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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!

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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 Telč. (Care for another ad by this company?)

Ježek, the beer of Jihlava.

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".)

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