Czechmatediary

Remember those ugly-looking commie cars like Lada, Dacia, Trabant or Skoda? Well, Skoda has recovered quite a bit! The original Skoda automobile was originated back in the early 1890′s in Mlada Boleslav. Even despite the glim post WWII political conditions Skoda has always been known to be a reliable car. Its dated image had been a subject to many jokes (see the image above), but  Škoda remained a common car on the roads in the UK and Western Europe throughout the 1970s and 80s. After the Velvet Revolution it became subsidiary of the Volkswagen group – the greatest thing that has ever happened to the Skoda company. The car’s looks as well as performance has been improving ever since including the new sport model Skoda Yeti. (more…)

Yesterday afternoon at the age of 93 years Tomas Bata junior peacefully died in Canada. This world-known Czechoslovak entrepreneur and an owner of the world-known Bata shoe company was the son of Tomas Bata senior – the acutal founder of Bata Shoes. Tomas senior’s nickname used to be the “Henry Ford of Eastern Europe” because he “saw technology as  means of progress, and wanted to make the shoes as cheaply as possible so that the greatest number of people could access them”. The Bata company itself was founded back in 1894 in a Czech town Zlin. After Tomas senior died in a tragic plane accident, his brother Jan took over the business. Under Jan’s leadership the company quickly expanded abroad to Europe, North America, Asia, and North Africa. Along with the continual expansion, the company policy was to set up new villages around the newly build factories so that the workers have places to live. Here are just some examples od those towns (the names are pretty cute): (more…)

Did you know that prices of some food items in the Czech Republic went up 20 – 30% since the beginning of the year? That’s outrageous! I thought we had it bad here in the United States with the ever-climbing gas prices. The magazine Radio Praha digs deeper to find the cause of this Czech groceries crises (click here)…

CZ: Vite, ze vetsina ceskych potravnin je od pocatku tohoto roku o 20 – 30% drazsi? Kolik ted vubec stoji Fidorka? 50 kourn, nebo i vic?? Ja tady v Americe placu nad cenami mistniho benzinu, zatimco v Cechach to maji mnohem horsi. Nad duvody teto potravinarske krize se pozastavuje magazin Radia Prahy (kliknete zde).

Source: http://www.radio.cz/en/article/103977

The Czech crown has been reaching its all-time record-highs against the US dollar these past couple of months. The absolute highest point was reached on March 12th when 1 US dollar was equal to only 16.0 CZK.

When I came to the US in 1998 the American dollar was worth about 43 Czech crowns and I was scared to death to buy even a chewing gum: a 2-dollar chewing gum (about 80 crowns) was worth as much as a decent dinner for two (!) in a Czech restaurant. (more…)