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When it comes to moving between floors in Prague's taller buildings, there are more options than just elevators, escalators, and the stairs. The paternoster, an unusual early variant on the elevator, is still in wide use throughout the Czech Republic.

The dramatic events of the Velvet Revolution began on the 17th November 1989. A student demonstration was put down brutally by the police, resulting in a huge public outcry. Protests and further demonstrations gained such rapid momentum that within days the regime was doomed, and by the end of the year Vaclav Havel was president. Any Czech over the age of thirty-five will have vivid memories of the time, but in the meantime a generation has grown up for whom these events are no more than history. So how, seventeen years after the fall of communism,

The 28th October is an unlikely date for Czechs to be celebrating their national holiday. After all, it commemorates the founding of a state that no longer exists. Czechoslovakia was established in 1918 with the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, and was relegated to the history books 74 years later, when Czechs and Slovaks - or rather their political leaders - decided to go their separate ways at the end of 1992. While Slovaks quickly forgot their old national day, Czechs went on as if nothing had happened. To this day

Jan Gregor is a reporter for Echo, a magazine for Czechs and Slovaks living in the UK and Ireland. Jan, who comes from the Slovak city of Banska Bystrice, is himself one of the many thousands of young people from this part of the world who have moved to the British Isles since European Union enlargement in 2004.

Hedy Fromings was born Hedvika Honigenova in 1926. In the late 1940s she left Czechoslovakia, moving to the UK - where she had spent the war years - with her English husband. To maintain ties with her home country she became an active member of the British Czech Friendship League and a spin-off organisation, the Beskydy Dancers music and dance group; she eventually became the leader of the latter almost three decades ago.

Hedy Fromings is a retired architect in her late 70s, though she is still very much active as the head of the Beskydy Dancers, a Czech dance and music group in London. When I met her in the British capital a few days ago, Mrs Fromings told me all about her young days as a refugee in the UK during World War II, her family's fortunes, and how she met her English husband.

The 10th annual Forum 2000 conference, which this year focuses on the Dilemmas of Global Co-existence, has brought many leaders from the world of politics, business, and academia to Prague. Among them is former Canadian Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Kim Campbell - the only woman to have ever served as head of state in North America. Kim Campbell was only 46 years old when she became the Prime Minister of Canada in 1993. Today she is the Secretary General of the Club of Madrid, an organization she co-founded.

Bohuslav Jan Prochazka and his companion Jindrich Kubiasa set off from the Prague Auto Club on Opletalova Street 70 years ago, on April 25, 1936. They were driving a Skoda Rapid car - and their aim was to set a new record for travelling 360 degrees around the world. In this special programme, Prochazka's son Bret tells us all about this remarkable journey.

If we delve into the Czech Radio archives, we find recordings in English going right back to Radio Prague's beginnings 70 years ago. Some of the extracts we are going to feature in this programme have not been aired for well over half a century. They capture some of the most interesting and dramatic moments in our history.

August 31st is a very special day for Radio Prague. Exactly 70 years ago, in 1936, Radio Prague made its first ever broadcast in English. But radio is not only about interviews and reports. The main reason we are here, are you, the listeners, in the case of Radio Prague scattered all around the globe.