Magazine

Dominika Hašková, photo: YouTube
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Hockey legend Dominik Hašek’s fifteen-year-old daughter Dominika steps out of her father’s shadow. Some of the stones extracted and replaced during the reconstruction of Charles Bridge will most likely have to be put back! And, Mountfield produces a collection of historic lawn-mowers people made at home during the communist years. Find out more in Magazine with Daniela Lazarová.

Dominika Hašková,  photo: YouTube
Hockey legend Dominik Hašek’s fifteen-year-old daughter Dominika stepped out of her father’s shadow last week when she appeared on the ongoing reality show Czecho-Slovakia has talent – a joint venture by commercial TV stations in the former sister-states. The fifteen-year-old wowed both the jury and the audience with her performance singing Leonard Cohen’s hit Hallelujah. I want to show my father I’m a good singer – she said before going on stage. A tabloid paper noted that whoever Dominika had got her talent from it wasn’t from her dad – and produced an old video of Dominik Hašek singing, to prove its case. (You can see Dominika’s performance on YouTube)


Radek John,  Miroslav Kalousek  (TOP 09),  Petr Nečas  (Civic Democrats),  left to right,  photo: CTK
The three parties of the centre-right coalition who took power in June are still learning to work together – and many of their spats still take place in the media. When the cabinet met this week, Public Affairs leader Radek John jokingly suggested that in future anyone who tries to settle accounts through the media should be made to buy the cabinet a crate of the best champagne. The suggestion raised a laugh but was reportedly turned down on account of the fact that the cabinet would be permanently rolling-down drunk.


Photo: Kristýna Maková
Charles IV would be amazed to see what workers in the 21 st century are doing to his bridge. Following criticism of sloppy work and an insensitive approach to a valuable historical treasure the firm reconstructing the bridge will very likely be forced to return some of the 14th century stone blocks it extracted and replaced with brand new ones. The national authority for the preservation of historical monuments looked into claims that too many stone blocks were replaced unnecessarily and found this to be the case. It is now deciding how many of the old blocks should be returned – which would mean that some of the newly reconstructed parts of the bridge would have to be taken apart and replaced with the old stones – in the second phase of reconstruction. Given the senseless loss of time and money one wonders what punishment Charles IV would have meted out for sloppy work on his precious bridge.


Photo: CTK
Czechs inventiveness and DIY skills are well-known and come from years of communism, when many products were unavailable on the market. There is even a word for such a person – a kutil describes someone who is self-reliant around the house, can fix anything and invents things that make his or her life easier. A TV programme for kutils enjoyed great success even after the fall of communism in 1989. Now Mountfield has a unique collection of old lawn-mowers documenting this ability. Some time ago the company announced it would sell its lawn mowers with a discount in return for old ones and was amazed by some of the contraptions people brought in. There were lawn-mowers made in the communist 70s and 80s when there were none on the market. Vaclav Brom, a spokesman for Mounfield, says these homemade products are ingenious, but none too safe. They were basically made from bits and pieces found on the scrapheap. Most of them ran on motors taken from old washing machines. The wheels were generally taken from children’s prams or tricycles. All of the lawn-mowers were extremely cumbersome and there was danger of getting an electric shock through a faulty lead or getting injured by flying pieces of metal which had been badly-attached. Not to mention that they were extremely noisy. A lawnmower made as late as 1995 – had a handle and chassis made of wood, an engine from a washing machine, knives made from handsaws and “electronics” borrowed from a table lamp. Another rare piece in Mounfield’s historic collection is an electric scythe. This particular contraption was hazardous in the extreme, since the blade would fly off every now and then.
Photo: CTK
Conscious of the need to improve work safety its inventor produced leg shields from old stove pipes that the user attached to his legs with leather strips from an old belt. It must have looked like a knight in armor was mowing the garden. Another –more ambitious piece boasted a three-phase motor taken from a centrifuge from an ancient launderette that served a condominium at a time when having a washing machine in one’s flat was a luxury. In short this is an exhibition that a certain Edwin Beard Budding would appreciate –he patented the first ever lawn-mower back in 1830.


Photo: CTK
Everyone who lived in communist Czechoslovakia knows what Tuzex shops were – a network of shops selling luxury goods for the top brass –from Western jeans and perfumes to real caviar. The shops only sold goods for hard currency or so-called Tuzex vouchers –and were originally set up to drain hard currency out of circulation. You’d be hard put to find a Tuzex store in the country now but there is one doing excellent business in Berlin. The name is of course a joke and the store set up by a Czech expat sells anything but luxury goods, giving Czechs living in Germany a taste of home. It offers the like of Czech bread and mustard – a type that you cannot buy anywhere else in the world – Karlovy Vary wafers, the famous Becher liquor, several brands of Czech beer and marinated sausages called utopence – or “drowned things” – in short things that Czechs find it difficult to live without.