2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?
A combination of both. I’m from Europe, so everything is tiny and close to each other. Each year I usually go on one bigger holiday abroad. It’s also quite cheap cause I travel by hitch-hiking a lot. And I also travel a lot on the weekends and shorter holidays, I go hiking in the woods and mountains a lot, visit castles and other towns and that’s usually just within the Czech Republic.
9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?
I apologise to the other three of our amazing and endlessly interesting neighbours, even my dear, dear Slovakia, but I have to pick Poland. I was there last summer and it was one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. I love so much about the country, the folklore, people, the food. Gdańsk is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen (followed closely by Toruń). The night I spent by the Baltic coast on Hel was one of the best ones of my entire life. I am such a massive fangirl of Poland. Oh and their folk costumes are to die for. And their language is both incredibly hot and incredibly hilarious.
12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem?
To be honest, I’ve never read any properly. I make a point of trying to read everything I’m able to in the original language. But some that you can find online and aren’t bad are poems from Ivan Blatný, Václav Hrabě, František Gellner, J. H. Krchovský and Jan Skácel (The Song of Proximate Blame). And of course Franz Kafka but he doesn’t count as his works were originally written in German.
18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?
Yes I do, sort of. My family comes from Southern Moravia, which can be easily identified by other Czech natives because of specific pronounciation and some words. Also my mum was raised in Brno, which is a big city that has it’s own slang, sort of comparable to London cockney, and she uses it a lot and so do I.(When the musical My Fair Lady was translated to Czech, Eliza spoke this way).
So my speech is sort of a mix between rural South-Moravian dialects and this Brno thing which is called Hantec. It’s not that rare though, a lot of people come from similar backgrounds here in Brno, but I’ve been told my accent is pretty strong and I use a lot of the region-specific words. I confuse people from the western part of the country on regular basis.
29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?
Oh yes, yes we do. Brno is the second largest city in the country, so naturally there’s a lot of competition with Prague. You know how this sort of rivalry goes though, there’s no actual hostility, it’s just fun. But Prague is the butt of the joke in most regions as it’s also the capital, and I think it’s more or less the same in most places. The typical japes about Prague include: they’re all perfumed wusses, they have ridiculous accents, their beer is shit, they can’t drink, they don’t know what snow looks like, they know nothing about wine. Of course all of these are just stupid, envious jokes and not actually true (apart from the beer one, come fight me)
