What Every American Should Know About Europe
Page 44
In April 1990, Vaclav Havel stepped in as president of a free country. The new government flew in Frank Zappa and appointed the singer honorary consultant to the Ministry of Culture.
“All I knew about Czechoslovakia before I got there was what I had seen on Cable News Network: people walking around in dingy, gray streets, and having a revolution. I had no idea how pretty and quiet it is… What they don’t want [Czechoslovakia to become] can be summed up by the comment urgently made by one of the many kids who trailed me throughout my visit: ‘Frankie, Frankie, please don’t bring me Las Vegas.’”3—Frank Zappa in 1990
But Czechoslovakia disappeared yet again. In 1993, she vanished in an amicable split called the Velvet Divorce. Where once stood a united country now stands two: the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both recent entries into NATO and the European Union. The Czech Republic and Slovakia are a study in contrasts: the Czech Republic’s capital is mysterious Prague, whose castled beauty lures 6 million tourists a year; Slovakia’s capital is little Bratislava (where the Castle District is pretty), which has barely blipped on the tourist charts. The Czech Republic has a strong but cold leader, Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, whose jaws are always flapping in criticism of the European Union; Slovakia has a kind but somewhat anemic leader, Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda, whose greatest achievement was convincing the European Union to take his country in.
The Velvet Divorce of 1993 was partly about Czech dominance; neither Czechs nor Slovaks wanted the country to split, but the Czech and Slovak prime ministers had a blowout that decided the country’s fate, and neither bothered to put the important matter to a vote. Even President Vaclav Havel was not consulted in the matter: he was so livid over the split that he quit as president. A few months later, however, he resumed the presidential post; now almost everybody, including Havel, believes the breakup was a good thing.
NOT IN MY BACKYARD
Even though they’re now two separate countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia do rile up the neighborhood (particularly Austria) with their nuclear power plants, which even plenty of Czechs and Slovaks oppose. Whether you’re talking about the Czechs’ Temelin plant (forty miles from Austria), which may be manned by Homer Simpson, since it breaks down every few months, or the Slovaks’ Bohunice plant, an older Soviet design built to 1950s standards and lacking containment domes to trap leaking radioactive gases, the babies just aren’t up to snuff, right down to their lack of safety features. They were only half-built when Soviet funding dried up, but American and Western European companies finished the jobs, admitting that they weren’t up to Western standards. Austrians are so ticked that the plants were turned on that they occasionally block highways between the two countries, and the plants produce more electricity than their countries need. Which is why Western European countries helped finish the plants: Central Europe’s nukes can unobtrusively—and profitably—deliver electricity to Western European countries where consumers often oppose nuclear plants.
24. CZECH REPUBLIC
(Česká Republika)
Jaded Loveliness
FAST FACTS
Country: Czech Republic; Česká Republika
Capital: Prague
Government: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: January 1, 1993 (separated from Czechoslovakia)
Population: 10,235,000 (2006 estimate)
Head of State: President Vaclav Klaus (2003)
Head of Government: Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek (2005)
Elections: President elected by parliament, five-year term; prime minister appointed by president, five-year term
Name of Parliament: Parliament or Senat
Ethnicity: 91% Czech; 4% Moravian; 2% Slovak; 4% other (2001 census)
Religion: 59% unaffiliated; 27% Roman Catholic; 9% unspecified; 3% Orthodox; 2% Protestant; 3% others (2001 census)
Language: Czech; also Slovak, German, Polish, Hungarian spoken by minorities
Literacy: 99% (2003 estimate)
Famous Exports: Dvořák, Milos Forman, Semtex
Economic Big Boy: Cez (utilities); 2004 total sales: $3.3 billion1
Per Capita GDP: $18,100 (2005)
Unemployment: 7.8% (January 2006 Eurostat figure)
EU Status: Entered May 2004
Currency: Czech koruna
Quick Tour
Hard to imagine a prettier place than this castled land, which has more royal structures per acre than anywhere else in the world; flowering orchards and lush vineyards carpet soft hills, and the heavily spired architecture is straight out of a fairy tale. From her fetching high-towered castles, where officials of yore oft tumbled out of windows, to Prague’s elaborate astronomical clock, the Česká Republika that stitches together Moravia and Bohemia is stunning, surreal, and tinged with the macabre.
Prague’s Charles Bridge: Fairy-tale pretty
One of Prague’s most beloved sights is the beautiful Apostle Clock on the main square. Every hour, elaborately sculpted saints and skeletons come out for a mechanical spin. Legend has it that when the work was created in the fifteenth century, Prague’s Town Council so adored their unique time-telling marvel that they blinded the clockmaker to prevent him from ever making such a masterpiece for anyone else.
But Česká Republika has a dark, brooding side, and has long been a magnet for the strange and the sinister. In Prague, a sixteenth-century center for alchemy, astrology, and magic, there’s still an undercurrent of secrecy, and a hint of malevolence that seeps out of the Vltava River—some say it holds evil water sprites—as aptly captured in the eerie works of Kafka.
FRANZ KAFKA (1883–1924)
Born when Bohemia was still part of the Austrian Empire, coal-eyed, heavily unibrowed Franz Kafka studied law, sold insurance, lived with his parents, and regarded Prague as his curse. The combo created some of the strangest fiction ever to see the ink of the printing presses—which they thankfully did since Max Brod, the friend to whom Kafka bequeathed his writing, refused to destroy it as directed. Although he lived long before Czechoslovakia became a Soviet satellite, Kafka painfully captured the terrible anonymity of being a powerless cog in the machine. That sentiment of worthlessness is best expressed in The Metamorphosis, in which a worker wakes up as a giant insect—a state that also captured Kafka’s chronic feeling of being a wimp in his overbearing father’s eyes. The insurance seller who spent his nights writing (and sometimes cavorting with prostitutes) had few works published during his lifetime and never married, despite being engaged numerous times to several women. This problem, too, he blamed on his father, to whom Kafka, upon learning he was dying of tuberculosis, wrote a forty-five-page tell-off letter that Dad never read. His disturbing fiction best captures the mysterious, malevolent part of Prague, but it is not without humor. In The Trial, for instance, the judges who are perpetually reading thick books, presumably about legal matters, are at last revealed to be delving deep into porn. The writer, who is so tied to Prague that he is nearly a cliché, finally received public recognition in 2004, when a statue of his likeness was erected in the square outside the Jewish Quarter apartment where he first scratched pen across paper and brought his nightmares alive. His twisted writing endures, and he’s said to influence numerous creators from composer Philip Glass to novelist Gabriel García Márquez. Can’t say the same for his dad.
The once-common fear of Communism returning may have been conquered (joining NATO helped), but corruption runs rampant and the place lives in shadows: Russian and Ukrainian mobs have moved in, along with the Chinese, Yugoslavs, and Chechens; kidnapping is one means to recruit sex slaves for international rings, and one never knows what long-buried secret will next be unearthed in the woods.
One Soviet-era secret presented itself in the 2002 floods: the north’s Spolana Neratovice chemical plant’s hidden hoard of toxic chemicals came floating out and streamed into the Elbe river—source of drinking water downstream in Germany. The factory’s ill-stored by-products, long kept hidden from the public, may be t
he reason for the mysteriously high number of miscarriages in the area.
Some once-idealistic Czechs are disillusioned with the democracy that finally has materialized; cynicism has crept in since the innocent days when peace and truth could win over war and lies. Wages are now higher, but so is the price of everything from beer to rent; many Czechs can no longer afford living in housing-short Prague. The once dimly lit city flashes with neon, the arteries that were nearly void of cars are now clogged with traffic, and the stores that lacked variety are today crammed with slow-moving tourists. Nothing in this land has ever turned out as it was imagined, and even former president Vaclav Havel, like the neon heart he lit in the presidential headquarters, Prague Castle, was little more than a highly visible icon with limited power.
“Once I counted the changes of political regimes in my mother’s life and there have been eight during her seventy-eight years. Britons have never experienced as many changes during their whole history, so no wonder we are a nation that doesn’t show too much enthusiasm. We are skeptical optimists.”—Former prime minister Vladimir Spidla in 20042
The Czechs’ morose musings and the country’s shady side are offset by her beauty which calls to the masses: so many stop by to see the fabled land that tourism now adds 6 percent of GDP to the national piggy bank and employs over 100,000. In fact, after Communism fell, Western travelers descended here first, wowed by the statue-lined Charles Bridge and the charming architecture that seemed to have dropped out of a seventeenth-century picture book. Prague became internationally chic as the world discovered her enchanting beauty—and silver-spooned American twenty-somethings swaggered in, buying up entire buildings; the printing presses that once cranked out underground writing began churning out hip weeklies for expats. Even if the sound of English is frighteningly common, Prague’s allure endures.
Hot Spots
Prague: Gorgeous and vaguely creepy capital Prague is the most visited city in Central Europe. Best known for Kafka, revolts, beer, and the Charles Bridge—which survived six centuries of wars, but nearly washed away in the 2002 floods—the place is also getting a reputation for her prostitutes. Some 15,000 nocturnal ladies work here.3
Prague Castle: Built on a pagan sacrificial ground, spired Hradcany Castle looks more like a Gothic church and serves as the presidential palace.
Moravia: Thick with lavender hills and littered with hundreds of castles, the agricultural land in the south was once a powerful dynasty and still holds the Czech Republic’s second biggest city, Brno. Pretty Moravia used to get ignored by the tourists, but now some are unlocking the secrets of this mist-wrapped region, which serves as the national vineyard. The treasure of Moravia, however, is slivovice, a potent plum brandy that everyone from peasant to duke made even during times when it was banned: at points, the valuable concoction even served as currency.
The skies: The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999, but Czechs themselves say the current military equipment is not an asset. Czech-made helicopters frequently crash and a Czech-made trainer plane recently fell apart in midair. The Czech government plans to spend a few billion to buy Swedish fighter planes; other aggressive bidders for that juicy deal, such as Lockheed Martin, withdrew their offers over the government’s alleged financial misdealings.
Under EU requirements, bars now must have hot water and paper towels in the loo; many owners, says Radio Prague, are resisting the upgrade.
Bars: Tourists are typically the only ones who dare knock back the absinthe (complete with wormwood) that can be ordered in the bars here—the high-octane, mildly hallucinogenic “green fairy” is outlawed in most of Europe. It’s said that Czechs drink more beer than anyone else in the world, and the country is home to the world’s oldest working microbrewery, the world’s first Pilsner, and the world’s first “Budweiser” (the local manufacturer has been fighting with Anheuser-Busch over the name for more than a century, sometimes winning its cases).
Hotshots
Vaclav Havel: President of Czechoslovakia, 1990–1992; President of the Czech Republic, 1993–2003. Dissident writer whose incredulousness with the Soviet situation helped to finally free Czechoslovakia from Moscow’s hold, he led the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Havel—like Lech Walesa—was frustrated by his lack of real power; unlike the Pole, Havel lasted thirteen years. He wielded great clout with the masses, and was the unofficial diplomat of Central Europe to the West, but did make a few political U-turns. He said he wouldn’t support NATO, but changed his mind and became a major NATO booster; mouths really dropped open when Havel backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for which President George W. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom as a supporter of U.S. policy. His wife, Olga, was as popular with Czechs as he was; within a year of her 1996 death from cancer, he married flirtatious actress Dagmar Veskrnova, who’s twenty years his junior (she’s in her late forties), causing a scandal and a drop in popularity. Many still love him anyway. Sick with cancer, the playwright who was a brewery caretaker during the Communist days (his punishment for lashing out at the system) lost half a lung in 1996 and has nearly died several times since. Havel is now working on his memoirs and lives part of the year in Portugal.
Besides plays, Havel wrote essays, manifestos, and provocative letters. His 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless,” analyzing the Soviet brainwashing techniques employed to create a passive society, was one of his most influential works. Also notable were his critical letters to Communist leaders, factors that led to his three prison terms during their regime.
Vaclav Klaus: Prime Minister, 1993–1997; President, 2003–present. The EU’s loudest and most articulate critic, the icy-eyed economist Klaus is driven and known to run over whoever or whatever is in his way. As finance minister, “the Professor” pushed Czechoslovakia onto the free-market fast track—leading the Czech Miracle. As prime minister, his fight with Slovak leader Vladimir Meciar led to the Velvet Divorce with Slovakia. He stepped down as prime minister in 1997, after being accused of misusing political funding for his Civic Democratic Party; when he did not secure the required votes for the prime ministerial position in 2002, he suffered a nervous breakdown. When Havel stepped down as president in 2003, it took three voting rounds in parliament for Klaus to nab the presidential seat. Some like him, and some really, really don’t, and many are just plain shocked that Klaus still looms large on the political scene. His cocky, brusque style is legendary, prompting the joke, “What’s the difference between God and Klaus? God doesn’t think he’s Klaus.”4
President Vaclav Klaus: The antithesis of Vaclav Havel
Noteworthy: The divine works of Czech classical composer Antonín Dvořák might never have fallen on modern ears had he continued in his original line of work as a butcher.
News you can understand: Broadcasting for sixty-six years, Radio Prague has a story of its own, including being censored by the Soviets and airing broadcasts from hidden locations. Now it’s the best one-stop source for history, culture, and news, and can be accessed in six languages on their remarkable Web site: www.radioprague.cz. Also notable: the weekly Prague Post.
25. SLOVAK REPUBLIC
(Slovakia, Slovensko)
The Forgotten Slav
FAST FACTS
Country: Slovak Republic/Slovakia; Slovenská Republika/Slovensko
Capital: Bratislava
Government: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: January 1, 1993 (created as separate state from Czechoslovakia)
Population: 5,439,000 (2006 estimate)
Head of State: President Ivan Gasparovik (2004)
Head of Government: Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda (1998)
Elections: President elected by direct, popular vote, five-year term; prime minister appointed by president, five-year term
Name of Parliament: National Council; Narodna Rada
Ethnicity: 86% Slovak; 10% Hungarian; 2% Roma; 1% Ruthenian/Ukrainian; 2% other
Religion: 69% Roman Catholic; 13% none; 11% Protestant; 4% Ortho
dox; 3% others
Language: 84% Slovak (official); 11% Hungarian; 2% Roma; 1% Ukrainian; 3% others
Literacy: 99% (2001 estimate)
Famous Exports: absinthe, Andy Warhol’s mother, the man who brought Prague her finest spring
Economic Big Boy: Volkswagen Slovakia; 2003 total revenue: €4.43 billion (about $5.5 billion)1
Per Capita GDP: $15,800 (2005)
Unemployment: 15.8%; under-25 rate: 30% (January 2006 Eurostat estimate)
EU status: Entered May 2004
Currency: Slovakian korun
Quick Tour
“The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned firsthand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas.”—George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, to a Slovak journalist who asked what he thought of Slovakia. Bush had actually met the foreign minister of Slovenia, not Slovakia.2
Cradled against the Tatra Mountains, where tranquil lakes are surrounded by pines, castle-happy Slovensko is crawling with 3,800 caves and twisting subterranean tunnels (and spelunkers crawling through them), bubbling with thermal waters, and dotted with pretty villages, some connected by a wine trail that passes through vineyards making lovely Chardonnay and Cabernet. But despite the opera, theater, and brainy young people in her capital city, despite the untouched medieval and renaissance architecture across the land, despite the skiing, health spas, and valleys that still are sites of harvest festivals, sweet little Slovakia is mostly undiscovered—and more often defined by what she was, than what she is. In fact, many Europeans still don’t know that Slovakia is now an independent country—and not just the Czechs’ “other half.”