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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.

Czech firefighters win the gold medal at the World Firefighters' Games in Adelaide. Czechs develop a taste for exotic food. And, the Pub of the Year Award goes to....Tramway! Find out more in Magazine with Daniela Lazarova.

Toughening up the Czech Republic's rather toothless anti-smoking legislation is back on the agenda this week, but those hoping for a strict ban along the lines of Italy or Ireland are likely to be disappointed. An amendment to the existing law on smoking in the workplace is due to be discussed in parliament. The proposals are hardly earth-shattering, but even so they're unlikely to succeed.

This week has been a good one for Czech anti-smoking campaigners. On Tuesday the High Court in Brno supported a lawsuit taken by one tenant in an apartment building to ban his neighbours from smoking on the stairwells and corridors. It is a ruling that has for the first time backed the right of non-smokers to prevent people lighting up in their environment. Now, a proposed new law is to come before parliament, which aims to make it harder to smoke in public places.

Everyone knows the basic ingredients of pizza are dough, tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese. But a new study has found that much of the pizza being served in the Czech Republic is made with so-called "fake cheeses", that aren't really cheese at all. Ilya Marritz has more.

A "communist-style" evening at the pub - what's so good about it? A Czech farmer harvests his cabbage field in January. And, the man who advised Oscar winning film director Jiri Menzel in the making of his latest movie "I Served the King of England". Find out more in Magazine with Daniela Lazarova.

The Czech Cultural Center Houston has begun selling a new Czech family cookbook titled "Cooking with the Klimas", and if you were looking for inspiration in the kitchen this dual language book might be what you've been looking for. Written by a retired Czech-American physician with help from her husband and daughter, it was more than twenty years in the making. The result is a 500 page "tome" chock full of home recipes.

If you happen to be a celebrity like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Nicholson, or Paul Newman, then you may have heard of Roman Hadrbolec - in fact, you may have tasted his dishes. Roman is a Czech celebrity chef who was born in Moravia. After an apprenticeship in Austria's four-star hotel Alphof, three months Down Under, and several months on the Pride luxury ship of the prestigious Seabourn Cruise Line, he spent a decade in the homes of people many of us only know from cinema screens.

In the plebeian confines of the bufet, I started to feel not so foreign at all.

In the United States, Thanksgiving - one of the nation's most important holidays - is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. In Prague this year, numerous establishments catered to Americans far from home by serving up traditional Thanksgiving food and hosting full-fledged turkey dinners. Emily Udell checked out a few Thanksgiving celebrations in Prague.