Czechmatediary

When I was a little girl I loved dolls (what a surprise, right?). I loved them so much that every time my dad was leaving for work I would ask him to bring me one. Well, one of those days has become a memory for the rest of my life.

It was summertime and I was vacationing with my family at our cottage. Since our parents didn’t have as much time off as us, kids, my dear grandma Kaja would baby-sit us during that time. This grandma became one of my most influential people in my life. She survived both wars, raised 2 kids during W.W.II and feverishly taught French for most of her life. She also believed in a true and pure communism (nowadays we call it Utopia). Anyhow, since grandma Kaja endured through the war times she has always had the survival-of-the-fittest attitude and therefore learned to be VERY frugal and VERY resourceful. Let me just give you an example (and I am sure some of you may relate as their grandmas did similar things):

1. She would never throw away milk bags (during communism milk was sold in plastic bags) to use them later for other purposes such as a storage for her rubber bands. (more…)

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…)

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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As I was surfing the Czech web the other day looking for something attractive to write about, I came across this interesting article called “What are we like?“. I was interested enough to finish the whole article and I decided to share some of the stuff with you. Not only is the content intriguing but the author is well over 70 years old (and runs a blog!!) so you know that he has earned the authority and respect to talk about pretty much anything he wants and people will listen.

(Pro ceskou verzi clanku “Jaci jsme?” kliknete zde)

Mr. Krejci divides Czechs into 9 categories:

1. The defendants of the “good old times”: they long for the communist times to come back when the government was in charge of the economy…. as well as their own lives. That way they didn’t have to worry about anything. Now they feel like everyone is doing whatever they feel like without following any kind of order.
2. The never-happy, beer-belly hicks: they know that nothing is the way they wanted it to be. They can’t change it nor can they change themselves. The only place where their opinions have any kind of weight are in their own homes with their families. (more…)
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Here is a guest post of a gentleman named Michael whose enthusiasm for learning the Czech language is quite inspirational. See for yourself…

CZ: Je na case predstavit meho mileho hosta Michala. Je zakem druheho rocniku ceskeho jazyka na mistni universite a jeho nadseni k uceni tohoto sloziteho jazyka je proste nakazlive. Posudte sami:

“IF I HAD TO CHOOSE MY FAVORITE CZECH WORD…”

If I had to choose my favorite Czech word, “pokoj” comes to mind immediately. With its double meaning of ‘room’ and ‘peace of mind’, it is, to me, the perfect example of why one should learn the language to know the culture. (more…)

The Czech Republic (and Slovakia) has an interesting tradition. If you are a high school student your mom will most likely force you to go to “do tanecnich” ( Dancing school). It is a very inexpensive way to not only learn how to dance almost any type of dance that currently exists (seriously, they teach you anything from Polka to Samba to Foxtrot) but it is also a socialization tool for all of the pimply kids out there. When you are 15 or 16 years old, it is hard to talk to the opposite sex (well, for most of us anyway). But this dancing school makes you to do exactly that. At the beginning of each weakly session you are forced into pairs (male -female) whether you like it or not. (more…)

In her article “The secrets of the Czech complexion” Rosie Johnson expresses her perplexion over the beauty of Czech girls’ skin during the winter times and calls them the “Sun-kissed goddesses”. I don’t mean to brag or anything but being Czech myself, I have to say I have gotten some positive comments on my skin complexion as well. Needless to say, that I have just recently discovered that there is actually a specific kind of soap for your face! I is kind of embarrassing that up till recently I have just been using water (or a regular bar of soap) to wash my face down. But my friend decided to educate me one day and made me buy one of those fancy face soaps (for about $20,000 a bottle) and the result??? (more…)

Once upon a time, back when I was a highschooler, I really wanted to learn Italian. Unfortunately, after researching the whole situation I found out the only country that would “take me” was England, and I had to become a nanny to go. But I didn’t want to go to gloomy England! I wanted to go to beautiful and sunny Italy!!! Oh well, I thought to myself, I guess I will at least be ready for my final exam in English when I come back….So I left for the summer and worked for a lovely English family, but little did I know what awaited… (more…)

An actor, writer and a poet George Voskovec, known as the “11th angry man“(from a famous American movie called “12 Angry Men“) definitely belongs to my favorite famous Czech American. He was born to a Czech father and French mother in Sazava in 1905 , went to high school in Prague, where he ended up meeting his best friend as well as the life-long acting partner Jan Werich. Together, while still university students, they joined the acting team at the Liberated Theater in 1927. Thanks to their wonderful acting and singing abilities the place soon became one of the most hip places in Prague. Even the German theater scene loved them until their performances became mostly anti-fascist which also led to closing the theater in 1938 and them immigrating to the USA in early 1939.

After the war both of them returned to Prague to their re-established Liberated theater where they again started happily performing until their humor became “not welcomed” by the communist party. Once again, Woskovec and Verich were under a political pressure. Voskovec did not feel like dealing with it anymore and went back to the United States, while Werich decided to stay in communist Czechoslovakia. (more…)