The Czechs in a Nutshell

The Celts were kicked out of what are now the Czech lands by the Germanic Marcomannis several decades before Common Era, and if they had only left inventions such as the potter’s wheel, the circular mill, some coins and an apparently eternal craze among the Czechs for everything Celtic, they wouldn’t have deserved to be mentioned in this country’s history with more than a couple of words.

Yet the Czechs can thank the Celtic Boiohaemum tribe for one basic contribution to their cultural history: the name Bohemia — the term most countries in the world use when speaking about the part of the country that the Czechs themselves call Čechy.

Needless to say, not all Czechs are too enthusiastic about this term. Ever since the French author Henri Murgers published his Scenes from Life in Bohemia in 1848, decent citizens have considered Bohemians to be painters, writers, poets and similar good-for-nothings, who don’t feel bound by “ordinary” moral conventions. True, the Czech lands have certainly never lacked people in this category, but, still, isn’t it a bit unfair to deem several million Czechs as morally devastated Bohemians?

To avoid this embarrassing confusion, some reputation-wary Czechs have come up with a sweet, pseudo-scientific explanation:

“Yes, it’s correct that the Bohemians who came to France in the early nineteenth century drank and copulated far more and worked and went to church far less than they should have. But these people were actually not Czechs — they were Roma! In England they claimed to be of (E)gyptian origin, in Spain and the Czech lands, they claimed to be Flamencos (Flemings). Now, they use the same trick in France by saying they are Bohemians!”

But you know better: the original Bohemians were neither Czech Slavs nor Roma. They were Celts!

Bureaucracy

In Bohemia and Moravia, bureaucracy was booming already when the Czechs were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (that’s where they were originally infected by the disease). It got even worse under the communists, and notwithstanding all promises made by the politicians after 1989, the situation hasn’t improved any much after the Velvet Revolution either.

The rule of the red tape is, admittedly, nothing exceptional in Central Europe. One might even say that this is perfectly normal in a country that has fostered both Franz Kafka and The Good Soldier Švejk. And indeed, Czech bureaucracy’s tentacles can from time to time behave in a way that makes a poor citizen (not to mention a foreigner) a part of the same all-mighty and incomprehensible machinery as Kafka’s hero[1] Josef K.

In addition to its enormity, Czech bureaucracy is characterized by one basic feature: formal details are often much more important than substance.

This is very conspicuous in the judiciary system, where entire legal cases can be postponed because a form is not correctly filled out or an address has recently been changed. What’s more, judges are often engaged in formal matters that other countries solve with a civil servant and a computer. As a result, operations, such as registering a new company, that take a couple of days in, say, Scandinavia, can take four to five months in the Czech Republic.

It’s hard to say how many days (possibly years) of his or her life that the average Czech spends queuing up at different offices or running around gathering the necessary razítka (stamps). But more or less all of them have realized one crucial thing: you simply can’t beat the system (well, you can grease it — see: Corruption). This goes double for a vulnerable foreigner. However legitimate your complaints are, loud outbursts or even frustrated yelling don’t help you at all. On the contrary, the low-paid bureaucrat will be delighted to use his or her only privilege: i.e. the power to make the situation even worse for you, optimally causing you a nervous breakdown.

Consequently, there are only two ways of dealing with Czech bureaucracy. Either you pay somebody to fix the formalities and the queuing for you, or, if you decide to undergo the Calvary personally, you arm yourself with tons of patience, lots of phlegm, a half-witted smile — and a copy of Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk.

Carlsbad English Bitters

This somewhat exotic name refers to a brand of herbal liquor that is now sold under the name Becherovka. Although most Czechs praise it to the sky and revere it with the same intensity as the Russians worship their vodka or the French their Champagne, some (well, many) foreigners have problems swallowing this bitter mixture of aromatic oils and alcohol, delivered in its characteristic flat and green bottles.