Pictured above, the Greatest Czech of all Time, Jara Cimrman
- Czechs drink more beer per capita than any other country on the face of the earth. As the guide books say, it’s cheaper than water.[1]
- Not too long ago, the sexiest female Czech politicians all posed for a calendar. [2]"Women's political influence is growing. Why not show we are women who aren't afraid of being sexy?"
- When I first moved here, during the weather forecast, if the forecast called for was a hot summer’s day the weatherwoman (or weatherman, sometimes) would, while conducting the weather forecast, strip down to a bikini or pair of speedos so viewers would the appropriate mode of dress for the morrow. Sadly, this has become a thing of the past.
- The Czech Republic celebrates the Catholic saints Cyril and Methodius and the Protestant martyr Jan Hus, on two subsequent days in July. Equal time, I guess.
- The hardest-drinking, most macho, toughest, most amply beer-gutted Czech man will spend Christmas Eve watching reenactments of fairy tales on Christmas Eve.
- Czechs buy live carp for Christmas dinner. They let them live in their bathtub for a few days “to clean them out”before hammering their brains out and frying them up. A tradition which is sadly disappearing but still alive.
- On Easter Monday, especially in some villages in Moravia, Czech men visit women in the town and beat them with switches and/or pick them up and throw them in local rivers, lakes and streams — or failing that, in the shower. The men are then rewarded for their strenuous efforts with colored eggs, sweets and slivovice.
- When the Soviet Union invaded in 1968, Czechs in Moravia, unable to resist in any more significant way, changed road signs to Prague, misdirecting the Soviet army; the Soviet tanks travelled for quite a ways before they realized that they were completely lost.
- Czechs love a good pig-slaughter. People get together, slay a pig, then spend the day converting every single molecule of it into food, getting rip-roaring drunk in the process.
- When asked to vote for “The Greatest Czech of all Time”, Czechs overwhelmingly voted for Jára Cimrman — a fictional character. When the TV program conducting the poll disqualified Cimrman on the grounds that he did not, you know, actually exist, an online petition was launched to keep Cimrman eligible for the honor of “Greatest Czech."
- AThe Czech prime minister is a former FSB (something like the old Czechoslovak KGB) agent….and he’s from Slovakia…allied with the Communists. Not exactly funny but plenty absurd, if you think about it.
- The leader of the local far-right nationalist party is half-Japanese.
Footnotes
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