From the New Europe: Marketing beautiful women to tourists

by Iva Skoch on

God help us! Prague has unveiled its latest desperate attempt to find a new identity and market it to tourists. I hope you are ready. The punchline, in essence, is: Come here because we have beautiful women. (And architecture, but really, who cares. Too many syllables in that word.)

As you can see from this video ad, the Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova and last year’s Miss World, Tatana Kucharova, with a kitschy backdrop of the Prague Castle, are trying to tell you that you should come to Prague because–quite frankly–everyone here looks like this and lives like this.

Before you buy your ticket, let me warn you:

  1. Not all Czech women look like this
  2. In fact, most Czech women do not look like this
  3. Those who do look like this are–don’t take this the wrong way–not waiting around to meet you. Unless of course, you are rich and famous
  4. Did I mention not all Czech women look like this?
  5. Although prices are certainly becoming top-notch, the service in a lot of “luxury places” in Prague still isn’t
  6. Then again: the Champagne they are drinking will always be there. Mercifully, the girls in the ad are not drinking beer and eating roast pork because that would make it just unbearable cheesy in a traditional culture kind of way.

I feel bad for this beautiful city sometimes. Right after the Revolution, Prague city officials were happy to get anyone to come here and spend precious hard currency. Then, they got tired of the “broke backpacker crowd” so they started marketing to the “cultured tourist”: Prague has great live music, amazing architecture…you get the idea.

That didn’t really work, either. Although Prague has great, talented musicians, you are still better off going to see opera in Vienna (granted, not as cheaply). So, they went back to the party crowd, marketing to semi-wealthy Western European folks to come here for the weekend and party it up. That is, in a nutshell, how we ended up with a bunch of stag-party types from the UK throwing up all over Prague’s mediaeval cobblestones.

With the new spot, apparently, we want to attract the “luxury travel people”, who like to engage in expensive Champagne-drinking with a view of Gothic spires while exhibiting their latest supermodel girlfriend.

I wonder what kind of undesirable Eurotrash crowd this will attract. Do I smell Gucci opening a store?

From the New Europe: How do you like the new library design?

by Iva Skoch on

Perhaps never before has the Czech Republic been so divided over a piece of architecture. The winning proposal for a new National Library in Prague, which is supposed to be built in Letna, in the Prague 7 district, not far from the Castle, is a source of major controversy in the country.

The purple-and-yellow building proposal (see photo) has been designed by Jan Kaplicky, an architect of the London architecture firm Future Systems. Yes, it is an extremely bold design, for a city known for its Gothic and Baroque architecture.

People call it all kinds of things…octopus, jellyfish, blob, phlegm are among the nicer ones. I personally like it. But I like cities that mix and match their architecture, like New York.

What about you? How do you like it?

From the New Europe: Self-tapping pub promotes drinking games (and drinking)

by Iva Skoch on

The world is definitely about to get fully automated any day now. Just yesterday, I blogged about a German restaurant that’s based solely on automated service: no waiters, no tipping.

Today, I have a new culinary efficiency concept for you: the self-tapping pub. Leave it up to the Czechs–the world’s biggest beer consumers per capita–to invent a pub, where you don’t even need a waiter to get your beer. What waste of time!

The customers at “The Pub“, as the automated pub is actually called, can tap Pilsner Urquell beer from brewer Plze??ský Prazdroj at their tables, and a computer device on the tap keeps track of the standings of all tables in beer drinking. The scores are then projected onto a screen in the bar, Czech Business Weekly reports. The system enables customers to keep track of the beer drinking scores of all tables not only in the bar they are in, but also in all bars of the same chain across the Czech Republic. So far, they have branches in Prague, Pilsen, Hradec Kralove, Brno, Liberec, Karlovy Vary and Tabor.

The bars have Web cameras so that customers can see their competitors in different bars in the chain. They can also select which bar they would like to be in a beer drinking contest with and can send short messages via small screens on the tap. Needles to say, being able to see how much everyone else is drinking only promotes the competitive spirit among the pub guests. And that, I guess, is the idea.

The concept, started by two 24-year-old Czech men three years ago, has been been a smashing success in the Czech Republic. The chain might apparently soon be expanding to Poland, Russia and Italy.

From the New Europe: The Unbearable Appeal of Being in Prague

by Iva Skoch on

It is still a fairly common cliche in Prague: a backpacker with a beat up copy of Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trying to discover the Prague Kundera once described.

That Prague–desperate amidst the Russian invasion–does not exist anymore. The locals don’t want it to exist. I always sense a little disappointment when tourists find out that Prague is not at all the exotic, gloomy city that Kundera wrote about. It has–like it or not–become free and commerce-driven. No Russian soldiers, no interrogation, just free market capitalism. The literary scene is not great, despite foreign media and guidebooks’ keeping on “selling it” as the city of uber-intellectuals, such as Kundera, Kafka and Havel. Understandably, it is a much more appealing brand than “just another up and coming Eastern European city.”

With that in mind, I found it amusing to read today’s article in the travel section of The New York Times entitled “Milan Kundera’s Prague: Trumping the Unbearable Darkness of History.” Oh no, here we go again, longing for the way Prague felt under communism. Kundera has actually had a very troubled relationship to the post-communist country. He has lived in France for the last few decades and hasn’t even wanted his books to be published in Czech. The idea that his is the Prague being sold to tourists wouldn’t be particularly appealing to him, I don’t think.

As the author of the article pointed out, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is no love letter to Prague. That is an accurate observation. It is a great book, don’t get me wrong. One of my all time favorites. However, to think that it will make you understand the Prague you are seeing today is silly.

There is a lot more to Prague than its communist past. Try looking back longer than 20, 40 years. Prague has a great Gothic and Baroque past that–in the grand scheme of things–is a lot more relevant that its 40 years under communism (20 years ago).

Drive-thru Easter story (and more about Easter in Ohio)

by Iva Skoch on

So I actually made it to Cleveland for Easter. It was not exactly easy, but I guess Easter is all about suffering so I am not complaining. The flight from Prague to New York was delayed and the flight from New York to Cleveland was three hours more delayed because Ohio got hit with 8 inches of snow. Yes, snow on Easter. Long story short, I made it here in time to find what the Easter bunny left for me (iTunes card, dark chocolates, paddle ball set….it was a cool Easter bunny, I must say.)

It has been three and a half years since I was last in Ohio. Snow was on the ground then, too. The weather here is about as bad as the weather in Prague. What Prague lacks though, is the drive-thru Easter story. Only in America!

A church in Middleburg Heights, Ohio has developed a creative way of telling the Easter story without the inconvenience of having to get out of one’s car. You simply pull your car up to the last supper, and see the story dramatized by live actors. In their church parking lot, the actors stage Easter scenes-like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, writes wkyc.com.

Pastor Mike Wengerd says “What a wonderful, safe way for people to say-i don’t have to leave my car and do this.”
Members say their drive-thru attracts people who don’t normally come to church, and it also strengthens the faith of those who make it happen.

You gotta ask, what would Jesus say about this?