Roll out the barrel. After a hiatus of two years since the last Czech ‘Beer Day’ due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the annual event saw a healthy turnout on its return this September to the grounds of the embassies of the Czech and Slovak republics in London’s Notting Hill.
Prague, where the streets are a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century, was the setting for an international conference this summer for heritage preservation experts from around Europe along with private sector representatives, investors and architects of successful Czech heritage projects to discuss how heritage is looked after, who is responsible for buildings and monuments of significance as well as how to fundraise in order to maintain these assets over the long term.
To spa or not to spa, that is the question. Now, Ludwig van Beethoven and Marie Curie might not automatically spring to mind as spa goers. Born almost 100 years apart, one of the most recognised and influential of all composers and the double Nobel Prize winner frequented spa towns in what is now modern day Czech Republic, though for very different reasons.
Money, money, money. No, I’m not talking about the Abba song, but the path along which money has travelled stretching as far back as civilization itself. And, as I discovered on a recent trip to Prague to visit the ‘People & Money’ exhibition, there is a Czech saying that goes: “Money is the means of the wise and the end of fools.”
As the only city in the world located on the border with three countries - Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary - Bratislava, the Slovak capital, is worth at least a weekend trip away. There are also some excellent things to see and do in ‘Little Big’ city. And, with Vienna around 40km away, it’s a perfect place for a getaway.
It could be described as “Czech Mate” for Euroboozer, a leading UK importer of fine speciality craft brewed beers, which has teamed up with CzechTrade’s London branch to showcase the best of the Czech Republic's beer wares in 2019 next month.
Based in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, Euroboozer is organising a number of events around the annual 'Czech Beer Day' - being held this year on 19 June - at the Czech Embassy in London’s Notting Hill - that illustrates the breadth and diversity of beer production across the central eastern European country.
Roll out the barrel! Simply said, great beer comes from a great country. Now whilst some might disagree as to which nation is the ‘World Champion’ when it comes to produces the best beer - lager, ale or call it what you will, the Czech Republic is certainly up there with the best of them.
The Germans will naturally claim that their beer can be considered the best and especially so around the Oktoberfest, while Belgium’s output cannot be discounted for its rich variety of beers with over a thousand different beers including Belgian Abbey beers.
Time is always said to be of the essence, but for the producers of Czech ‘gold’, they know that it takes the time that other European beer producers fail to allow. This was certainly the impression that those attending this year’s ‘Czech Beer Day 2017’ up in swanky Hampstead heard this July.
Indeed, beer produced these days in the Czech Republic, a nation that lays claim to the world’s first-ever pilsner blond lager - Pilsner Urquell in 1842 - takes between 100 to 200 days to brew. That bottom-fermented beer in fact inspired much of the beer produced around the globe today.
Recent media attention around Ashya King, the five-year old British boy, who travelled to Prague this summer for proton therapy treatment certainly put the spotlight firmly on the Czech Republic and its reputation for cutting-edge medical treatments.
Discover excellence off the beaten track in Moravia and Silesia, the little known regions of the Czech Republic.
International eXcellence Magazine went off in search of something different in the Czech Republic, looking for adventure, mountains, history and landscapes. Ryan Air have now started flying direct to Ostrava so it's a quick and easy, if spectacularly uncomfortable jaunt over Western Europe (it takes skill to make a seat that badly, or is there some deal going on between Chiropracters and Ryan Air we don’t know about!).
