Random Facts About the Czech Republic, Volume One:

—Grocery stores expect you to bring your own plastic bags into the establishment to take away your goods.

—Rollerblades are still the shit over here.

—Foosball is the national pastime.

—The Czech language has seven different cases and, depending on word endings, a sentence can mean very different things. For example, the sentence “The hunter killed the bear” can be changed in meaning to “The hunter was killed by the bear” by only changing the last letters in the words bear and hunter (word order intact).

—Lots of cammo.

—There’s a sizeable Vietnamese minority from the days when communist countries traded peasants like Donruss baseball cards.

—The Czechs don’t believe in dryers. You will not find a single flat equipped with one.

—Czechs really do hate gypsies. Apparently I look like one.

—Although pitchers are nice, there exist “giraffes” here, a contraption shaped like a bong that contains 4 liters of beer.

—Socks and sandals, socks and sandals, why on earth would you ever wear socks and sandals? I cannot think of many greater social taboos in the States than socks and sandals. My friend Zach once gave a speech in Academic Decathlon about the subversive effects of such a combination.

—Everyone owns a dog and all the dogs are incredibly obedient—they take them on trains, trams, and buses, they muzzle them, they let them walk around without a leash. The only unruly dog I’ve met was an American’s.

—More weirdness to follow…