All I Want For Christmas Is… Her

The Christmas Market in downtown Brno is represented by neat wooden shacks that sell traditional works of art or candles. But also purses and T-shirts. What do purses have to do with Christmas and traditional Christmas markets? Well, probably the fact that you can buy them for Christmas.

They also sell unbelievable hash browns (we are talking even 400-gram pieces) and hot wine. And hot wine is a good thing to go try with… well, her.

I probably should not say where I met her in case people I know know somebody who knows somebody who knows her (this paragraph could be 10 lines long ). But it is safe to say that she is under my skin and it makes you realize screw gifts, I have everything (every thing) I need . So asking a girl out three weeks before Christmas is probably a nice gift to give yourself.

Plus, according to the most recent weather reports this Christmas will not be snowy (Phoebe Buffay). Good. You don’t want traffic jams and snow storms if most of your family members do a lot of driving as a part of their daily job.

Alright, alright. All I want for Christmas is (a date with) her. But if it doesn’t work out, I am buying a Vespa.

Do you want to buy a monastery for CZK 160 million?

The Louka Monastery in the town of Znojmo, Czech Republic, is for sale for CZK 160 million (USD 10 million). The person or company to offer the most can have it.

How come a historical landmark that dates back to the 17th century is for sale? The Office of the Government Representation in Property Affairs administers the building de iure, as it used to be owned by the Czech Army. But it has been almost unused and abandoned for almost 20 years (photo author: www.znojmo.biz).

According to the Czech law, the office has to adhere to the rules of the option to purchase that is granted to other state institutions, the local municipality, etc. They did not want it.

Not a surprise, the reconstruction will cost dozens of millions, the local daily reported. So the last option is to sell it in a public tender. It may not look like a tender, but it is.

The local municipality did not want the monastery even though it was offered it for free. The trick is that while the building is indeed for free, the associated conditions that the city would have to fulfill do cost money.

The city of Znojmo and its vicinity is a well-known wine region, so any future owner would want to cooperate with the municipality in order to attract tourist, whatever the final use might be. To this date some wine growers use the cellars.

It is quite common for “former landmarks” to be sold publicly. Usually some chateaus or tiny castles that are not protected by law as official landmarks end up in real estate for-sale-by-owner listings. Some of them have quite interesting history, and so the new owners are just as often eccentric people.

The company that buys the Louka Monastery will have to have money and business plan. Considering the current financial crisis, it is my qualified guess that it will have to “make money”, which means one of the most probable future use is as an expensive medical institution…

Constitutional court okays the Lisbon Treaty

The Czech Constitutional Court ruled today that the Treaty of Lisbon is compatible with our constitution [link = BBC article]. Therefore, it dismissed the motion that was referred to the court by the Senate. Some Senators had thought that because of the treaty Czechs would lose some of their sovereignty.

The Czech Lead

Former Czech News Agency Washington correspondent Jiri Majstr blogs.

Defense ministers’ asses need four-star hotels?

EU defense ministers were supposed to meet in my home town of Olomouc in February. According to local media the meeting was called off. Or, to be more exact, the ministers will meet elsewhere because there is not enough four-star hotel rooms, the Olomoucky denik daily wrote.

Local authorities say “We are not buying this. When Olomouc was picked the organizers (EU) had already been familiar with the accomodation possibilities”. And they speculate that some other city made a secret deal of some sort.

What surprises me more is the fact that four-star hotels are a prerequisite for a meeting of bureaucrats who are paid from our own taxes/money. Are you saying that there is no bed and running hot water in three-star hotels? I have seen all three-star hotels in Olomouc and they are just fine.

Czech Constitutional Court to rule on the Treaty of Lisbon

Huge political news in the Czech Republic today.

The Constitutional Court is expected to rule on whether the Treaty of Lisbon is in line with the Czech Constitution. The matter was referred to the court by the Czech Senate.

The whole issue of the Treaty of Lisbon is very controversial here, especially since President Vaclav Klaus who is “euroskeptic” called for the abandoning of the treaty altogether.

And since the Constitutional Court building is across the sidewalk (yep, not the whole street) from my apartment, I have dozens of cops, even riot unit, and news vans camped out under my windows…

…to be updated…

UPDATE 1: Aha! I know why the riot cops are here. A certain Czech extreme-right party is present around the building. The law says any protests are forbidden within 100 meters from the ConCourt buildings. The party’s chairwoman says it is not a demonstration. To make her point she brought her two children with her.

UPDATE 2: The session was adjourned after four hours and it is scheduled to continue tomorrow at 10 a.m.

“Do you want to arrest me?” felons ask cops as winter comes

It happens every year, but this year more often and under less usual circumstances. People who do not want to spend winter in the streets, cold and hungry “let themselves be caught” stealing, hoping they would end up in jail for several months, TV NOVA reported tonight (link to be provided once the news story is posted on the station’s web broadcast).

The less usual circumstance include people who come voluntarily to any police station to ask whether there is any arrest warrant on them (in other words, they ask the cops “Have you been looking for me?”). The news story even quoted a drug addict who came to a police station to admit he had been using drugs and therefore breaking the law. He appeared before a judge within hours, admitting he wants to go to jail and he was indeed sentenced.

As a human being, I have sympathy for this man. As a taxpayer during economic/financial crisis, I am a little mad. Every day this and other inmates spend in jail costs thousands…

Ultra-modern skyscraper next to Vietnamese shacks

Trinity Tower

A very interesting skyscraper keeps growing in downtown Brno, next to the current main train station (it does not look all that interesting _now_ but it will be once it is finished ). The municipality favors this new development, especially since there will soon be a brand new subdivision with offices, stores, apartments, and a new train station.

Which is exactly why I do not understand the Brno City municipality does not intervene in the problem of the most ugliest thing in downtown Brno. Shacks of Vietnamese “market salesmen” that line the underpass underneath the tracks of the railway station that sell ultra-cheap clothing, shoes and Chinese-made toys. It should be noted that the Vietnamese minority living in the Czech Republic is not generally poor, or lower-class. Many of them make a LOT of money on the type of clothing they sell. Many of them sell counterfeit Adidas, Puma, Reebok, Tissot, Festina, etc. They even occupy the most prominent street in Brno, because they can afford the rent. Paradox, eh?

I have been to many railway stations all over Europe and all of them featured stores and businesses that primarily serve travellers. Or at least they are operated by normal-merchandise-selling people: delis, souvenirs, possibly digital photo processing minilabs, etc. Why the hell would anyone buy bras and panties at a railway station?

...this place is sometimes called Little Hanoi

Just to explain this, this has nothing to do with race or cultural aspects. This is about selling crap at inappropriate places. If these were Hanoi-esque restaurants, I would not say a word.

Sure, the City of Brno does not own the premises. But if it can regulate gambling machines in certain streets inside of houses it does not own either, something should be done about this. Tourists who arrive by EuroCity trains usually judge a city by the first impression they have. In terms of the above, Brno sucks…

Czechs no longer need U.S. visa

As of November 17 Czechs no longer need U.S. visa. The Czech Republic entered the Visa Waiver Program within which all one has to do is fill out an ESTA application.

However, some restrictions still DO apply but they are related to rather administrative procedures that potential travellers have to take care of themselves anyway. They need to have a special “chipped” (biometric) passport, and if they need a student visa they still need to visit the U.S. embassy as the VWP only applies to tourists/short time travellers.

Coincidentally this change comes in a time when the U.S. DHS no longer needs to be afraid of Czechs coming to the U.S. to seek illegal employment. With the financial crisis and all, I think the country no longer has this problem… Instead (just like ANY country, including the Czech Republic) it can be happy to have any number of tourists who decide not to save money and travel anyway.

But for some reason the prices of airline tickets did not plummet, even though the oil prices did. One-way PRG-JFK airline ticket still costs around CZK 18,000 (around $1,000)…

Reference:
transcript from a press conference at USDHS, attended by Secretary Chertoff and the Czech PM and Interior Minister

Velvet Revolution anniversary

Remember the year 1989? The year of peaceful revolutions in East Germany, Bulgaria and… Czechoslovakia?

Nineteen years ago Czechs and Slovaks got rid of the Communist regime. It was Friday, November 17, when riot police forces suppressed a student demonstration. This lead to a significant series of events that included the resignation of then-president Gustav Husak, or student leaders meeting the PM, or the election of Vaclav Havel as the first democratic president since 1946.

Just like most Americans remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, most Czechs remember where they were on November 17 just as the police were using their batons against students who had been singing and chanting “We got bare hands”.

The Iron Curtain was removed from the border with Germany and Austria in early December 1989. This was also the end of communist oppression instruments, like the secret police, restrictions on travel, or one of the most terrifying ones: the Communist Party’s power over people’s jobs and fates (enemies of the state were being fired from jobs and often made to have demeaning jobs, compared to their previous ones).

And still, 19 years after the end of Communism as a rule, over 15 percent (in average) of people would still vote for “the new communists“!!! (both in Parliamentary and regional government elections)… These people think their lives used to be better before 1989, simply because the communist regime used to take care of everything and they did not have to take responsibility. And just because “everybody had equally little”. And just because “the institutions of the communist oppression did not do anything to their families”.

I think I am not going to comment on these people because I would have to be extremely rude. But I think it is legitimate to say that this country will not change until the voters of the communist party who remember the prior-1989 life will have died out…