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TOPIC: czech republic

This Happened

This Happened — November 17: The Velvet Revolution

Updated Nov. 17, 2023 at 12:10 p.m.

In the push for an end to the Communist regime, Prague's international students took to the streets to have their demands heard on November 17, 1989. It was the beginning of what would come to be known as the Velvet Revolution.

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Identity And Dissolution, A Czech Farewell To Milan Kundera

A week has passed since the passing of the Czech-born author of the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera in his Paris apartment. Having emigrated to France in 1975 after being ostracized for criticizing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, his relationship with his homeland would remain complicated for decades.

-Essay-

PRAGUE — Milan Kundera's lifelong dream has finally been fulfilled. He disappeared behind his literary work, became invisible, and left in his wake only a shelf of beautifully crafted books that serve as the ideal portrait of the author — a portrait reflecting his journey, with Laughable Loves on one side and The Festival of Insignificance on the other.

Through novels like The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, through essays titled The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, Milan Kundera left behind half a century's worth of authorial work and a legacy unparalleled in modern Czech literature.

He left behind an extensive library, translated in some 50 languages. Perhaps only Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk — the most translated novel of Czech literature — tops this remarkable feat.

Born on April 1, 1929, in the Czech city of Brno, Milan Kundera, a resident of France since the age of 46 and a globally renowned author by the 1980s, possessed a remarkable ability beyond his evident literary talent: the ability to provoke.

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Inside The Polish-Led Push To Send Fighter Jets To Ukraine – Bypassing Germany

A bloc of eastern European countries has distanced themselves from Western Europe — Germany in particular — by sending Soviet era jets to Ukraine, part of growing push to supply the country with Western-made fighter jets.

Following Poland’s lead, Slovakia has now declared its plans to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. The U.S. may well have been kept informed of the decisions, but Warsaw did not tell the German government. Some Eastern European allies are distancing themselves from Western Europe. And there’s a good reason for that.

Once again Poland is pushing ahead with supplying weapons to Ukraine. “We can say that we will shortly be sending MiG fighter jets to Ukraine,” said President Andrzej Duda on Thursday in Warsaw, during a visit from the Czech President Petr Pavel – announcing it almost in passing, as seems to be Duda’s way.

Duda went one step further than his Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who only the day before had set out a timeline for Poland to provide jets. He said it would take four to six weeks, then the President and commander-in-chief announced a shorter timeline of only a few days.

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All Eyes On Southern Ukraine, Baghdad Clashes, Pumpkin Ride

👋 Da'anzho!*


Welcome to Tuesday, where Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to retake Kherson in the south of the country, deadly clashes rock Iraq after cleric al-Sadr resigns, and the world record for pumpkin paddling (you read that right) gets broken. We also turn to Ukraine’s news platform Livy Bereg to see how Russian propaganda plays out across European countries.



[*Eastern Apache]

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LGBTQ Plus
William Nattrass

A Czech Exception? LGBTI Push For Progress In Central Europe

Attitudes are shifting in countries with both a communist past and strong Christian roots.

PRAGUE — It's no secret that Central Europe isn't the world's best place for LGBTI people. The odious anti-gay rhetoric of Polish President Andrzej Duda recently made international headlines, along with the country's introduction of "LGBT-free zones." In Hungary, Viktor Orbán's government used its power of decree during the coronavirus pandemic to make it impossible for people to change their legal gender, passing a bill replacing "gender" in the civil registry with "sex at birth." Meanwhile, Slovakia's Constitution explicitly limits marriage to opposite-sex couples, while a Eurobarometer survey five years ago found that only 24% of Slovaks support same-sex marriage.

Still, the region is not a monolith and times continue to evolve, which makes the situation for LGBTI in the Czech Republic worth particular attention.

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Coronavirus

Paris To Prague: A Czech Homecoming And Quarantine Au Revoir

PRAGUE — As I walked down Avenue René Coty on a sunny day in late May, everything was like a Paris postcard — except that my glasses were fogging up over my facemask. But I knew the scenery by heart by then, as I had never left a one-kilometer radius around my student residence during the two-month French national lockdown.

By the end of May, we were two weeks into the "de-confinement" and Parisians could move freely without a piece of paper certifying the purpose, date and time of their outing. But the streets were far quieter than normal as I walked down the stairs into the virtual empty metro station for the first time in three months. A guard at the entrance checked my (homemade) mask and stopped others who didn't have one. Another guard, who helped me get my large suitcase through the turnstile, wished me bon voyage. He guessed right: I was on my way to Charles de Gaulle airport ... and a flight back to my hometown of Prague.

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THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD

Pandemic Blues, The Disconcerting New Concert Experience

Rock hero Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame, has described live music performances during the COVID-19 lockdowns as: "unflattering little windows that look like doorbell security footage and sound like Neil Armstrong's distorted transmissions from the moon."

One month later, in some corners of the world, authentic, in-person live music is ready to take the stage again — though with some caveats.

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Geopolitics
Jiří Pehe

Coronavirus And The Czech Republic's Geopolitical Crossroads

-Analysis-

PRAGUE — From a geopolitical perspective, the Czech Republic is a case apart. After four decades of being "abducted" to the East (as writer Milan Kundera, for one, described the era of Soviet communism), it has spent 30 years as part of the West, first as part of Czechoslovakia, with its Velvet Revolution, and later as an independent state and member of both NATO and the European Union. But in recent years, part of the country's political elite and a large part of society have repeatedly questioned our affiliation with the West.

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food / travel
Alex Correa*

A Brazilian Superman, Lost And Homeless In Prague

PRAGUE Czech Republic was the first country I visited that wasn't either Latin or Germanic. Czech, as I found out the hard way, is a very tricky Slavic language, one of those that rarely lets you deduce the meaning of a word and in which entire sentences seem to have been written by somebody with severe cognitive issues.


If you don't believe me, here are a few examples:


— No, I've never heard of the deep web.

— Ne, já jsem nikdy neslyšel o hlubokého webu.


— What did you put in my drink?

— Co jste dal do pití?


— Please, do not take my liver, sir.

— Prosím, neberte mé játra však, pane.


I started in Berlin, Germany. The train journey to Prague's central station is enough to make anybody exhilarated or a little scared. The script changes little by little until you start realizing that either you dropped acid that somehow confused all the letters on the signs, or you've entered the Czech Republic.

When everything goes according to plan, it's actually rather easy to become enthralled with such a different language. There are an infinite number of possibilities, and it's a lot easier to meet new people in bars, for example with the always efficient, "How do you say cheers in your language?" But if things start going off the tracks, the interest in exoticism devolves into an abyss of despair, and with one magical step, you find yourself unable to find a living soul who speaks English.

That's what happened to me after I dedicated a reasonable amount time to figuring out the city's public transport system. (Trying to memorize the names of the surrounding metro stations when your phone's battery is giving up isn't the best idea.) I reached my Airbnb rental and discovered that the hosts had forgotten about my arrival and were unreachable. I waited for two hours, entering and exiting the building thanks to considerate neighbors, and I found a café with Wi-Fi to allow me to pursue a plan B.

Tossed out

I was thrown out of the café at 10 p.m., when it was already very dark outside and the employees wanted to go home. I ended up staying in a remote neighborhood with a guy who would later send me Whatsapp messages on a daily basis to ask if I'd "already picked up a Czech chick." After an exhausting day, I had what every traveler needs: somewhere to sleep and a stranger to ask me inappropriate questions. What more could I wish for?

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Is that clear? — Photo — Infinite Ache

The next day, showered and ready to explore the city, I started meeting other tourists who were also desperately confused by the language. I reached deep inside to embrace my best altruism and swore that whenever I'd see somebody lost or looking for information, I'd offer to help.

The project started well: I met an errant explorer on the tram and directed him toward his hotel across the city. In a restaurant, I helped a couple decipher the menu using Google Translate. In just a few hours, I became Prague's Superman, without the six pack and super powers.

Living up to my new, Good Samaritan status, I became the hero of two helpless Japanese girls standing in the middle of the sidewalk with gigantic suitcases. Or at least I tried to. They were trying to make sense of their city map. But when people don't even know they're holding the map upside down, you know it's going to be a slog for them.

I came closer, but they completely ignored me. When I finally offered to help, I was sprayed with a series of piercing "no no no no no no no no no nos." They moved away from me, leaving their luggage where it was, as if I'd been holding a gun to their heads. They made all sorts of hand gestures to tell me to go away, saying stuff in Japanese. I tried to explain myself: "I'm just trying to help some strangers in the street because when I first arrived in Prague myself ... " but I failed miserably. They were only moving further away, each time a little faster, while I was trying to give my best rendition of "it's not what you're thinking." Thanks for nothing, pop culture.

About 40 minutes later, I returned to the spot, and there they were, sitting on the curbside. But they at least holding the map properly this time. I didn't stop. One moment I had been Superman, the next Godzilla. I left them behind in that alley.

And I'm fine with it. As Confucius famously said, "It's no use trying to help those who don't help themselves." Not even in Prague.

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blog

Victims Of Communism

There are several statues, monuments and informal crosses thoughout Prague that commemorate the death of 21-year-old Jan Palach and 19-year-old Jan Zajíc. The two students set themselves on fire in 1969 to protest the end of the Prague Spring, brought on by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led armies.

blog

Opening Up

Over the years, we saw Prague transition from austere Soviet Czechoslovakia to the more tourist-friendly Czech Republic. I took this picture of my wife in the Old Town Square — one of Europe's most beautiful squares — just about eight months before the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.