Czechmatediary

One of my friends recently enlightened me on some major Czech news regarding Czech horse racing. I have to admit,when she told me, I was staring at her like a deer in headlights, completely embarrased that this news has escaped to me. Good thing that I got such good, well-informed friends! The 119th Velka Pardubicka, ran on October 11th of this year, will be marked as one of the greatest ones in history. The winner became Josef Vana, at 57 the oldest proffessional jump jockey in the world. Vana has won the Pardubicka 5 times previously as a jockey and the 6th time as a trainer. Before this victory he considered his 1997 victory on Vronsky his greatest.”The year before I was diagnosed as clinically dead for 15 minutes after a fall at Baden-Baden…I lost 3 quarters of one lung and broke some ribs on my right side”, recollects Vana. [continue reading…]

I found some terribly scary pictures to get you ready for this year’s Halloweeeeeeeeen. The bananas are my all-time favorite :0)

CZ: Vyhrabala jsem pro vas par hrozitansky strasidelnych snimku z jakychsi minulych Halloweenu, aby jste se naladili na tento rok. Ta banankova fotka je zatim moje nejoblibenejsi :0) [continue reading…]

WARNING: if you you want to stay clear of garlic breath stop reading right now. This recipe is so potent that it will give you one just by reading these words! Traditional cesnecka (Garlic soup) doesn’t have much in it but garlic and few herbs. I don’t know what the magic is, but at the end it ends up tasting so yummy and rich! This particular recipe came from Sher who is an American expat living in Prague with her Czech husband and who also has a fun blog called Sher off the Beaten Path. Dobrou chut! And don’t forget, the more garlic the merrier!

Click HERE for the Cesnecka recipe.

CZ: Tak uz je to tady – cesnecka!!! Jestlize se bojite cesnekoveho (neboli tzv. zabijackeho) dechu, radsi tyto slova ani nectete, protoze tento recept je tak silny, ze vam v krvi zacne kolovat cesnek, aniz byste pozreli jedine sousto. Ja cesnek miluju, takze pro mne to neni problem :0). Recept je prevzaty od Sher, tedy spise od jejiho blogu zvaneho Sher off the Beaten Path. Sher je Americanka, ktera uz nejakou dobu zije se svym ceskym manzelem v Praze.

Recept na Cesnecku najdete zde (kliknete zde).

“Have you ever had your teeth cleaning done?”, asked a dentist the first time I went to get my teeth checked here in the US. “I think so”, I answered. He looked at me with a puzzled look: “You think so?” To enlighten you on this topic, back in Czech –  during communist Czechoslovakia – the dental care was not so good. In fact, to be more exact, it was terrible. I remember going to the dentist once a year with my whole class and – to put you in the right mood – let me just say that I would throw up right when my mom woke me up that morning. Why? Because I was terrified of that day! The dentists were mean, totally disinterested in us and God be with you when they found a tooth decay! How did they find it? [continue reading…]

Here is something for our little ones. I hand drew pictures of famous Czech cartoon characters on white T-shirts so that our kids can be the coolest kids on the block! You know how it is in style now when you wear something ambiguous on your T-shirt (the more ambiguous the better)? Then having Bob a Bobek, Krtek, Maxipes Fik or Pat and Mat on you shirt is something like that but better. No one will know what it means unless you are one of the ‘chosen’ ones :)) Here are some of the other reasons why you should get one besides the obvious coolness factor:

• you promote Czech culture
• you make your kids feel proud about their Czech roots
• you support the arts by purchasing something hand made

CZ: NOVINKA!!! Tricka pro deti s Bobem a Bobkem, Krteckem, Maxipsem Fikem nebo Patem a Matem!! Budou tak instante temi nejvetsimi frajeri na jakemkoliv hristi a navic budou podporovat ceskou kulturu a umelce na volne noze :o)

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I may be just totally embarrassing myself here but I just recently found a Czech-style ‘YouTube’! The website is called Stream.cz and it shows anything from news, TV shows and celebrity lifestyle to music, sport and children shows…and the picture is clear! No more inferior YouTube videos that kill your eyesight!

CZ: Mozna, ze se touhle zpravou prozradim a vy zjistite, ze jsem ve skutecnosti sto let za opicema. Ja jsem totiz nedavno narazila na webovku zvanou  Stream.cz, kde se muzete divat na cokoliv ceskeho (serialy, sport, detske pohadky, hudbu….) a to zdarma. Nejen ze to, ale kvalita kazdeho videa je naprosto vyborna! Sbohem YouTuuubbeeeee!!!!!!

Czechs together with Hungarians suffer the most with the  colon-rectal cancer – they are actually currently number one in the world. According to the Czech Gastrointestinal Society the Czechs have this type of cancer actually coded in their genes. How is that possible? The biggest playing factor is their bad eating habits – especially their weakness for very fattening foods – something that has been going on in the Czech Republic for centuries. Unhealthy cooking has been in fact with our culture for so long that it changed the genetic coding of the Czech gene pool altogether  and now we are paying for it (thanks a lot, great-great-great-grandma!). “If all of a sudden the whole Czech society decided to become vegetarian it will still take 2 to 3 generations for the sensitive genome to even out with the genomes of the other nations,” says Miroslav Zavoral, the vice-president of the Czech gastrointestinal society. [continue reading…]

I don’t know how about you but every time I am offering someone a cookie in the Czech language I find myself in a very confusing and uncomfortable situation. To stay true to my Czech soul I want to say ‘susenka‘ but deep inside I know –  and you know – that ‘cookie‘ is NOT a ‘susenka‘! Susenka is a waffle-like sweet cracker where as cookie si something…..different; something which does not have its equal in the Czech Republic. Simply put, there is no correct translation for the word ‘cookie‘ and that saddens me. So I guess I will just keep feeling guilty about calling it ‘susenka‘ and wait for that wonderful day when someone else will discover a different, better-fitting translation for it. However, the same acute problem is facing the word ‘muffin‘. Excuse me, but what the heck would you call that in Czech? ‘Buchta‘ – for the lack of a better term??

Life is so hard sometimes….
My mom sent my bunch of Fidorkas and Milas for my birthday the other day and when my daughter asked me what it was I could finally, without guilt, say: ‘susenka‘ – true susenka.

VOTE ON THIS HOT TOPIC IN THE POLL BELLOW: [continue reading…]

This one will make you laugh. The attachment bellow is a short article taken from a Czech magazine for children, written in 1960 (during  deep communism). Here is the translation:

“When you, my little pioneer, are going to be 30 or 35 years old, you will wake up into the world which will be completely different from today. The communist comrades in the USSR and in our country will have available many automated factories, agricultural jobs will be done through various industrial ways and we will work 6 hours a day. At this time our discovery crew will be reaching the deepest parts of space. All these great things will have a great impact on our everyday life: 250 million tons of steel, the abundance of all appliances, free public transportation, free food at the school and factory cafeterias, living in huge appartments free of charge, free or very inexpensive vacation trips and so on. This in not a beginning of some science fiction story in our magazine, it is a realistic 20-year program of the Communist party, something which is talked, written and thought about all over the world. The capitalist fame is quickly fading. After all, in 10 years the USSR will exceed the United States 2 and half times and in 1980 we will be ahead of the US in 10-folds. It is so beautiful to live in such world! [continue reading…]