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A week or so in the Czech Republic

In summer 1998 I spent a week or so in the Czech Republic, and took lots of mediocre holiday snaps. Here they are!


[my Ford Ka] Capitalism and privatization seem not yet to have destroyed the Czech rail system. (Then again, maybe it's only in the anglophone countries that right-wing politicians so hate the railways.) If I'd known how good the rail system was, I wouldn't have rented this car (Ka). Still, it did the job and I can't complain.

[Trabant] A Trabant ("Trabi") spotted in Jihlava. Of course the Trabant is horribly polluting and a Bad Thing, but I couldn't resist an example with leopard-skin seat covers.

[Velorex] [Velorex] Front and rear views of a Jawa-powered Velorex trike, which as you can see is a cross between a motorbike and an umbrella. This is the only one I saw in the Czech Republic this year. (It was in Tábor.)

[Tatra 603] Among the fondest of my (few) memories of a brief trip to Prague in 1966 are of spotting these and other exotic vehicles that I'd never heard of and indeed never suspected existed -- notably the sinister, beetle-like Tatra.

[sausage ad] [sausage ad] [breakfast]

The photo on the left is perhaps the first I took in the Czech Republic, the evening that I arrived at Jihlava. I liked the 1930s design of this ad, which I soon realized was plastered all over the place. Actually it's just a company that produces meat paste, which I consumed for breakfast at Telc. (Care for another ad by this company?)

[beer] [beer]

Jezek, the beer of Jihlava.

[bar in Tabor] [Semtex and Erektus] [Semtex and Erektus]

I suppose "real men" (or some of them) drink beer, whereas those who are worried about their explosiveness or virility drink one or other of these concoctions. Note that they're quite a bit more expensive than beer. (Out of an ethnological curiosity, I tried them. They're boring, but no worse than Japan's "Pocari Sweat".)


Hluboká | Jihlava | Jindrichuv Hradec | Kratochvíle |
Pec | Slavonice | Tábor | Telc | Trebon

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First created: 18 July 1999. Last fiddled with: 27 July 2001.

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