In the Czechs’ instance, this post-totalitarian euphoria has manifested itself in a virtually omnipresent sale of alcoholic beverages and a deep-rooted conviction that unlimited access to booze is one of democracy’s most basic pillars.
When a member of the Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies in late 2003 got so drunk that he didn’t manage to press the correct voting button, the media questioned whether the people’s elected representatives really needed five on-site bars and restaurants serving alcohol for a price next to nothing. They were immediately put in their place by the Chamber’s President, who maintained that “he would be ashamed” to receive foreign visitors and not be able to serve them a stiff drink.
To be fair, the Czechs’ long and rich boozing traditions have also brought about some positive results; for instance, in developing a medical treatment for alcoholism. Prague was, in 1952, allegedly the first city in Europe to open a detention station to take care of dead-drunks who were picked up at public places. A few years later, a strong-willed and unorthodox medical doctor, Jaroslav Skála, opened a clinic for alcoholics at the Apolinář Hospital in Prague.
Contrary to the Western attitude, where boozers are treated with meek understanding and friendly therapy, the now-legendary Doctor Skála introduced a three-month cure with a draconian regime resembling the Foreign Legion. Patients were forced to start every day with a jog, and they had to earn themselves points by exemplary behaviour to gain even the smallest privileges.
To establish disgust towards alcohol, Doctor Skála even gave his patients pills that caused strong vomiting. The smelly bucket in which the poor fellows had puked in was used the next day when the patients washed the floor to earn privilege points.
Notwithstanding its masochistic elements, the Skála Therapy has proved surprisingly successful. Bar the forced vomiting, it is still applied by most of the institutions that offer alcoholics medical treatment in this country. Consequently, foreigners who develop a drinking problem during their stay in the Czech Republic have two options: either do as most locals, i.e. choose the untroubled attitude and keep on boozing as long as your liver lets you. Or join the smaller but often quite prominent group of graduates of Doctor Skála’s anti-alcoholic survival course.
Austrians
When the Lower House of the Austrian Parliament in December 2003 voted to accept the enlargement of the ELI, it was in reality a formal matter. After all of the international hullabaloo caused by the right-wing populist Jörg Haider and his Freedom Party the Austrians certainly wouldn’t tease Brussels by blocking the former communist countries from becoming “a part of Europe”.
Yet they took great care in giving the Czech Republic significantly fewer votes than any of the other eight candidate countries. The Czechs, for their part, shrugged their shoulders as if nothing had really happened, but off the record officials admitted they were scared to death that the Austrians would be more than delighted to cause serious troubles with their EU accession.
All in all, this is a fairly accurate picture of the relations between the two neighbours: the Czechs and the Austrians (in sharp contrast to the Hungarians and the Austrians) simply love if not to hate, so at least to provoke each other. Bi-national brawls take place with impressive regularity, and as soon as the consequences of one clash start to be forgotten, a new one breaks out. However, both partners realize that they can’t move apart, and that they have lots of common interests. Thus, despite the not very amicable feelings, they try to behave pragmatically and at bright moments even pretend that they are good friends.
Photo © Terje B. Englund
If the Czechs’ somewhat ambiguous relations to the Slovaks, Hungarians and Poles seem strange to you, then the reason for their distaste for Austrians seems almost as straightforward as that for the Germans.
Except for the peculiar name that the Czechs use for their southern neighbours — Rakousko is not of Slavonic origin, but probably derives from the name Raabsburg, a fortress by the Rabe river — millions of Czechs immediately associate Austria with niceties such as “national suppression”, “hypocritical snobs”, “arrogance” and “eco fascists”. If you, just to be balanced, ask them to also mention something positive, they’ll probably come up with “chocolate cake” or “the Alps”.
As one might expect in a region where history is omnipresent, the reason for Austria’s shabby image lies in the past — both in its older and more modern chapters.
When Ferdinand of Habsburg ascended to the Czech throne in 1526, the Czech kingdom, politically dominated by Protestants (see: Hus, Jan) formally became a part of the strongly Catholic Austrian Empire (see: Religion). The tensions between the king in Vienna and his quarrelsome subjects in Prague seethed and boiled for almost a century, until they reached their climax with the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, where the Czechs were beaten into their boots, and their kingdom was practically reduced to a province of Austria.
The official historiography that emerged with the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 depicted — and often still depicts — the three centuries when the Czechs were ruled from Vienna as “the era of darkness”. This was certainly a handy slogan for creating a Czech national identity, and the inglorious defeat at White Mountain unquestionably brought about some harsh consequences for the Czechs, but compared to real life during those 300 years, it was most probably a dramatic exaggeration.
Bar a period following the 1848 uprising against the Habsburgs, which had stronger public support in Hungary and other parts of the Empire, Vienna enhanced the cultural and economic development of Bohemia and Moravia. How could Bohemia otherwise become the Empire’s industrial hub? Logically, what Vienna didn’t support was the demand for Czech sovereignty that emerged during the national revival in the middle of nineteenth century (see: Czech Language).
In the slightly nationalistic climate that followed the separation of Czechoslovakia in 1993 it’s not a politically correct question, but one can ask whether the broad masses of Czechs were all that dissatisfied as the Emperor’s subjects.
What really infuriated them, was Franz Josef’s decision not to come to Prague to be crowned a Czech king, and also the fact that Hungary, in 1867, was made Austria’s equal within the Empire, while the Czechs were not. But basically, the Czechs’ ambiguous attitude to the Austro-Hungarian Empire is reminiscent of those two old ladies who went to the manager of the hotel where they were staying to complain about the food. “It’s completely inedible,” one of them snorted. “And the portions are far too small,” the other added.
However, the last years of kakánie (a popular Czech renaming of the Empire, based on the frequently used abbreviation kk — kaiserlich und königlich, which resembles that verb kakat — to take a dump) were far from funny.
When Austria-Hungary in 1914 declared war on Serbia, the Czech population was drawn into a carnage in which they didn’t have any political interest (see: Švejk, The Good Soldier), and which ultimately cost more than 200.000 young Czechs their lives. Still, almost every city, town and village in Bohemia and Moravia has a monument honouring the huge sacrifice that the Czech nation had to pay “because of those ΨΔ↓א! Austrians”.