This is a fun article in which, hopefully, many of you will recognize their Czech genes, because you know you’re Czech if…
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You know weekends are for chalupa and long walks in nature
Your family probably has an old house in the countryside where your great-grandmother used to prepare povidla in a large stone pot and you remember spending summers there sleeping under a huge feather-filled blanket that weighted at least a ton. You would also go there for the weekends, your mother would start the fire in the old stove on Friday and the house would eventually get warm on Sunday, just before you left.
You also spent at least some of your weekends on loooooong walks in the nature.
You know your boletus from your field mushroom
You know that in order to get to the best spot and pick mushrooms before all your competition, you have to wake up at 4 AM because there’s no better time to roam the wet cold autumn woods than before dawn! And you’ve probably learnt to distinguish at least 10 types of mushrooms before the age of 6.
When they call your country part of Eastern Europe, you remind them that Prague is more west than Vienna
Although it doesn’t really matter because there’s a chance you’re talking to one of these people:
You know everything about singing, dancing and ice-hockey
Even though you have no formal training in singing, dancing or ice-hockey, you know all about them. You watch all the singing competitions on TV, Dancing with the Stars and hockey matches and you know exactly where the dancers/singers/players went wrong. You know that the Czech ice-hockey team is the best, no matter that the last significant accomplishment occurred in 1998.
If you’re a millennial, a boomer or older, you probably speak German, Russian or English
Depending on your generation, you very probably speak at least one of these languages if you were raised in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.
And even if you don’t speak any foreign language, you know the word Robot is Czech!
Although maybe you don’t know that it was Josef Čapek who invented the word, because so many people throughout your childhood told you it was Karel Čapek.
You know what TWO things this is for:
One of your childhood memories is “skating” in fabric slippers on freshly waxed castle floor
And the guide yelling at you not to.
Another one is your grandparents listening to brass orchestras at least on Sundays at lunchtime
“Už troubějííííí, už troubějííííí na horách jeeeeleniiiiii!” and you might have developed an allergy to brass orchestras as an adolescent.
You eat carp and potato salad at Christmas
Or you don’t but most of your family does. For at least three days straight.
You take your shoes off after entering your house or anyone else’s
Because not to do so is absolutely disgusting and seeing people in American TV shows get all the way to their bed in shoes they wore outside makes you sick to the stomach.
You know that Budweiser Budvar is correctly pronounced Budějovický Budvar
And Pilsner Urquell is Plzeňský Prazdroj.
You could live for half a year on the food your grandparents canned and stored in their basement
You probably learnt how to pickle cucumbers yourself. And maybe you also have a basement full of canned food.
You know that the right meal to take with you on a trip is schnitzel between two slices of bread
And that at least one of those trips a year is a 16-hour-drive to Croatia + another 10 hours in traffic jams because the rest of the country is going, too.
If there’s a queue, you join it
They might be giving something for free. Never mind that you don’t need it, you take 10.