The Czechs in a Nutshell

So, to get to the point: any Ukrainian living in the Czech Republic who claims that he (almost all of them are men) hails from Ruthenia and that he deeply regrets that the Czechs had to leave, will no longer be regarded as a miserable Gastarbeiter, but as an unlucky Slav brother longing for democracy and prosperity!

Urination

Nobody would be particularly surprised to learn that the Czechs urinate in the same way as people in all other European countries. What’s surprising, though, is the incredible benevolence with which the Czechs tolerate urination in public places.

Take, for instance, this real-life situation: you are travelling by bus to a village in Western Bohemia, when the bus-driver stops suddenly because the car driving in front of you pulls over and blocks the narrow road. The chap behind the wheel jumps out of his Škoda, takes a few steps towards the ditch — and starts urinating blissfully in front of the fifty bus-passengers. Not a single word of condemnation is uttered, be it against the car driver’s tasteless behaviour or the delay he causes.

Basically, public urination is confined to two segments of the Czech population: children and adult men (most feminists would probably say that this is practically the one and the same group).

When it comes to children, the tolerance towards public urination is both understandable and praiseworthy. Contrary to Western countries, where children use diapers almost until they become teenagers, Czech parents regard it as a matter of personal honour to teach their children to use the toilet before they reach the age of two. From time to time, this inevitably implies the use of a bush in a public park or even the gutter as an improvised toilet, but thanks to the educational character of the act, nobody complains.

The tolerance towards men’s public urination, though, is not that simple to understand. Obviously, it’s fair to assume that the extremely high frequency of this phenomenon is somehow connected to Czech men’s equally extremely high consumption of beer. Consequently, the bladder of the average Czech male tends to be under far greater pressure than male bladders elsewhere.

Nevertheless, this pressure should not give them carte blanche to terrorize their surroundings through urination. Even the most run-down hospoda in the country has a lavatory of some kind, and the network of public toilets is often better than those in Western Europe (see: Central Europe). Why, then, do so many Czech men so often feel free to dispose of their bodily fluids in public places?

It’s hard to give a scientific answer. Some pundits would claim that it’s because the Czechs, not influenced or morally guided by any strong and visible nobility, are an utterly plebeian nation with plebeian behaviour. In this connection, there is a well-known story about the time that Jan Masaryk (see: Defenestration), Czechoslovakia’s ambassador to Great Britain in the interwar years, was invited to dinner at an English nobleman’s mansion. “Maybe you would like to wash your hands,” the host suggested before dinner started, discreetly hinting that the ambassador might need to visit the toilet. “Oh no, that’s not necessary,” replied the quick-witted Masaryk. “I just washed them behind the tree in your garden!”

According to a less widespread theory, the public urination-syndrome merely reflects the domination of Czech society by male chauvinists, who don’t care about their surroundings. And then, of course, there are those who see it as a nation-wide problem with alcoholism. In any event, a foreigner in the Czech Republic should better be prepared: a man, who is waving his genitals in public, is not necessarily an exhibitionist, but more likely an ordinary chap on his way home from the local hospoda.

Values

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Europe has become a marvellously messy place. True, the Oder and Neisse Rivers still divide the richer half of the continent from the poorer, but apart from economic power, the east/west antagonism used during the forty years of the Cold War has evidently become outdated. But if Europe has changed politically, have its inhabitants changed mentally?

In an attempt to sort Europe into groups of regions where people share the same beliefs and values, sociologists have conducted annual surveys since the beginning of the 1980s that are presented regularly in European Values Study.