Czechia

1.1 Jan Hus

Religious reformer, fifteenth century. The Hussites are history heroes of mine, in that special way that long-dead people can be, where everything they did right was awesome and everything they did wrong was excusabel, them being of their time. Jan Hus got the project of redoing Christianity decades before Luther; was rewarded for it by being duplicitously burned at the stake at Constance in 1415. The Hussite Wars that followed managed the impressive feat of inventing a folk-Protestant peasant army that beat back several Holy Roman crusades using armoured war-wagons and early handguns. The Protestant Reformation, and some kind of peasant uprising, ahead of its time, was a Czech thing. If they had waited for the printing press as well as handguns, history might have been different.

Also, Hus is often credited with inventing modern Czech orthography.

1.2 Karel IV

The Holy Roman Emperor we Anglophones call Charles IV. Made Prague the imperial capital in the fourteenth century, commissioned various things that make towns serious: the bridge, the cathedral, founded the university (1348) that still bears his name. For who came before and after, see the HRE timeline below.

1.3 Charles University / Univerzita Karlova

Founded by Karel IV in 1348 as the first university in central Europe, and possessed of a bonkers institutional biography ever since. I confess I did actually look this biography up when I was applying to work there, but that was in 2025, so I’ll put it on this page as received knowledge.

Originally the four student “nations” (Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon, Polish) each had one vote in university affairs. In 1409 Wenceslaus IV decreed that the Bohemian nation should have three votes and the rest one between them; the German masters and students promptly walked out and founded the University of Leipzig, which is also still going. Jan Hus had been rector shortly before he was burned in 1415, after which the Hussites took over and the theology faculty was effectively closed for the next two centuries.

After the Habsburgs won the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, the Jesuits were handed the keys; in 1654 they merged the Carolinum with the Jesuit Clementinum to form the Charles-Ferdinand University, and the place was Catholicised by force.

In 1882 the institution was split into a Czech-language university and a German-language university, both called Charles-Ferdinand, sharing some libraries but not apparently much else. In 1939 the Nazis closed the Czech university and sent over a thousand of its students to concentration camps; in 1945 the German half was abolished in turn. The Communists purged the survivors in 1948. The students of Charles University were on the front line of 1989.

Language/religion of instruction across seven hundred years runs, more or less: Latin, Latin (Hussite), Latin (Jesuit), German, Czech-and-German-in-parallel, Reich-German, Czech. The medieval-university brand has not been done many favours, but it has survived.

1.4 Various Wenceslases

Mostly as an English speaker I know Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia (907–935): the “Good King” of the Christmas carol, who was strictly a duke not a king (I confess I did need to look that up) and who was knifed by his brother. Thereafter there was a confusing line-up of Kings Wenceslas (I to IV). The fourth one was Charles IV’s son and the would-be Holy Roman Emperor of the family; he turns up in the HRE timeline below. The largest square in Prague is named for the first-mentioned, who became the patron saint of Bohemia.

1.5 Defenestration

Throwing political opponents out of windows — the Czech contribution to constitutional procedure. The First Defenestration of Prague (1419) launched the Hussite Wars; the Second Defenestration (1618) launched the Thirty Years’ War. A non-canonical mini-defenestration occurred in between. The foreign minister Jan Masaryk fell out of a window in 1948 in a manner that was officially suicide and unofficially a third-to-fourth defenestration. I for one think it speaks to a strong progressive streak, that there was such a ready supply of tall buildings to throw people from at a time when the typical peasant didn’t have a floor. Either that or an architectural flex?

1.6 Sudetenland

The German-speaking border regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia. Most Anglophones (me included) know the word from WWII history class as the bit Hitler announced in 1938 he would invade in order to “protect” the Germans living there, which Britain and France then let him have at Munich, after which he promptly invaded the rest of the country anyway. What WWII history class did not tell me is what happened next: in 1945–1946 Czechoslovakia expelled around three million ethnic Germans from these same regions under the Beneš decrees, in one of the larger forced population transfers in European history.

The Sudetenland was depopulated, partially resettled by Czechs and Slovaks, and the German-Bohemian and German-Moravian cultures, in place since the medieval Ostsiedlung, just… ended? One of those weirdnesses, like South Tyrol, that I didn’t have in my mental historical population-displacement map.

UPDATE: The post war Polish displacement into Recovered Territories was even bigger. Not that this is a competition, now folks, don’t start trying to climb this leaderboard.

1.7 Milan Kundera

Novelist. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the famous one that I am vaguely annoyed how much I like. Kundera defected to France in the 1970s, was stripped of citizenship by the Communist government, declined to come back after 1989, eventually wrote in French, fell out with the Czech literary scene, and got accused of having informed on a fellow citizen as a young man in 1950.

1.8 Václav Havel

Playwright, dissident, jailed, then president — first of Czechoslovakia, then of the new Czech Republic after the country split with Slovakia in 1993 (the “Velvet Divorce”, which sounds polite enough). The model intellectual-as-statesman that the post-Soviet Eastern European liberal moment offered up before that moment ended.

1.9 Viktor Koženy

The Pirate of Prague. Made off with several hundred million dollars of Czech voucher-privatisation money in the 1990s, had disastrous adventures in Colorado and Azerbaijan, fled to the Bahamas, and has since been wanted in several jurisdictions for variations of fraud. The yang end of the post-1989 spectrum from Havel’s yin.

1.10 Václav Smil

Polymath of energy, materials, agriculture. Czech-born, emigrated to Canada (Manitoba) and writes from there. Bill Gates says he reads everything Smil writes; given Smil’s output, it is credible that the valuation of his time runs to a hundred million dollars at Bill’s hourly rate. I have complicated feelings about Smil, whose books were a major part of my undergraduate studies but I did not at the time feel really nailed the human dimension of energy transition. Enough time has passed that I cannot recall specific complaints though.

1.11 Franz Kafka

A German-speaking Jewish insurance clerk in Prague who happened also to be the writer who tells us how it feels to live inside a bureaucratic empire that has lost the thread. Published almost nothing in his lifetime; asked his executor to burn the manuscripts; the executor, Max Brod, did not.

1.12 Jan Švankmajer

Surrealist animator. The 1988 Alice (Něco z Alenky) is the version of Alice in Wonderland that still gives me intrusive thoughts years afterwards: tactile, dreadful, made of dust and meat. There is a tradition of Czech stop-motion that runs deep and dark. I still send people animated GIFs grabbed from this nightmare.

1.13 Karel Zeman

“The Czech Méliès” — live-action and animation hybrid films, particularly the Jules Verne adaptations. They are, like, really good. Annoying they are only on DVD.

1.14 Antonín Dvořák

Composer, nineteenth century. We played New World Symphony (1893) in my family home when I was a child. He wrote other music, but I do not know what, so I looked him up. I learned he spent three years running the National Conservatory of Music in New York, during which he told the Americans they should build a national music on Black spirituals and Native American melodies; this turned out to be unwelcome advice that the country eventually took.

1.15 Karel Čapek and Robots

Playwright and journalist. His play R.U.R. (1920) introduced the word robot to the world, and War with the Newts (1936) is on my to-read list as one of the better satires-with-amphibians ever written.¹

1.16 Pilsner

The pale lager style invented in Plzeň in 1842, when a Bavarian brewer named Josef Groll got the local brewery to combine bottom-fermenting yeast, very pale Moravian malt, and the local soft water. The result was a beer so popular it took over the world: every lager in a green or clear bottle anywhere is a descendant. Pilsner Urquell still exists; opinions on whether it has held up vary. I do not drink though, so I do not care either way.

1.17 Amanita design

Amanita design: The studio behind the Machinarium and Samorost series of point-and-click puzzle adventure games with achingly lovely and/or upsetting hand-made art. Relatedly, employee Floex is a musician I rather enjoy.

1.18 YUKU

YUKU: Cult hipster record label.

1.19 Mendel’s pea garden

Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar at the abbey in Brno, spent the 1850s and 1860s growing tens of thousands of pea plants and counting their offspring’s traits. He published a paper that was ignored for thirty years and then, around 1900, became the foundation of genetics. The mathematics of inheritance was figured out, more or less correctly, in a monastery vegetable patch. Except it was fabricated (Fisher 1936)! Or was it (Ellis et al. 2019)?

1.20 JetBrains

Developer-tools company originally headquartered in Prague since 2000. Makes IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, and the rest of the IDE bestiary; created Kotlin, which Google eventually decided was the right way to write Android apps. I just looked them up and they are now domiciled in the Netherlands; not sure if this still counts.

1.21 Atheism

Depending on how you count it, Czechia is the least religious country in Europe cf OurWorldInData. We can tweak our criteria and find that Estonia is less religious, depending on what kind of irreligiosity race we are running. Definitely up in the godless major leagues, either way.

2.1 Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe: Danish nobleman and astronomer whose observations of the heavens were the basis for Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Emperor Rudolf II made him imperial mathematician in 1601 in Prague and he died here. (HT Jan Kulveit.)

2.2 Oh damn Johannes Kepler too

Johannes Kepler, the guy who inspired Newton to do the gravity thing, spent 12 years of his career in Prague. I did not know that.

2.3 Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel and the Golem

Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel: Rabbi of Prague, often associated with the creation of the Golem, a mythical creature made from clay and early metaphor for loss of control in AI. The good Rabbi was a real person who actually died here. Embarrassing that I did not know about this. (HT Jan Kulveit.)

2.4 Mikuláš of Kadaň, Jan Šindel and Prague’s Astronomical Clock

That famous clock also has a twisted history. (HT Jan Kulveit.)

2.5 Jan Patočka

Jan Patočka was a philosopher, dissident, and Charter 77 signatory who died in police custody in 1977, and whose library I am currently working from. (HT Jan Kulveit.)

2.6 Jena Codex

The Jena Codex, also called the Jenský kodex or Antithesis Christi et Antichristi, is badass Figure 2. It is, I am told by Czech wikipedia an illuminated Hussite manuscript from around 1500, commissioned by the Utraquist (i.e. Hussite-flavoured) Bohuslav of Čechtice. I cannot read it, but apparently it is full of theological and polemical texts that contrast the early Christian Church with the Church of Jan Hus’s time. Here are three online versions of it:

• Manuscriptorium
• eSbirky.cz - Antithesis Christi et Antichristi
• Category:Jenský kodex (whole pages) – Wikimedia Commons

2.7 Jan Žižka

If I think the Hussites are so impressive I should probably have credited Jan Žižka, the general who led the radical, peasant-filled Hussite armies in the wars that followed Jan Hus’s death, while blind.

2.8 Other musicians of note

• Clarinet Factory
• Home - Maok

4.1 Survival kit

Hello

Dobrý den [ˈdobriː ˈdɛn] (roughly “DOB-ree den”; literally “good day”). Informal: Ahoj [ˈaɦoj], like sailors.

Thank you

Děkuji [ˈɟɛkujɪ] (roughly “DYEH-koo-yee”). Casual short form Díky [ˈɟiːkɪ].

Please

Prosím [ˈprosiːm]. The same word does multiple duty for “you’re welcome”, “pardon?” “here you are”, and “after you.”

Excuse me / sorry

Promiňte [ˈpromiɲtɛ] (formal). Pardon [ˈpardon] (yes, the French loan) is widely understood.

Goodbye

Na shledanou [na ˈsxlɛdanou̯] formally; Ahoj [ˈaɦoj] or Čau [ˈt͡ʃau̯] (like Italian ciao) informally.

Do you speak English?

Mluvíte anglicky? [ˈmluviːtɛ ˈaŋɡlit͡ski] (roughly “MLOO-vee-teh AHN-glits-ki”). The verb takes the adverbial form anglicky, in the same shape as mluvím česky, “I speak Czech-ly”. Cool.

Sorry, I am an idiot foreigner who only speaks English

Promiňte, jsem hloupý cizinec a mluvím jenom anglicky [ˈpromiɲtɛ jsɛm ˈɦloupiː ˈt͡sizinɛt͡s a ˈmluviːm ˈjɛnom ˈaŋɡlit͡ski] (roughly “PRO-min-teh, ysem HLOH-pee TSEE-zee-nets ah MLOO-veem YEH-nom AHN-glits-ki”). Hloupá cizinka for the female form, apparently. The terser retreat Promiňte, neumím česky, “Sorry, I don’t know Czech”, may also serve but that is not as funny. NB this is an AI-generated translation; How did we do, Czech speakers?

Yes

Ano [ˈano] (“AH-no”). Casually shortened to jo [jo], which is German ja in Czech orthography. Confusingly to English ears, the Czech word no is also a colloquial agreement particle (“well, yeah”) — never a negation.

No

Ne [nɛ] (“neh”). Repeat for emphasis: Ne, ne, ne.

And of course, I love flashcards. Here are some:

• 🇨🇿 The Ultimate Czech Deck – Languages on Fire (A1 to B1) - AnkiWeb
• Czech Core 100 - Basic words (EN CS with audio) - AnkiWeb The author really wants you to know dates, days of the week etc before you learn how to say “Promiňte” and “Prosím”. I wonder what teh creato’s project was in Czechia? Very heavy on calendars, whatever it was. Anyway they have pronunciation audio, for everything, so I still recommend it even for people who do not want to start their Czech learning journey with “Tuesday the 12th of September”.

4.2 Václav and Wenceslaus

Secretly the same. In modern English we use Václav for contemporary Czechs (Havel, Smil, Klaus) and reserve Wenceslaus (the Latin form) or Wenceslas (the slimmed-down English version) for medieval rulers — Wenceslaus I Duke of Bohemia, Wenceslaus IV who issued the 1409 reorganisation of Charles University, and so on.

AFAICT this distinction is not drawn in Czechia. Václav descends from an old Slavic Vęceslavъ, “greater glory”, which Latin took up as Wenceslaus; English kept the Latin form for kings even after dropping it for everyone else.

4.3 Prague and Praha

The city is Praha in Czech. English took the form Prague via Latin Praga and French. The same pattern by which Anglophones say Vienna, Munich, Warsaw, Cologne, Geneva instead of Wien, München, Warszawa, Köln, Genève — European cities each given a slightly shopworn English nickname.

4.4 “Bohemians”

Czechia used to more-or-less be called Bohemia by non-Czechs. It seems that the word was always an exonym. IIRC the reason that bohemian now means “artistic nonconformists” in English is not because the Czechs were especially artistic or nonconformist, but that the word was borrowed from French in the nineteenth century, and the French called Romani bohémiens as a kind of geographic origin story for Romani and romanticised their lifestyle as carefree and creative-looking. There are not especially many Romani people in Czechia now, but maybe this made more sense before the war and communist repression etc.

4.5 “Czechs”

English has some fossilised spelling from before the 19th century. Czech = Čech (masc) or Češka (fem) in Czech. The language is čeština, the adjective is český, and the country is Česko. But I am going to stick to Czechia, since it is the official English name.

6.1 Bikes

So far, Prague’s bike infrastructure is meh. I would describe it as being at the level of “90s in Australia but with more cobblestones”. Also the riding directions are aggressively bad on Apple Maps, like “Please ignore the bitumen road and take this much longer detour via some cobbled pedestrian walking street which is both more crowded and more difficult to ride on” Figure 3.

To be fair, Apple Maps generally sucks here. Google Maps is the main game.

6.2 Workout stations

• Fitness Park RVL13 – Riegrovy Sady. Inside the popular Riegrovy Sady park in Vinohrady (Prague 2). Full calisthenics setup with gym foam flooring, good shade, and a public toilet 12 metres away. I’ve been using this one.
• Workout Hřiště u FK Viktoria Žižkov — Prague 3, right next to a tram stop making it very easy to reach. Covers all muscle groups, good surface for ground-level exercises too.
• Venkovní Posilovna Vinohrady — Prague 10, solid pull-up and dip bar setup.
• Workout Place – V Olšinách — Quieter spot in Prague 10 in a park setting.
• Street Workout Hřiště Prosek — Prague 9, pull-up bars, parallel bars, abs benches.

6.3 Saunas

TBD. I had better return and find out.