Each year there are probably more beauty contests arranged in Bohemia and Moravia than in all other European countries combined. The cultural highlight of every Czech region is the election of a local “Miss”. When a new parliament is elected, media immediately pick an unofficial Miss among the fresh members. There is a Miss Deaf, Miss Internet, Miss IQ, Miss Roma, Miss Longhaired, Miss Under-Aged, Miss Czech Railways and even a Missis Mother. In short: picture any profession, company, ethnic minority, village, handicap or whatever, and you can bet your boots that the given group boasts a Miss.
Naturally, the ultimate contest is the election of Miss Czech Republic. The event — broadcast live on TV Nova and with more viewers than any other television program — is preceded by a series of similar contests at the regional level, so at least in theory, Miss Czech Republic can with some credibility claim to be the most beautiful woman in the country.
Photo © Jaroslav Fišer
This is also reflected by the prestige that the title gives its holder. The new Miss, traditionally a 17-year old, scrawny blond who has learnt a poem by heart, is immediately catapulted into the nation’s hottest jet set.
If she plays her cards skillfully, she’ll stay there even after the title is handed over to another beauty.
A safe and frequently-used way to reach this position is to start a relationship with one of the Czech ice hockey stars playing in the NHL (according to some observers, an alliance between those without teeth and those without brains). If that doesn’t work, the Miss title always makes a perfect stepping-stone for a career in business or politics. One Czech Miss even used her title to promote environmental issues.
But how can the Czechs be so out of step with Western Europe, where beauty contests are regarded as a relic from the political Stone Age?
The short answer is that the Czechs, because of their isolation under the communists (see: Ocean), have not until now been confronted with the political correctness that has prevailed in the West for several decades. And since the communists so thoroughly discredited feminism, protests against low-browed beauty contests are not perceived as a defense of women’s rights, but rather as a sullen roar coming from the Bolshevik past. Besides that, more or less every Czech is convinced that no other country on the planet can boast a higher density of beautiful women, so why not take pride in it?
Yet in the name of justice, shouldn’t there also be contests for men? Isn’t Czech society, after all, reputed for its egalitarian flair? Well, such contests do exist, even though most of them concentrate more on men’s professional or intellectual abilities than their looks. But Czech chaps who love to dress up and strut on the catwalk needn’t despair. They can always register for the very popular contest Miss Transvestite!
Beer
There are absolutely not many nice words to say about Vasil Bil̕ak, the Husák regime’s wily chief ideologist who, in 1968, begged Leonid Brezhnev to come and rape Czechoslovakia (see: Communism). Yet thanks to one of his statements, he is still widely remembered: “Beer is bread to the Czechs!”
The literary brilliance of this judgment can certainly be debated, but it undoubtedly belongs to the very few true-to-life comments the dogmatist ever uttered. In fact, it’s still valid! No other nation on this planet drinks more beer — pivo to the natives — than the Czechs. Statistically, every single inhabitant in this country pours down 322 half-litres of beer annually. Considering that these inhabitants include babies, grandmothers and the evidently-not-too-many adult Czechs who never touch alcohol, the real consumption is by all estimates much more impressive — or depressive, if you happen to be a teetotaller (see: Alcoholics).
The Czechs’ profound and long-lasting love for beer and their globally acknowledged tradition as brewers have convinced a lot of people in this country that the foaming comfort is actually a local invention. The legend even claims that the eleventh century Brabant Duke Jan I (Jan Primus = Gambrinus) was history’s first brewer. This is indeed a slight exaggeration, as archaeological excavations prove that the Sumerians had already got in high spirits by the magic “barley water” some 5,000 years ago.
Still, the Czechs — accompanied by their Western neighbours in Bavaria — can claim the right to several inventions that changed the art of beer brewing forever.
Firstly, they understood sooner than anybody else that “barley water” (both the Czechs and the Bavarians resisted the temptation to experiment with grains other than the one prescribed by the original Sumerian recipe) could be mixed very successfully with hops. And second, thanks to Josef Groll, a Bavarian brewer who was head-hunted to Western Bohemia in 1842, the city of Plzeň (in German Pilsen) was among the first to start mass production of beer using the “lower” fermentation method, resulting in a product which later has acquired worldwide reputation as Pilsner.
Yet it’s fair to assume that the Czechs have been brewing beer more or less from the moment that the first tribes of Slavs settled in the area between the Elbe and the Vltava, sometime in the sixth century CE. The pan-Slavonic word for beer, pivo, is even closely linked to the word píti (to drink). According to the beer expert Antonín Kratochvíle, the first documentation of brewing in Bohemia is the Foundation Deed of the Vyšehrad Collegiate Church in Prague, dated 1088, which assigns a “tithe of hops” to be delivered to the canon regulars to enable them to brew.
During the following centuries, breweries popped up in several monasteries, where monks produced beer both for their own godly consumption, and for the probably-not-so-pious local noblemen. Beer brewing made considerable headway in the fourteenth century, when the Czech kings established new royal towns with amazing speed all over the country. To secure themselves as much public support as possible, the kings cleverly enough gave respected burghers the privilege to brew beer.
To start with, the burghers produced only for their own consumption, but this individualistic attitude soon proved inefficient. Therefore, they joined forces and employed brewers to make it for them. In other words, the basis of the first modern concessionary breweries was laid.
It was only with the nineteenth century’s technological inventions that Czech beer brewing became a virtual industry and a business. In fact, all members of the current “Big Five” — Prazdroj and Gambrinus in Plzeň, Staropramen in Prague, Budvar in České Budějovice and the Velké Popovice brewery in Central Bohemia — were established around 1850. It’s no coincidence that all of them are situated in Bohemia. In Moravia, people tend to compensate their less-excessive relationship to beer with a correspondingly excessive consumption of local wine.
Photo © Jaroslav Fišer
Now, you might object that several local breweries are marketing their products with the slogan “Brewed in this city from 1575”. Well, they’re certainly not speaking about the same type of beer as the one they produce today. In sixteenth century Bohemia it was, according to the Brewery Museum in Plzeň, not uncommon for brews to be “improved” with the bones of executed criminals, dog’s faeces, sawdust from dug-up coffins, splinters from scaffolds or other delicacies. Therefore, the only thing a Pilsner beer brewed in, say, 1615, has in common with the light and delicious Prazdroj which is produced today, is the city of Plzeň as its place of origin, and barley and hops as its raw materials.