approachable, human, highly-intelligent and with great sense of humour started to be in charge of U.S.A.
Maybe you should go back now to my country and talk to people what they think…..and if you are still living in Czech – with such a attitude you should not be living there – that hattress it’s not good for your health!:)
Veronika: are you saying Czechs changed their views about Americans because of Obama? Does it mean, that if we have Obama at power with all his “czars” , that Americans are good people and if we get Bush (none of 44 US presidents was really good) then Americans turn to idiots for next 4 years?… Sorry, to hear that. It means you are portraiting Czech people as being superficial , which I hope, is not a case. It is wonderful that people in Czech Republic love Obama so much, but they will not suffer consequencies of his presidency and reign of his czars… BTW, popularity polls in USA are showing a constant decline of approval of him as a president of USA…
Enough of that…..
Sorry for my English, but I am still in a learning stage
Coz takhle dat si spenat??:))
Dear Veronika.
I and several million other Americans will be happy to know how beloved President Obama is in the Czech Republic!! Perhaps you’ll keep him next time he visits! (:-))
Actually, the reality of our system of government is such that NO leader is supposed to be without checks and balances of their power and authority….and thus their popularity. That tension between views should be maintained at all times for a republic to work. Remember, we are not a democracy. We are a republic. A democracy is mob rule where the majority runs roughshod over minority views. A republic has that conflicting tension between opposing views. We purists get very uncomfortable when a leader (at any level) begins to be held in cultist popularity. It’s a sign that people are not looking at all sides of a question and thus that imperative tension between opposing views is beginning to go slack.
Back to my original view, when would you like another visit by our fearless leader? (:-))
Veronika, it’s understandable that the Czechs would be enthusiastic about Obama, because their media (at least their newspapers) have very uninformed, ideologically slanted coverage of events in the US. In fact, there is even more of a leftist bias in the reporting on the US in Mladá fronta and Lidovky than in the papers that Americans consider to be the most biased. I used to wonder who was paying to give them that coverage. The reporters were lazy, if nothing else.
Bush was actually an intelligent president, competent in most things he undertook. There was some difficulty at the beginning of the Iraq war, but he changed the secretary of defense and got that turned around. Notice that Obama is largely continuing his policies in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but nobody is complaining about it.
I can also see why the Czechs would like Obama so much, because he is doing and advocating a lot of things that the KSCS did in the late 1940s. During his campaign, and for some time after, he advocated forcing students to do brigáda every year, and he has also advocated forming a force similar to the Lidová policie. So far he hasn’t acted on either of those two things, and I hope he doesn’t. But he is taking over corporations that he doesn’t understand how to run, much as the KSCS did in the 1940s and 1950s.
A couple weeks ago, when the president of Honduras attempted to take the country over and make himself a dictator on the Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez model, Obama came out in favor of the wannabe dictator instead of on the side of the Honduran supreme court and legislature who were trying to prevent their democracy from being overthrown. This is not new for him, because he generally behaves more favorably toward dictators than toward our own allies.
At various international summits, the European leaders don’t tend to take him very seriously or cooperate with him. They want a photo op with him because he’s popular, but they generally treat him like a lightweight. Notice that he didn’t succeed in convincing any of our allies to take any of the prisoners from Guantánamo prison, even though they claimed they thought we should close it.
There are plenty of other things to tell about Obama, seeing as that he’s generally for government control of almost anything it can seize without too much public outrage. And his policies so far have made the recession worse instead of better.
Obama may be popular among Czechs, and he’s also popular with Americans, except that they don’t like what he’s doing. Polls now show that, while the majority of Americans like him personally, the majority don’t approve of his policies. He’s going to lead us to some even more serious economic and military problems, much as Jimmy Carter did, and he will probably take away quite a bit of our freedoms, which Jimmy Carter didn’t.
As one famous economist/sociologist said during the presidential campaign, “Obama is the youngest candidate with the oldest ideas. His foreign policy ideas are from the 1930s, and his social ideas are from the 1960s.” Even McCain has more modern ideas than he does. The black commentators who have a political radio show in my city call him the best marionette ever for the whites who run the Democratic party.
So telling me that Obama is popular in the Czech Republic doesn’t indicate anything to me other than that Czechs still love our TV stars.
Veronika- Bush actually finished at a higher grade level in college than both Gore and Kerry. He was not dumb at all, he was just not a great public speaker.
So why is Obama such a fantastic leader? What has he done? Both before and during his presidency? Nothing. He’s just “cooool duuude”.
This blog has a subtitle :”Small Bohemian Steps to World Domination….”…..I would like to remind y’all that our president has Czech blood in his veins as well…Yes, I read it somewhere…;)
Hey, Keith, I’m ever so cooool but that does not mean I would be a good president. That works well when you are campaigning but the job of the prez is to lead, not to govern and not to campaign once he or she is elected. I want a leader, not a dictator and not a photo hound. I don’t care if a leader is charming, good looking or well dressed. Can he or she think well enought to understand what he or she does not know? Can he or she think well enough to surround him or herself with people who will tell them what they need to know, not just what they want to hear? Can he or she communicate well enough to get ideas across? Can he or she “stand the heat in the kitchen” when things don’t go their way? Most of all, can that leader understand when they are being patted on the head diplomatically? I could go on but you get the gist.
????????????????????
“Bush actually finished at a higher grade level in college than both Gore and Kerry. He was not dumb at all, he was just not a great public speaker.”
Haha, that is very funny! College degree does not prove intelligence everybody know that. You cannot be serious, Keith.
The worst public speaker cannot send out so much nonsense if he is as intelligent as you think he is. Now, maybe what’s intelligent to one does not seem to be necessarily intelligent to another.
Marylena- Maybe you misunderstood my comment about Obama’s coolness. I think it is a joke and means nothing. It’s the (non-thinking)masses that are swept up by his so called ‘coolness’.
Jana B- People went on and on about Bush’s lack of intelligence but they never had anything to back up his supposed ‘stupidity’ as I would guess is also the case with you. Intelligence can be objectively measured to some degree and although college is OBVIOUSLY not the final say, it was always an amusing fact in light of the ridiculous judgments on Bush’s smartabilityness; especially when Kerry was made to look like the ‘intellectual’. Sorry Kerry, you boorish Frankenmunster clod, but Bush had higher test scores than you!!! HAHAHA!
PS Read Jaimie’s last comment -you might learn something.
Ever since Gerald Ford had a problem with tripping due to bad knees from football, the American left has always used the strategy of trying to make the Republican look stupid. The US media, and people all over “intellectually superior” Europe made the same claims about President Reagan. There was nonstop noise about what an imbecile he was, but you don’t hear that anymore about him.
One of the techniques they use is to take raw, unedited quotes from the Republican, leaving in all the “uh” and “um” and backtracking that everyone does when speaking. This looks very stupid in print, and they use this as proof of the politician’s imbecility, but in fact everyone does it when he speaks.
Obama’s handlers are obviously quite aware of this, because they almost never have him talking off the cuff without a teleprompter or a sympathetic video editor. It’s said that he uses a teleprompter even when he’s going to talk for only five minutes. When he doesn’t have a teleprompter, it becomes very clear that he doesn’t talk much better than Bush.
You can see how he normally talks in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omHUsRTYFAU
And in this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Ju6kWfXEk
And in this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyW9e5QdWxk
Keith, I did not read Jamie’s last comment to be honest. I usually read the follow up but I skipped this time for couple of reasons. I was just responding to you.
Yet even higher scores in anything are no argument.
My own instinct backs me up, using my “zdravy selsky rozum” / brain (?)- if a person (does not matter who) is not capable of expressing what they want to say to the masses clearly there is either no point of them speaking to the people or they are just not in the right place. Therefore should not be a diplomat. That is the first criteria. But then I don’t mean that just knowing how to do that is enough.
Person who is not able to even pronounce words the way they are supposed to be should not be doing the job of a president. Maybe I am not feeling it quite right in English but that definitely applies for Czech. They teach you all that at school and if you are smart you get it.
President should not be someone who is “the smart guy” next door but someone who can pull it all together. “Ma vsech 5 P”.
Just listening to him (Bush) was painful nonsense. Sometimes I felt embarrassed for him. But obviously he did not mind, so good for him. And thankfully that era is over!
I’d have more to say to this but I am now finding that I wish the conversation was in Czech just because of my limited language capabilities. And also I have other things to do like spent some time with my lovely American husband.
One last thing. Can somebody explain to me what “boorish Frankenmunster clod” means?
Jana, if I remember correctly, Václav Havel had a speech defect. I seem to remember that he pronounced his ř back in his throat somewhere. He was your president.
It’s understandable that a Czech would imagine perfect standard language would be a requirement for the presidency, because Czechs speak an artificially reconstructed language with only one standard, and are maniacs about preserving its purity, or at least the schoolteachers are.
English does not operate the same way. We are a world language with multiple standards, and a greater tolerance of local dialects.
At least in the last 50 years, only about half the US presidents have spoken standard English: Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Daddy Bush.
Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and G.W. Bush did not. Kennedy’s accent was especially weird.
I don’t think there’s a good Czech translation for “boorish”. It means something like hrubiánský, but you can be a high-class boor, as John Kerry was, and not be a hrubián. “Frankenmunster” is a combination of “Frankenstein” and the name of a TV character named “Herman Munster”, who looked like Frankenstein’s monster. Many people think that John Kerry looks like Herman Munster. “Clod” means something like “tupec”. Kerry was high-class, but not very intelligent. He speaks standard English, but some of the things he says are monumentally stupid, something like the things Joe Biden says all the time.
Here I would like to defend the Czech language. Czechs are obsessed with their language and it is OK. For centuries Czech language was on brink of distinction.
Once a great language, it became a small language island and only since 1918 it could become a “real” language again. That’s why there is one standard, no deviations allowed. It is not acceptable to use local dialects on radio and TV… On the other side, English is a big language used in many countries, that’s why the standards are somewhat relaxed and sometimes it can be confusing… There are no “restrooms” in Canada, for example…
When Czechs will dominate the world I am sure multiple
standards will be allowed …
Can somebody explain, why Obama is using “y’all” so very often? How do I translate it to Czech?
)
I was never taught this in my language classes (one possible reason for my imperfectness was the fact that my teacher was a Czech nice lady and I happened to pay attention to here look more than to her speech
Wonder what kind of teacher our president had?
Vlastimil, I think you meant that the Czech language was on the verge of “extinction”.
Anyway, as I said, Czech is an artificially reconstructed language, and at the time of its reconstruction, the standard Czech that resulted was no one’s native language at all, and some of the obrozenci who reconstructed the language could never speak it very well.
Other reasons Czechs tolerate no local dialects in public use of the language — and don’t even tolerate the standard way that the majority of Czechs speak — is that it is one small country with one large capital, and because it has a language academy. In that sense they are like the French. French is a world language, but there is only one large francophone city, whose dialect is considered the standard for everybody. Plus they have that French academy.
This affects the way both the French and the Czechs view language standards, and they mistakenly impose their perception on other languages that have multiple acceptable standards. Usually what a Czech does when learning a multi-standard language like English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., is to choose one country or a city that they perceive to be the seat of the “original” language, and then they conclude that any variation in accent, vocabulary and syntax that is not used in that place is “wrong”, or as some Czechs put it in English, “ruined language”.
The funny part is that with some languages, such as English, the original form of the language has been extinct for many centuries (in the case of English, almost 1,000 years), and it’s completely irrelevant which country the language originated in.
Yes Jamie, that’s what I meant…without a teleporter it is not easy
))
“Y’all” is a common southern US equivalent of plural “vy”. In some places they say “y’uns” instead, and some people in the northeast say “yous”. Blacks throughout the United States who speak nonstandard “black” dialect use “y’all”, as do many southern whites. It’s considered nespisovné.
Obama was raised by his white mother and white grandparents, who surely did not use “y’all”. (His grandmother was a bank executive.) His Kenyan father, who walked out early in his life, most probably didn’t use the word. It’s almost certain that Obama’s native dialect is bland standard General American, which you can hear him speak in interviews from several years ago.
My assumption is that he acquired the habit of saying “y’all” along with some of the rhythms he uses when giving speeches, in recent years in order to appear “black”. He probably wanted to look real to the brothas.
An interesting fact is that “written Czech” and “spoken Czech” are many times quite different languages.
We have to remember that the Czech language is spoken by
roughly 10 millions people and the “real correct” Czech is spoken by only 1-2 millions fanatics…
The Czech language is a small language and people feel it needs to be protected …
BTW I read some books written in spoken Czech and local dialects and it really felt weird
That’s what I thought about his “y’all”.
I have read an interesting article about black dialects and they are very closed to Southern white dialects. One
possible reason is that slaves adopted southern dialects
because their masters spoke it….
It really appears like the “y’all” is one of his “smart” moves …. I
The southern dialects come largely from the lower-class English and Scots-Irish dialects that were spoken by settlers to the south. These dialects were what the slaves heard from their foremen, since many of them had rather little direct contact with their masters. The black dialect also has a few elements left over from pidgin and creole English that generally are not found in the speech of southern whites (but never say never).
Jamie, one small correction “y’all” and “y’uns” are holdovers from Elizabethan English (still spoken in the Piedmont and Appalachian areas of America) as is “hoped” or “hopen” for the past tense of help. I do not know where the “youse” of the northeastern US has its roots. BTW, Southerners do not look kindly on anyone who “puts on” (another Elizabethan holdover) Southern speech. Hillary and Bill Clinton tried it and it went over like a lead balloon. Bill had it in his background (Arkansas is one of those areas which still cling to Old English modalities) but he had so long ago dropped it that it sounded affected coming from him also. “Putting on airs” is a Southernism for pretending to be more than you really are and it’s social suicide. Also, Southerners normally write more standard English than they speak casually. I’m wondering if the Czech language has similar oddities.
MaryLena, please note that Appalachian English is not the same as Elizabethan English. It has a few elements in common, but they are not the same or even nearly the same variety.
What Czechs have in their language is not exactly the same. In that case, speaking perfect standard Czech at home, on the street or anywhere but in school, on TV or in the theater makes a person stick out. People think anyone who does that is phony and projecting arrogance. As I said above, standard Czech is a reconstructed language that was never actually anyone’s native tongue.
You need to understand, too, that Southerners enjoy language. It’s our way of coping with snobbery. So, just for fun, consider this:
A few refinements:
First, “hissie fit” is not a Southern expression. It is a lovely Victorian expression derived from the word hysterical. It’s a shortening of “hysterical fit”. You pitch a hissy fit. You have a conniption fit. The difference is a hissy fit allows you to throw or break things because you’ve lost control. A conniption fit you have because it is a controlled and contrived rage intended to get your way about something.
Second, there is a difference between sweet tea and sweetened tea. Sweet tea has sugar added during the brewing. Sweetened tea has sugar added after the tea is brewed and cooled.
Third, it is Hotlanta, not Addlanta.
Fourth, directly means “when I get around to it.” That infers you have other priorities. “By and by” means “when I jolly well am in the mood” and has nothing to do with priorities. It has to do with preferences.
Fifth, “right near” is almost within sight. “Just down the road” is close enough to walk to if you take a bottle of water with you. “A far right piece” means you will need to drive there.
Sixth, “fixin” as a verb is the act of preparation. As a noun, it means a condiment or unnecessary side dish.
There are other phrases that are just characteristic of the social constructs of the South. For ex, “Darlin’, you really don’t want to do that” means “If you do, you die.” The tone of voice should cause an immediate and uncurable, uncontrollable case of diabetes.
Starting a reproof with “precious lamb” means “I’m about to take you to the woodshed unless you shape up.”
Hope you enjoyed the laughs. We Southerners do. And, most of us don’t really care that people make fun of us and our speech. We know the value of our contribution to this country. For ex, we have more volunteers in the military than any other region, we have respect for our elders, we love politics and exchanges of thought.
To Jamie:
I was not talking about speech impediment or dialect but wrong pronunciation.
Like Bushes famous “nucular” – nuclear.
Jana, I don’t know if Mr. Bush has one, but there is a learning disability that would explain that mispronunciation if there is a pattern of similar errors.
If you go by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “nucular” is not a mispronunciation, but the acceptable alternative pronunciation. Take a look.
Here is the link. Look particularly at the usage note below the definitions.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuclear
So Jaimie, if Czech is an ‘artificially reconstructed language’, does that mean…it’s ‘Bionic’?
And perhaps the ‘Hot Czech Chicks’ themselves are in fact ‘artificially reconstructed’?
Maybe that’s why my Czech wife seems to need a’reboot’ every so often. Usually about once a month.
Keith, I find your last post offensive. I hope you tell your wife about it.
Jana- I did and she laughed out loud. Her programming is awesome. Those commies knew what they were doing. Worked with those Eastern German swimmer chicks and it worked with my wife. I didn’t pay 6 million crowns fer nuthin’.
Keith: That’s a steal!
Being a Czech myself, I know and every Czech should know that the current version of Czech language is artificial . Many recreators of Czech language could not speak it themselves and and in many cases structure of Czech sentences is closer to German than for example to Russian.
Many Czech words were missing and in spoken Czech German words were used. That’s why many Czech replacement words have Russian origin , because many Czech language “constructor” were also obsessed by Russian language. So, the Czech language is a “mischling” of Czech and German grammar and Czech, Russian and other Slavic words (most if not all German words were thrown out). In spoken Czech are German words still in use, for example flaska, ruksak, furt, sranky, hergot, etc…
Many words were simply created….without even looking into how peasants would say it.
Many Czech patriotic books in 19th century were written in German, so other “educated” Czechs would understand it.
One of the most aggravating things about learning Czech is that the textbooks teach only this “literary” Czech and usually don’t give any indication that the German-derived words exist. When the learner arrives in the Czech Republic, he quickly finds that many of the words he has learned are not used in ordinary speech, and that he has never been taught the words that really are used.
Many of the German words in Czech were simply translated part by part into Czech, such as Abfall > odpad, Ausflug > výlet.
Here in US I was working with a weirdo who was using some mix of Oxford-Cambridge English, and people were telling hem :” speak English !”…
The same in Czechlands.. People will don’t mind listening to the “correct” Czech on radio and TV but will get easily irritated when you will use it in everyday verbal exchange
Hey, Jamie, here’s a great new career path for you!! When my Japanese son arrived in the US, he learned that the English he had studied was “book” English. When he and his wife went to Japan to live, she started giving classes in “conversational English”. That little cottage industry grew so well that he quit his engineering job to help run the language school. They now have three locations and offer conversational English, French and Spanish in addition to math tutorials.
Do they teach also a “trucker” English?
Vlastimil, I’m afraid not. (:-))
For: Jamie, Vlastimil and Keith
If you are so clever you can translate it for yourselves:
Jamie, Vlastimile a Keith je mi z vas smutno…
Ja si myslim Jamie, ze jsi mel ceskou pritelkyni a ta ti dala kosem a ted si trosku nakysly – mozna vykvaseny:)
Jano diky – jsi jedna z mala kdo ma zdravy selsky rozum.
Spenat bych si dala, ten mam moc rada!:)
Mejte se hezky a nezapomente,ze diskuze byla o Praze – trosku to nabralo politickych rozmeru tak by to chtelo pribrzdit:) Hezky vikend!
Veronika
Ps: Keith pozdravuj manzelku, preju ji hodne stesti, ona to urcite potrebuje.
Veroniko, mylis se, diskuze byla o americanech, kteri neznaji zemepis… Pak nekdo objevil, ze Cesi taky mozna neco neznaji , tak jsem do toho pridal naseho sefa vsech caru, abych vas vystrasil, ale diskuze vesele pokracovala a nabyla mezinarodnich pomeru…..
A nebud ze me smutna, pred nami je pekny vikend
Tak to jsi me Vlastimile potesil:)
Preju hezky vikend i tobe!
Je mi líto, Veroniko, ale žádnou českou přítelyni jsem nikdy neměl — Čiňanku ano, Arabku ano, pár Američanek, ale nenašel jsem Češku, která by podle mě za to stála, i když jsem dost možností měl. Tak, musíš najít jinou a méně blbou teorii.
Skoda Jamie. Mozna, ze bys Cesku mel vyzkouset – as my U.S. husband says: “once you go Czech, you never go back”
DD
Anyway, I just stumble on this blog and I am really happy that something like this exists. I love the heated discussions! I am Libra at heart and on paper, so I can see both sides of the coin. There are some ridiculously “stupid” people living everywhere. I would just not call it stupidity but ignorance, or better yet absent-mindedness. Why should anybody care about something that is not important to them? If geography is not important to Americans (or Czechs) why should they be forced to learn? I’ve been living in the U.S. for about 10 years and I know squat about American football. I just don’t care at all about it! And if some enthusiast starts explaining it to me, I listen, I am interested in that particular moment, but an hour later I forget. Should I be called stupid because I don’t know and don’t care? Many might say yes. It is the same thing with geography. So when somebody says something “ignorant” about the best country on Earth
, just as Tanja suggests, take a deep breath, think of the other things that that person might be good at and start explaining (if it is worth the effort to you).
“Jesus-like” attitude – really? I don’t think Jesus was making fun of people for their ignorance before he tried to enlighten them.
You’re a complete idiot. Don’t hurt yourself trying to pat yourself on the back while you are acting ” “Jesus-like” and educating people.
Hey “Jesus”, you should pull your head out of your ass and actually read the post. She was defending the ‘ignorant Americans’ at the beginning of the post. Obviously you are the idiot.
Kamila, ja jsem taky libra a moje manzelka taky neda dopustit na Cechy…Rekla mi, ze jestli se nekdy se mnou rozvede, vezme si zase jenom Cecha
Vlastiku, tak to jsem rada, ze nase polovicky sdileji stejne vasne
“Jesus”, idiot? Really? Is that what you do? Go around and insult people when they are actually defending YOU? Obviously, you see only what you want to see. If you got offended by the world “jesus-like,” just substitute it for “tolerant” or “patient”. Calling names is the lowest form of argument, that one (you) uses only when he can’t think of anything else. Maybe you should go back to school and take some critical thinking classes (in addition to geography).
“Ignorance is Bliss” ..again.. “Knowledge is Power” …. but only if Adam had not eaten the apple ???… “Guys learn to build not destroy, because when you build good things it will automatically destroy the bad things”
Ahoj Tano,
I’ve been reading your blog stories coming in my e-mail inbox for a while but only today got to spending a bit more time browsing your site. You are doing such a wonderful job! I love the mix of your stories and articles. I’m London based for some nine years now, having previously lived in Australia for a short while.
I had to laugh so hard having just read the above story…sooo true. It reminded me how the Australians always used to say “Czechoslovakia” – those who actually knew the name anyway…let alone the location. One wonderful question I got from a hairdresser in Sydney when saying where I was from, was: “Are the beaches nice there?” Bless… The British are somewhat better but they still don’t have a very clear idea what exactly is further east of Germany.
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