The Czechs in a Nutshell

In any case, every October, when the dancing school season begins, the streets are filled with 15-16-year-old acne-pimpled boys and girls rushing to their lessons. Contrary to the Germans and Austrians, who have also kept this tradition, but in a laid-back and modernized version, the Czechs are painstakingly mindful of the formalities: the boys are obligatorily dressed in dark suits (usually too big and borrowed from dad) and bowtie or smoking, and their sweaty hands are covered with white gloves when dancing.

Indeed, the formalities are enforced with such vigour that dancing schools are probably the only place in the entire Czech Republic where a man can’t be seen wearing sandals and socks. The girls are expected to wear frocks, but due to the peculiarities of the Czech dress code, also mini-skirts are tolerated. More rarely these days, mom accompanies her daughter as a chaperone.

One of the reasons why hordes of youngsters are still signing up (or rather, their parents are signing them up) for the dancing schools is utterly practical. From November to March, every thinkable Czech organization, from the government to the Union of Fire Fighters down to the village’s Stamp Collectors Club, organizes a ball.

This is an event of huge social importance, where any image-conscious person should turn up, and it is widely recognized as a perfect place for a man to make advances towards a woman. Just keep one thing in mind: while you are allowed to be as drunk as you please (see: Alcoholics), and can probably also have sex in the cloakroom with your colleague’s wife without causing any locomotion, you will completely discredit yourself if you don’t master at least the basics of ballroom dancing!

Danes

Denmark is one of those few European nations that have never in history done a single bad thing to the Czechs (see: Austrians; Germans; Hungarians; Poles; Russians). Yet this small and peaceful nation has got the dubious honour of starring in a well-known Czech saying: pít jako Dán (to drink like a Dane), which actually means to drink yourself dead-drunk, or respectively, that you have a serious drinking problem (see: Alcoholics).

This is by all means unjust to the Danes. True, Shakespeare already concluded long ago that there was something rotten in their country. And it’s also true that the Danes have a more relaxed attitude towards alcoholic beverages than other Nordic countries. Yet to most of the world their civilized drinking culture may serve as a model, and not to be made an example of. So why have the Czechs stigmatised them in this cruel way?

One explanation might be that the Czechs invented “drink like a Dane” just to avoid “drink like a Czech”, which would have taken its toll on their national identity. Of course, they could, with great justification, have tried “drink like a Russian”, but in that case they would have risked provoking a much bigger and often touchy country. Small and distant Denmark, on the contrary, represented the ideal scapegoat.

However intriguing these theories might sound, the actual explanation is to be found in the Czech language, or, to be more precise, in its impressive creativity.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Czechs started to import a blotting paper from Denmark. The sales were formidable, because the Danish blotting paper was more effective than any other in use at that time (see: Bureaucracy). In Czech, this product is called sací papír (literally “sucking paper”). Now, take a look at the verb sát/nasávat (to suck), which in slang means to drink heavily. Thus, the link is clear: a person who boozes as thoroughly as the Danish paper blotted ink, was simply called a Dane.

So, while the Danes’ blotting paper has long been obsolete, their unjustified reputation as heavy drinkers is still alive and kicking. Poor Danes...

Defenestration

A dictionary will tell you that the word defenestration is of Latin origin, and that de fenestra can be translated as out of a window. Thus, defenestration describes an action, where something — or rather, somebody — is thrown out of a window.

This might occur to you as a totally irrelevant piece of information — as long as you’re not in the Czech Republic. In this country’s history, defenestration plays a very significant part. It’s still a bit unclear how many of them deserve the label “historic” (were they two or three?). What’s undisputed, though, is that all of them took place in Prague, and all of them had a tremendous impact on political developments in Bohemia and Moravia.