Czechmatediary

I was sitting out in the hall waiting for my Czech class to begin and trying to ignore a sore throat when an instructor in German came along. She noticed my Czech grammar book and asked me if Czech was a difficult language to learn. It struck me then and there; everything is relative. On the sliding, sore throat scale, German is definitely harder to speak than Czech, even with its letter ‚ch‘. I suppose the nasally French language may be the most soothing of all but I never took that language so I’ll have to make the typical ‚gallic‘ shrug on that one.

A ‚simple‘ formula for constructing a sentence in Czech:

1. pick a verb, any verb. Sip it, hold it in your mouth a moment; savor it. Does it have good ‚legs‘; does it decline well. You don’t want one of those hybrid verbs, half conjugation type 1 and half type 3 (probably should call these renegade verbs). And definitely stay away from the ‚landmine‘ verbs whose declined stem does not even look like the infinitive. (more…)

The winner of the Czech music awards the “Album of the Year for 2007″ in women’s category as well as the all-time winner became Aneta Langerova with her new album Dotyk. Born in 1986 (youngster!) Aneta showed her multi-talented personality from early childhood. Not only was she good at tennis, acting, and instrument playing (piano and guitar) she was also a great singer. Aneta got discovered via the TV show “Czech is looking for a superstar” where she sang the Alanis Morissette song “Thank You” and won 79% of votes.

1. The top male singer of 2007 became Daniel Landa (don’t care much about him at all) who:

• sold the most records

• was played most frequently on the radio that year

• sold most tracks via the Internet

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A Slovak hockey player, Richard Zednik, who plays for the Florida Panthers lost 5 units of blood on Sunday after the player had his carotid artery cut by a teammate’s skate in a freak accident. After an hour long surgery Zednik is in a stable condition now. From the amount of blood that was covering the ice on that day people thought that he had actually cut the jugular vain as it was the case in 1989 with another hockey player, Clint Malarchuk. (more…)

As I wrote recently in one of my posts the old Czech folk song “Jozin z Bazin” has become a huge hit in Poland. Now the new development in this Jozin-z-Bazin mania is that the Polish made a YouTube parody of that song. As one of my commenters Maciej explains, “The parody makes fun of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and current politics in general to the tune of Jozin z Bazin. And the parody is becoming a hit as well but it will unlikely beat Jozin z Bazin”. Well, we will see about that because that video is FUNNY! (more…)

He had taught for over 30 years at the UCLA where he had molded the minds of over 13,000 students. In 2001 he received the Nusle prize for his life works…. Miroslav Plavec was one of the front astronomers of the 20th century. His early works dealt with meteor showers, but he is also widely known for his studies of close binaries, especially of mass transfer in binary systems. Plavec was born in Sedlcany in 1925. During the Nazi occupation Miroslav’s father was arrested and taken to the concentration camp where he had died 6 months later. Being the oldest sibling, Miroslav became the head of the family and decided to move with his mother and a younger brother to Ondrejov, a home of the Ondrejov’s observatory. (more…)

Do you miss communism? Do you miss Lednacek (ice-cream bar), Cecka (plastic chain pieces shaped in “C” shape; toy for kids), Tuzex (fancy store with Western goodies; had its special currency) or those grocery stores with the always-empty shelves (see the picture)? Well, save your tears because the Czech TV is coming up with a new TV series called Retro which will bring back those memories - the good and the bad ones…Find out more about the show here.

CZ: Styska se vam po komunismu? Po lednaccich, ceckach, po Tuzexu nebo prazdnych obchodech? No, uz nemusite plakat, ponevadz ceska televize prichazi na televizni obrazovky s novou show zvanou Retro a slzy vam tak ususi…prectete si vice zde.
Source: http://www.radio.cz/en/article/100467

Hi Everyone/Ahoj vsichni,

I have made quite a few additions to the List of Czech and Slovak organizations ! I keep finding new additions to the list quite frequently so check back on it every once in awhile.

Just click on the link bellow!

Obnoveny list Ceskych a Slovenskych organizaci v USA!

The list of Czech and Slovak organizations in the US (over 24 pages long!)

No matter what way you slice it women all over the world go by the same equation: they like to shop, they like to talk and explode if handled without care. The e-mail I received the other day just confirms it - see for yourself:

CZ: Zeny na celem svete “funguji” podle stejnych pravidel: radi nakupuji, jsou ukecane, a kdyz se s nimi nejedna opatrne, muzou take vybouchnout. A e-mail, ktery jsem nedavno obdrzela to jen potvrzuje:

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Mike Murray was a regular type of a guy. He served in with the US Marines at the German marine base. But his real love was Prague. Since he liked the city so much he would go there almost every weekend. On January 30th he was out with his friends and since he had couple of beers he decided to prevent any kind of trouble and decided to spend the night in his car which was parked on Ceskomoravska street in Prague 9. As he was settling down a drunk Czech policeman off-duty walks by his car and somehow gets flustered about the way Mike’s car is parked. He starts provoking the marine and does it for long enough time that Mike gets out of his car and they get into a heated discussion which turns into a fight. Up to this point the situation isn’t that unusual, right? But then the cop pulls out a knife and stabs Mike 3 times into the heart which causes almost an immediate death. (more…)

I love good coffee. I love it so much that I worked (slaved) at Starbucks for 3 years. I love it so much that every time I go back to Prague I am willing to travel miles to taste a good cup. I am now going to tell you about the best coffee shop in Prague (or at least the outskirts) that I have found so far. The atmosphere is great, the service is very friendly and most of all, the cappuccino is out of this world. The place is called the Kavarna u Zlateho koralku (”Coffeehouse by the golden pearl“) and it is located in Jilove u Prahy. True, it is not in the center of the city, it takes about 30 - 45 minutes to get there via public transportation, but it is well worth the travel. The coffee shop itself stands in a former 16th century cellar and before that the same space belonged to a monastery. Now back to the coffee business: if you order a cappuccino the espresso shots are never burnt, they taste creamy and sweet, never overly acidic. The milk is steamed to perfection and the beverage is topped with a wonderfully thick foam. (more…)