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Czech Republic
Let's explore one of the world's most fascinating countries — packed with surprises, stories, and pen pal potential.
The Basics
3 Things That Will Blow Your Mind
Genuinely. You'll want to tell someone immediately.
The word "robot" was invented in Czech
Karel Čapek coined the word in a 1920 play about artificial workers. It comes from the Czech word robota, meaning drudgery or forced labour. The play was translated into 30 languages and the word spread everywhere because nobody had a better one. Every time anyone anywhere talks about robots, they are using a Czech word without knowing it.
Czechs drink more beer per person than anyone else on Earth
The Czech Republic has held the world record for beer consumption per capita every single year for decades — averaging around 190 litres per person per year, which includes children and people who drink no alcohol at all. The country is home to Pilsner, the style of lager that most of the world's beer is now based on. It was invented in the Czech city of Plzeň in 1842.
The sugar cube was invented by a Czech
In 1843, Jakub Kryštof Rad was running a sugar refinery in Moravia when his wife cut her finger on a sharp lump of sugar and suggested he make it into something safer to handle. He spent two years developing a way to compress sugar into neat cubes that could be picked up with tongs. Before that, people bought sugar as a large hard cone and hacked pieces off it with a special knife.
Famous For
Prague
Prague's old town is one of the most completely preserved medieval city centres in Europe and it survived both World War Two and large-scale demolition largely intact. The city has more than 1,000 years of architecture stacked almost on top of itself, from Romanesque cellars to Gothic towers to Art Nouveau café fronts.
The Orloj
The Prague Astronomical Clock was installed in 1410 and has been ticking ever since. Every hour on the hour, a small procession of figures including Death carrying an hourglass appears from a door above the clock face. It tells the time, the phase of the moon, the position of the sun in the zodiac, and sunrise and sunset times — all at once.
Ice Hockey
Czech ice hockey players are found in the very best leagues in the world and the national team has won multiple World Championships and Olympic gold medals. Hockey is taken extremely seriously and children start learning to skate almost as soon as they can walk.
Beer and Brewing
The Czech Republic invented Pilsner and takes its brewing heritage seriously enough that Czech beer has protected status under EU law. Many pubs pour beer using a technique called the "hladinka" pour that takes several minutes and fills the glass with a thick creamy head.
Did You Know?
In the Czech Republic, the traditional Christmas meal is fried carp and potato salad. Families buy a live carp from a market stall a few days before Christmas and keep it alive in the bathtub until Christmas Eve. Children often spend those days giving the carp a name and campaigning to set it free instead of eating it. Some families do release it. Most do not.
Pen Pal Connection
A child in Czech Republic might write to you about the carp currently living in their bathtub and whether they have named it yet, a hockey game they played or watched in freezing cold, the astronomical clock in Prague that has been marking every hour since 1410 and is older than the printing press, or the fact that without a Czech playwright there would be no word for robot in any language.