Czechs Today | All stories

In the past when Czechs thought about comics, classic children’s publications like Čtyřlístek (Fourleaf Clover), about four animal characters, or Fast Arrows – adventure stories for kids - came to mind. But after 1989, conceptions of comics gradually changed as comics not seen here before gradually entered the market. Soon, many grew instantly recognizable to most teenagers: classic superheroes like Spider-Man, Batman and others; on the other, newer genres also began to come in, edgier so-called new wave productions, of which Art Speiglman’s classic

Czech singer Veronika Diamant decided at a very early age that she wanted to be a jazz musician. She studied music at the Prague Conservatory and is currently working on her new album. If everything goes according to plan, it could be released in spring of next year. When I met with Veronika, I first asked her when she discovered the world of music.

South Moravia is a region in the Czech Republic known for many things – a sunny climate, interesting folklore and reasonably good wine. Being the most visited region of the country outside Prague, many people come for historic sights, chateaus and mediaeval castles. But few visitors realize the region along the borders with Austria and Slovakia boats a number of Jewish monuments from times long gone. Most of them now belong to the Jewish Community in Brno which has one man to take care of them – architect Jaroslav Klenovský.

Katka Garcia, as her name suggests, is half Czech and half Spanish, with a bit of Russian thrown in. In addition to that she sings traditional music from Ireland and Scotland. She currently lives in Dublin and teaches Spanish at Trinity College and occasionally comes to Prague to perform with her fellow musicians. I caught up with her during her last visit.

Martin Rajniš is a renowned Czech architect, who along with Johnny Eisler and Miroslav Masák, authored the famous Máj building (now Tesco) in the centre of Prague. Designed in the high tech style Máj was one of Czechoslovakia’s first department stores and is now a cultural heritage site. But that is only one of the architect’s achievements: in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, he was involved in the extensive redesigning of the area around Anděl in Prague’s Smíchov district. Since, the architect has also concentrated more and more on designs

As a champion of animal rights and an advocate of green politics, Plzeň-born Helena Houdová was an atypical beauty queen when she became Miss Czech Republic in 1999. She went on to become one of the few winners of the competition to enjoy a successful international career as a model, though today her time is split between modelling and running the Sunflower Children humanitarian organisation. It’s based in New York, which is where I met Helena Houdová.

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.