Czechmatediary

This year’s National speed beer-drinking contest ended with a little surprise. If you were to look around the room and scan all of the nervous contestants, one of them would stick out for sure. Olina Cunatova, a 19-year old attractive young lady certainly did not blend with the typical crowd of beer-belly dudes. She received a lot of smirks and teases but not for long because once it was her turn to compete everyone’s chin dropped: (more…)

My life-long project is finally completed! Here is a pretty cool list of famous Czechs and Slovaks (full-blooded or partial) living abroad. Some of those names were quite the surprise! Did you know for example that there are currently 5 Czech Victoria Secret models? Most of these people live in America but that is where my Google search ended up leading me. What I am trying to say is that this list is far from including ALL of the celebrities but it is the best one out there. So enjoy it! And let me know if you can think of any other additions….MOVIES

1. George Voskovec (actor)
2. Lucky Vanous (actor)
3. Jon Voight (his grandfather, Mr. Voytka, came to the US from Kosice) (more…)
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Czech moms living in London - there is a hope! In about a week a new Czech school called The Kids Art Club is opening up on Lough Road. So if your child is 6 years of age or older and has nothing to do on Saturdays, this should keep him/her busy….For more info click here. (more…)

Maybe Prague is your home or you may just have visited this city once. No matter how familiar with Prague one is, you cannot miss the remains of this “progressive” communist creation which is also the biggest thorn of the downtown - the city freeway. The 4-lane road is located “conveniently” right bellow the National Museum, on the top of the Wenceslas square. What does that mean for the pedestrians? It means that every time you want to walk from Prague 2 to Prague 1 (which is quite often) you have two choices: (more…)

Maybe the Czechs (and all of Europe, actually) got it right: smoking is good for you after all! Don’t believe me? Watch this YouTube “medical report”:

Mozna, ze Cesi (a vubec cela zakourena Evropa) maji s tim kourenim pravdu: koureni podporuje zdravi! Neverite mi? Tak podivejte na toto “zdravotnicke” YouTube video: (more…)

If you are in a mood of being helpful to our world without being paid, the 42nd International Children’s Games in San Francisco is looking for volunteer Czech translators. The games will be held on July 10-15th and are expecting a Czech team coming from Cesky Krumlov. This year’s SFICG event is hosting children from 90 cities, 50 countries and 6 contintents! So, if you don’t show up our kids will just end up racing in the opposite direction because they didn’t know what the referee was saying….;-)

Hledaji se dobrovolni prekladatele pro Detske olympicke hry v San Francisku!

For more info contact: (more…)

The re-elected president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, was interviewed in March by the famous television host Glenn Beck on the issue of Global warming (see the YouTube video bellow). Whatever your conviction about this topic is, you have to admit that Klaus is pretty brave to be one of the “black sheep” and stand out against the mainstream opinion. Believe me, I do want to save the planet, but I agree with him on couple of things:

1/ there are not enough data to conclude that Global warming is caused by human activities (it may be a factor but not the main one) (more…)

Money is always a hot topic. Do you ever wonder who makes the most money? Is it the Germans? The Swiss? Or maybe the Dutch?? Well, the truth has finally been revealed. The biggest salaries are currently being earned by the Swiss, specifically those who work in Zürich. The current European salary table looks like this: (more…)

It’s kind of embarrassing but the most common Czech words are :

• voni ( the colloqial “oni” meaning “they”)
• proste (colloquial “right”)
• teda (”well”)
• bejt (the colloquial “byt” meaning “to be”)

Do they not look familiar to you? That is because they are used in spoken Czech. So unless you have the Dictionary of Spoken Czech near by you are pretty much left guessing to what those words might mean. Profesor Cermak, the creator of one of the above mentioned dictionaries, recorded in his research sample speeches by over 500 people and discovered that the spoken Czech uses huge number demonstrative pronouns such as “that”, “there”, “here”, “that” as well as the pronoun “I”. Also particles such as “vzdyt”, “no”, “aby”, “ze jo” (”after all”, “well”, “right”..) are very common through which we express our +/- attitudes, expectations or doubts.

What are one of the most frequent Czech nouns? (more…)

Women from all over the world come to the gloomy,  south Moravian town of Zlin. What is so special about Zlin? Does it offer some kind of special course in knitting? Or does is host  secret underground feminist meetings? Or is it something else??? Find out here…