PragueBuzz!

Green:old members, Pink:new members	Germany - Poland Celebration
Germany - Czech	Italy - Slovenia
Austria - Hungary	Hungaria - Slovakia

[Photo source]

Who says that brain-drain occurs only Westward, that job seekers move to cities with higher salary? The coin flips both side for Czech Republic as its young, reviving economy not only attracts workers from lesser developed Eastern neighbors like Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine to name a few but also enthusiastic wanderlust from richer Western Europe.

Czech Republic is a nice place to live, the cost of living is much lower and for many young people from Western Europe it is an interesting working experience to come here and spend a couple of years working for an international company. They don’t come here for the money.

The number of foreign workers of course will be significantly higher if we count those from America, Australia and Africa.

[Radio CZ]

Czech has narrowly beaten its toughest rival-cum-neighbor, mighty Germany, to top their group going into the playoff next year in Austria and Switzerland.

Having defeated Germany, theoretically Czech should be able to annihilate Portugal and Turkey and advance to the next round. But in the world of rolling balls, anything is possible. After all, Turkey had upset many strongest teams to place 3rd in 1998 World Cup. Portugal lost only to the champion in 2004 Euro Cup and ranked 4th at the last World Cup.

My heart is forever fixed for my childhood teams, the “Rooster” and the “Orange Tornado” (France and Netherlands respectively) though I doubt they will carry on far in the competition. Netherlands always enters the games with so much fanfare and expectation but years after years they seem to lack that something which can push them to the very end. As for France, Zidane retired last year, didn’t he?

I’ll sip a glass of wine for France, inhale a few rounds of marijuana smoke for the Dutch and of course tuck away in some “hospoda”* slurping down cheap beer and cheer on my “Dumpling”* Boys.

(*) hospoda = a typical Czech pub where a man’s sole business is consuming as much beer as his belly or his woman can tolerate.
(*) dumpling = a typical, traditional Czech meal.

[UEFA]

Screw that New Year plan you had about crossing Czech border for a new tourist stamp. The effect date for Czech’ joining the Schengen passport-free area will not be January 1st of 2008. As a gift to this country, current Schengen members moved the date up to December 21st or 2007.

Nice gestures to Czechs and legal Schengen stamp carriers, but can’t say the same thing for you!