Culture Smart! - Czech Republic - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Adapted from Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.

ISBN 978 1 78702 292 8

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

First published in Great Britain

by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd

59 Hutton Grove, London N12 8DS

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8446 2440

www.culturesmart.co.uk

Inquiries:

Design Bobby Birchall

Printed in Turkey

The Culture Smart! series is continuing to expand. All Culture Smart! guides are available as e-books, and many as audio books. For further information and latest titles visit www.culturesmart.co.uk

KEVAN VOGLER is a Canadian teacher, consultant, and graphic designer who has been living in his adopted homeland of the Czech Republic for more than fifteen years. After graduating in graphic design and illustration and visual communications at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Kevan moved to the Czech Republic in 2004. He lives in the countrys second-largest city, Brno, home of his Czech partner, where he worked as an English-language teacher and communications consultant to many Czech organizations and private clients, providing English courses and editorial services. He now works in social media and communication and in his free time hosts Beyond Prague, an online Web site dedicated to the discovery and appreciation of all things Czech.

This Culture Smart! guide to the Czech Republic is designed to give you some insight into the spirit and worldview of the Czech people. By the time the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of Communism took place in late 2019, a seemingly endless stream of tourists had found their way to Prague and some of the countys better known tourist attractions. How many left with a deeper understanding of the culture is impossible to say.

Lamentably, even this long after the fall of the old regime, a number of preconceptions about the Czechs and their culture persist, and many arrive knowing little more than the old stereotypes about Czech beer being cheap and the women beautiful. That lack of knowledge has led to frustration among Czechs, most of whom are well educated and well informed about the world around them, and who in turn sometimes view all tourists as being cut from the same cloth.

Czechs of all classes value education and culture, and it is never safe to assume that you can tell someones status from their appearance. The Czechs typically come across as rather reserved at first. However, beneath the layers of social reserve they are a deeply sincere and caring people. Its a side most visitors never get to see unless they are alert to it, but it is visible every time an indifferent-seeming teenager gets up to give their streetcar seat to an elderly person, or a senior citizen stops to coo at a baby in a carriage. Those fortunate enough to make friends with Czechs see it in the fierce loyalty they have for their friends and intimate family. Once a Czech calls someone a friendand it wont happen overnightthat friendship can last forever.

The Czechs are also deeply, darkly funny, with a distinctive, many-layered sense of humor. They are a people who have made laughing through tears a national survival strategy.

This book introduces you to the customs, values, and attitudes of a remarkable people, and the role of historical and current events in shaping these. It describes Czech life at home and in the workplace and offers practical advice on what to expect and how to behave in unfamiliar social situations. A generation of young Czechs has been born and raised completely free of the old regime, and the number of expatriates putting down roots here has grown significantly. These two factors alone have driven significant change in Czech culture, which this guide explores.

Visiting the Czech Republic will always be worthwhileits natural bounty and incredible sights are enough to satisfy any aesthetes need for beauty. But the real rewards will come for the visitor who cares enough to try to get inside the culture, beyond the reserve, to the complex corners of the Czech soul.