Letter from Prague | All stories

With the temperatures soaring to 30 degrees in the Czech capital these days, ice hockey is probably the furthest thing from many peoples' minds, mopping their foreheads at work, ticking off the days before their holidays start. All of the year's big tournaments have wrapped up and the Czechs didn't do too well in any: at the Ice Hockey World Championship in May they struggled through three losses before finally giving up the ghost. Likewise, this year was the first in a while that saw no Czechs win North America's Stanley Cup. True, at least there

Olsanske Cemetery in Prague is in fact a large complex of several cemeteries: including a Jewish and Orthodox cemeteries and graveyards of soldiers killed in both WWI and WWII. The whole area is some fifty hectares large and according to estimates some two million people have been buried there. First founded in the 17the century, not only are the cemeteries packed with history but they appear to be a whole ecosystem within the city. Framed by busy thoroughfares from all sides, the two rectangles are real oases of wildlife under a canopy of

There was an interesting piece in Mlada fronta the other day about the number of people who could be housed in shelters here in Prague in the event, heaven forbid, of some terrorist attack or other disaster. The city's shelters have room for an impressive (or at least to my mind impressive) 500,000 of a population of almost 1.2 million.

"If it were a soap opera we would have switched it off long ago" - that is how one Czech journalist characterized the most stupefying story in Czech criminal history. When the story broke a fortnight ago it seemed to be a horrifying case of child abuse.

Prague and Vienna are on relatively good terms but there is one issue that has been causing friction for almost a decade and I'm afraid it's an issue that will be very hard to solve. Nuclear free Austria fears that the Temelin nuclear power plant in south Bohemia - which is some 50 km away from the border with Austria - is dangerous and puts its citizens at risk. The Czechs, on the other hand, say their plant is safe and follows all safety precautions by the book.

Four years after he stepped down as president, Vaclav Havel is probably still the best known living Czech statesman or politician in world terms. I sometimes think, though, that today the best known Czech of all - one admired everywhere from Africa to the Far East - has nothing to do with politics, and indeed was only seven years old at the time of the Velvet Revolution. What's more, people around the globe surely have no problem remembering the little country he comes from - after all, his surname is Cech.

Tourist guides state that Mozart's spirit lives today in Prague, like Dvorak's in the Bohemian countryside. That other son of the country - Kafka... his spirit's alive and well too.

To someone who has lived in this country for some time, it comes as no surprise. I'm talking about the results of a recent survey carried out by the Faculty of Social Sciences of Prague Charles University and a polling agency. The findings are the following: Czechs prefer to bypass official procedures and try to solve both their work-related and private affairs through friends in the right places.

Last Sunday I had my first beer of the summer. Which isn't bad going for the middle of April. By first beer of the summer I mean my premiere pivo outdoors in one of Prague's great beer gardens, the existence of which is one of the many attractive features of life here.

Working in a radio station makes you so dependent on news-sources and technology that it comes as a bit of a shock to hear that many people are leading full and happy lives without the Internet. A poll just out indicates that one in two Czechs - or 53 percent of the population to be exact- have no experience with it what-so-ever. One in seven say they want it to stay that way.