Czechs Today | All stories

Collecting as a hobby is popular in the Czech Republic as it is throughout the world: the country has no shortage of those who collect prints, coins, stamps, and works of art. But the country also boasts a high number of collectors focussed on more unusual items: from pocket diaries to fruit & vegetable labels, from historic puppets to paper tissues. The country’s Curiosity Collectors’ Club, based in Prague, was founded more than 40 years ago, and now has 1,000 members. Recently, I caught up with the group’s chairman Ladislav Likler to learn more

Have you ever wondered what word people use most frequently? In Czech it’s dítě or child – at least as far as nouns go. One of the most common words in general are “voni”, “prostě”, “teda” or “bejt”. That you have never come across these expressions? That’s because they are used mostly in spoken – not written – Czech, which is practically a language of its own. The linguist František Čermák, together with colleagues, classified the words of spoken Czech and created a new Czech dictionary – Frekvenční slovník mluvené češtiny or the Frequency Dictionary

In this edition of Czechs Today, we talk to Ondřej Kohout, a painter and stage designer who left Czechoslovakia with his family in the early 1980s after signing the Charter 77 manifesto. He went to live in Vienna where he reunited with his father, the poet and playwright Pavel Kohout, who had been forced out of his country by communist authorities. In the Austrian capital Ondřej Kohout established himself as an independent artist, and since 1983 he has had more than 60 exhibitions in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and other European countries.

Virtual worlds existing in the realm of cyberspace are very much in the focus at the moment. They are now being put to all manners of serious uses and are also encountering various real-world teething problems. Whole companies have established their virtual branches in cyberspace. Following the example of other media organisations Czech Radio recently launched its virtual presence in the internet-base virtual world Second Life, as an additional project to its airwave and online activities.

The original US television series, Star Trek, was in re-runs for years before it was revived in the cinemas, and years more before the series inspired successful spin-offs like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. But all inceptions continue to be popular among fans even today. In the Czech Republic, members of one fan club, Kontinuum.cz, decided to take their fascination a step further, to “boldly go” where none here had gone before: they shot their very own amateur film based in the Star Trek universe.

Iva Prochazkova is one of the Czech Republic's most respected authors of children's books and novels for young adults, a writer who spent much of her career in Austria and Germany before returning to the Czech Republic in the 1990s. The author, recognised both in the Czech Republic as well as abroad, learned last month she would receive this year's Friedrich Gerstacker Award, Germany's oldest prize for youth literature. She receives the prize for her book Tanec Trosecniku (translatable as Dance of the Castaways or Castaways' Dance), a fantastical

Contemporary painter and rector of Prague's Academy of Fine Arts Jiri Sopko is one of the most respected artists in the Czech Republic. He first drew attention to his work in the 1960s and has continued to have a prominent and lasting impact. Last week a retrospective of some of Sopko's best but also lesser-known work opened at Prague's Rudolfinum Gallery.

On this day (20/6/1976) thirty one years ago, Czech footballer Antonin Panenka wrote himself into football history books by scoring the decisive goal for Czechoslovakia in a penalty shoot-out after the final of the European Cup of Nations against West Germany ended in a draw. This goal was undoubtedly one of the greatest moments in Czech sporting history and it made Panenka a household name. In this edition of Czechs Today, we look at the career of this great footballer and recall his stunning penalty kick, which sealed Czechoslovakia's only ever

This week, we speak to Jana Horakova-Kansky, daughter of one of Czechoslovakia's best known victims of Communist-era oppression, the democratic MP and wartime resistance hero Milada Horakova. Jana, Milada Horakova's only child, was just a teenager when her mother was executed on trumped up charges of treason and espionage in a 1950 show trial. Her father - who was also targeted by the Communist regime - made a daring escape from Czechoslovakia shortly afterwards, leaving Jana in the care of relatives. For years she was denied the opportunity to

Many listeners will probably have heard of the famous Iditarod sled dog race run in Alaska since the 1970s, recalling images of huskies pulling mushers across the frozen wastes. But they may be less familiar with the Iditarod Trail Invitational, a similar adventure race in which roughly 1,800 kilometres are crossed not using sled dogs but by going on foot, using cross-country skis, or mountain bikes. This year the mountain bike category was won by Czech rider Jan Kopka, a former road racer turned mountain biker with a passion for the extreme. At