92% Complete (3 days until Party begins; 5 days until Party ends)
Tuesday, 2. October 2007, 14:36:16
This is my week off for the upcoming party, and it is really getting there. As am I, of course.
Posts tagged with "Czechia"
Bohemian weekend
Wednesday, 23. May 2007, 08:03:04
Though scaled down from the original 11 day extravaganza, there is a party established this October in the Czech Republic.
It's Prague Gypsy week
Thursday, 27. May 2004, 14:00:46
Or to be far more accurate, World Roma Festival. This is the same week Lidové Noviny had a notice that the recently published book Psychologie Romů (The Roma psychology), which among other things claims that Roma have smaller brains than non-Roma, is under police investigation for racism. And Týden in an article on Czech likes and dislikes (for inexplicable reasons illustrated with two semi-nude girls) quoted a 2001 STEM poll
"Who would you consider as problem free neighbours?" with the following results:
Slovaks: 90%
French: 71%
Americans: 64%
Jews: 57%
Czechs*: 48%
Germans: 48%
Russians: 22%
Vietnamese: 15%
Roma: 9%
Big city Czech were more neighbourly, while communists were more hostile.
* The Czechs weren't Czechs in general, but from re-immigrants from the Czech minority in Ukraine, and seemingly just as bad as Germans and five times as likely to be troublesome as Slovaks, the Czechs' favourite neighbours.
Strikingly, but not surprisingly, only 1 in 11 would be untroubled with Roma neighbours. Czechs have always topped anti-Roma sentiments in all European polls (though neither Czechs nor Hungarians have much anti-Semitism; unlike the Poles and Slovaks). I believe the figures hide huge regional differences, that the sentiments in Prague neighbourhoods like Žižkov or Harfa are much more relaxed than you would find in Northern Czechia.
On another tack, the Roma were to blame for the Bohemian reputation of Bohemia (which is the English name for the Czech part of the Czech Republic, the non-Czech Czechs are Moravians or even Silesian, though most Silesians are Polish). When the Roma arrived in France, they were believed to come from Bohemia, and they were believed to be free-moving spirits, and not like most Czechs farmers staying very much put. Then the name Bohemia itself is a result of migration. The Romans named the Celtic tribe that used to live here the Boii. The Celts have long passed away, but the name remained even when the Slav and German tribes entered the scene.
The French were not the only ones that were confused, the English believed them to come from Egypt, thus Gypsy, and the Roma themselves believed they came from Romania, where most Roma live, thus Roma. Current, and better founded, orthodoxy pegs them as refugees from India. Maybe they more appropriately should be called Indian, a name that has never confused anyone before.
"Who would you consider as problem free neighbours?" with the following results:
Slovaks: 90%
French: 71%
Americans: 64%
Jews: 57%
Czechs*: 48%
Germans: 48%
Russians: 22%
Vietnamese: 15%
Roma: 9%
Big city Czech were more neighbourly, while communists were more hostile.
* The Czechs weren't Czechs in general, but from re-immigrants from the Czech minority in Ukraine, and seemingly just as bad as Germans and five times as likely to be troublesome as Slovaks, the Czechs' favourite neighbours.
Strikingly, but not surprisingly, only 1 in 11 would be untroubled with Roma neighbours. Czechs have always topped anti-Roma sentiments in all European polls (though neither Czechs nor Hungarians have much anti-Semitism; unlike the Poles and Slovaks). I believe the figures hide huge regional differences, that the sentiments in Prague neighbourhoods like Žižkov or Harfa are much more relaxed than you would find in Northern Czechia.
On another tack, the Roma were to blame for the Bohemian reputation of Bohemia (which is the English name for the Czech part of the Czech Republic, the non-Czech Czechs are Moravians or even Silesian, though most Silesians are Polish). When the Roma arrived in France, they were believed to come from Bohemia, and they were believed to be free-moving spirits, and not like most Czechs farmers staying very much put. Then the name Bohemia itself is a result of migration. The Romans named the Celtic tribe that used to live here the Boii. The Celts have long passed away, but the name remained even when the Slav and German tribes entered the scene.
The French were not the only ones that were confused, the English believed them to come from Egypt, thus Gypsy, and the Roma themselves believed they came from Romania, where most Roma live, thus Roma. Current, and better founded, orthodoxy pegs them as refugees from India. Maybe they more appropriately should be called Indian, a name that has never confused anyone before.
Live and texting at the end of the line
Monday, 24. May 2004, 14:02:38
This entry keeps me awake on the Czech-Polish boreder. It is past midnight and still one and a half hour to wait. Bohumin might be a nice town for all I know, but at this hour I wish I wasn't here. That is the odd thing about train travel, it insists on marooning you at times and places you don't want to be. I would fondly forget Frankly am Awful, Tonabrick, Frustracia, Catatonia, Maimed, as well as the wrong station in Berlin (no, there is no other). At least in this place you can stay inside at the station, electrical outlets and all, the night is warm and dry. Electrical hums, screeches and clanks from one side of the curtains, quadraphonic snoring from the other.
Railways have a hard time competing. They are more expensive than low-fare airlines, and slower, less convenient, and less comfortable than buses. The high-speed, high-quality, high-price lines do well, but companies like České Dráhy are suffering. The great flood two years before the Prague flood derailed a lot of the countryside, but ČD still has a vast network to maintain and aging rolling stock.
Most of Western and Northern Europe have good trains, but their in-station information system (to answer questions like "How do I get there from here?") is uniformly horrible, with a particular mention of Swedish railway stations. Their Internet sites are supposed to take the strain, but evidently nobody told the people actually designing the web pages that. Instead you are taken for a ride by Flash animations supposed to show how fun it is to take the train, with the end result you take the plane instead.
In comparison the Brno station information was impeccable. Though I could see that she cheated, she was really using www.bahn.de like the rest of us for the advanced questions. Bahn.de was however innocent of the arrival time misinformation that left me miserable in Bohumin instead of in Hranice na Moravě where I imagine I would be much happier to be miserable.
Railways have a hard time competing. They are more expensive than low-fare airlines, and slower, less convenient, and less comfortable than buses. The high-speed, high-quality, high-price lines do well, but companies like České Dráhy are suffering. The great flood two years before the Prague flood derailed a lot of the countryside, but ČD still has a vast network to maintain and aging rolling stock.
Most of Western and Northern Europe have good trains, but their in-station information system (to answer questions like "How do I get there from here?") is uniformly horrible, with a particular mention of Swedish railway stations. Their Internet sites are supposed to take the strain, but evidently nobody told the people actually designing the web pages that. Instead you are taken for a ride by Flash animations supposed to show how fun it is to take the train, with the end result you take the plane instead.
In comparison the Brno station information was impeccable. Though I could see that she cheated, she was really using www.bahn.de like the rest of us for the advanced questions. Bahn.de was however innocent of the arrival time misinformation that left me miserable in Bohumin instead of in Hranice na Moravě where I imagine I would be much happier to be miserable.
Circus Českomoravska
Thursday, 6. May 2004, 18:57:21
The venue for all this hokej was the recently built Sazka Arena in Vysočany, naturally the target for the daily pilgrimage. I had an additional reason for a visit. After the revolution but before the normalization I used to live there. In fact it was the first flat I had of my own, a penthouse pad with a great view over the humongous ČKD industrial complexes just across the street. I even tried to buy it with my pocket money; Vysočany was unpopular and no-cost real estate, primarily for being the most polluted area in Prague, which truly was saying something at that time.
But all things heavy industrial must pass, and so would the low grade coal that gave winter its distinct colour and aroma. The Metro was coming through and would shorten a half hour tram ride to the center down to ten minutes. My lack of Czechness and drive to circumnavigate the city bureaucracy left me homeless, but the location made great sense for a sports arena. The half-fallow land is still cheap and the Metro can push people through like no other transport system could, and does on a daily basis.
Like all other tickets, the tickets for the least popular quarter final was long sold out. The start price for a ticket was now 2000 CZK (about 60 €), but by waiting until the match was about to start and the unsold tickets were about to turn worthless with no buyers, I got one for 300 CZK just when I was about to accept another one for 400 CZK, half the original price.
Getting inside was a security version of snakes and ladders. Stand in line for two turns. You carry no gun, move two squares ahead. You have a valid ticket, move four squares ahead. Your bag is screened, stay over a turn. Your body metal is phone and wallet, one square. You carry a laptop, stay over two turn for it to boot up and down without blowing up. You have no laptop license, return to start and deposit the thing. Stay in line for a turn. You carry no gun, move two squares ahead… Thereafter you have to traverse a labyrinth of automatic doors that only opens for the proper tickets without telling which tickets a given door will accept.
Being there was an entirely different experience. Viewed on TV hokej looks like a live enactment of a Stiga game, but when you arrive at the arena you're instantly transported back to a Roman coliseum. Sazka has same body plan and atmosphere as Colosseum, only that the audience isn't long dead. The Romans may not have invented sport, nor even sports arenas and events (the Greeks have a claim there), but they did establish the modern body plan and choreography and there has been no reason to change it since. There have been improvements over the years. Most visibly Sazka has a cube of oversized TV screens hanging from the roof that successfully wrestle the attention away from the Stiga game below. The TV cube I guess is an American addition, one that I am sure the Romans would have loved to have.
But all things heavy industrial must pass, and so would the low grade coal that gave winter its distinct colour and aroma. The Metro was coming through and would shorten a half hour tram ride to the center down to ten minutes. My lack of Czechness and drive to circumnavigate the city bureaucracy left me homeless, but the location made great sense for a sports arena. The half-fallow land is still cheap and the Metro can push people through like no other transport system could, and does on a daily basis.
Like all other tickets, the tickets for the least popular quarter final was long sold out. The start price for a ticket was now 2000 CZK (about 60 €), but by waiting until the match was about to start and the unsold tickets were about to turn worthless with no buyers, I got one for 300 CZK just when I was about to accept another one for 400 CZK, half the original price.
Getting inside was a security version of snakes and ladders. Stand in line for two turns. You carry no gun, move two squares ahead. You have a valid ticket, move four squares ahead. Your bag is screened, stay over a turn. Your body metal is phone and wallet, one square. You carry a laptop, stay over two turn for it to boot up and down without blowing up. You have no laptop license, return to start and deposit the thing. Stay in line for a turn. You carry no gun, move two squares ahead… Thereafter you have to traverse a labyrinth of automatic doors that only opens for the proper tickets without telling which tickets a given door will accept.
Being there was an entirely different experience. Viewed on TV hokej looks like a live enactment of a Stiga game, but when you arrive at the arena you're instantly transported back to a Roman coliseum. Sazka has same body plan and atmosphere as Colosseum, only that the audience isn't long dead. The Romans may not have invented sport, nor even sports arenas and events (the Greeks have a claim there), but they did establish the modern body plan and choreography and there has been no reason to change it since. There have been improvements over the years. Most visibly Sazka has a cube of oversized TV screens hanging from the roof that successfully wrestle the attention away from the Stiga game below. The TV cube I guess is an American addition, one that I am sure the Romans would have loved to have.
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