In Focus | All stories

This year, it is 150 years since the first steamboats started to cruise the waters of the Vltava River in Prague. While back then, steamers were used mainly as a means of transport, nowadays they belong among the city’s most popular tourist attractions. I met with the head of the Prague Steamboat Company, Štěpán Rusňák, to talk about the company’s history and its present-day activities, but I first asked him how they endured the recent drought:

Drivers on Czech roads may soon come across a new, perhaps somewhat surprising, traffic sign: a moose crossing. The non-profit organisation Česká Krajina or Czech Landscape has proposed that the road management authorities place the traffic signs in regions where an encounter with these rare animals is most likely to happen. I spoke to Miloslav Jirků of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who is one of the people behind the initiative:

If you don't like organised trips abroad but you are not quite sure how to arrange a journey on your own, a new Czech travel agency called Travelove might be just the thing for you. From lunching with a local in Paris, taking a ride with the huskies in the Arctic Circle or meeting with an Irish musician in Cork, you can choose basically any experience you want and get it within a vacation tailor-made to your needs. Launched at the end of last year, Travelove has already opened an office in London and has been gradually expanding all over the

While most people regard decrepit buildings as something ugly, there are some who actually find them fascinating. One of the people enchanted by these modern-day ruins is Czech student Katka Havlíková. For several years now, she has been exploring vacant buildings across the Czech Republic as well as beyond the country's borders. She has even published a book on urban exploration and another one is to be released later this year. I met with Katka Havlíková to find out more about the phenomenon and her own fascination by vacant buildings:

Guidebooks are fairly common fare in Prague during the height of the tourism season. But one with a difference which has come out and takes the visitor and local both near the tourist hotspots and off the beaten path. It is in fact a guide to the sites used by the Communist-era secret police in the capital. The author is Prokop Tomek, an historian at the Prague’s Military History Institute and an expert on many aspects of the workings of the former secret police and intelligence service. I asked him first of all where the inspiration for the book

A new Czech documentary called Amerika, which has recently premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Festival, explores the unique Czech pastime known as tramping, inspired in part by the vision of the American Wild West. But instead of providing a detailed description of the movement, the film takes its viewers on a journey through the Czech countryside, giving them an opportunity to experience the emotions one feels when wandering through the landscape. We have more in this week’s edition of In Focus.

For more than a year now, young Czech journalist Janek Rubeš has been waging a war against Prague’s notorious taxi services that have a reputation for overcharging tourists. In his widely popular series broadcast on the internet television Stream.cz, he is also uncovering other tourist scams in the Czech capital. When I spoke to Janek Rubeš, I asked him what sparked his interest in this topic in the first place:

Marie Kinsky, a French dancer, teacher and graduate of the French Conservatory of Classical Dance, has moved to Prague back in 1997, and since then, she has been involved in all kinds of dance activities. She established the first Centre for Choreographic Development in the Czech Republic and along with her husband, she has been involved in the reconstruction of the Kinsky family estate in Žďár nad Sázavou. This weekend, the beautiful baroque castle will be hosting the fourth edition of KoresponDance, a festival of dance and physical theatre.

In recent years there has been a steep growth in the number of Czech women giving birth by Cesarean section. While in 1990 one in twelve women gave birth by C-section, today it is one in four. A similar trend can be seen in other parts of the world and the World Health Organization has been increasingly critical of what it calls C-sections-on-demand. According to WHO statistics a fifteen percent C-section rate is within the norm, and approximately 40 percent of all C-sections performed are medically unnecessary. So have C-sections become a fashionable

The Prague Quadrennial, the largest exhibition of performance design and theatre architecture in the world, gets under way in Prague on Wednesday. Hundreds of exhibitions from all over the world, exploring the latest trends in the field of scenography, will take place all around the city over the course of ten days, hosting performers from all around the world.