Are you saying my husband is abnormal? That's exactly why I married him. :wink: As to Eleshar and Petr_B saying This is minimalizing my comment. I did not say that Czech people don't smile, of course they do. I also didn't say that Communism is the only reason Czechs don't smile often. I believe Petr_B summed it up when he stated that communism definitely had an affect on the Czech culture. I believe my husband has some good points as to SOME of the reasons Czech people don't go around smiling. Of course there are other reasons. However, Eleshar its rather naive to omit communism's affect on Czech Culture. Perhaps it is "in" in Czech but for the most part, most Americans are too self-involved to even think about communism. Here, if you blame some evil on communism, they look at you like "What the heck are you talking about." Another point Eleshar - I'm sure your parents and my husband lived in 2 different worlds. Your mother joined the party so she probably didn't experience the type of prejudice, ridicule and fear that my husband had to live with every day of his life in communism. I don't know how much you know about American culture. But perhaps the difference between your parents and my husband is comparable to the difference between white Americans living in the suburbs and black Americans living in the intercity. I, as a white American, can never tell a black American that he/she doesn’t face police discrimination, etc. I've not lived in their place in life, therefore, I can't truly know what they faced.
Well... my mother lived long enough without joining the party... It was not like living 35 years in poverty and misery (nor prejudice nor ridicule nor fear, even though she was not of working-class origin, even though she had bad background from university where she had to pass an exam from Marxism-Leninism which she did not understand to and during the exam told nonsenses that earned her critique that she was "dangerously trockist"...) and then, after joining the party ascencion on the social ladder. And as I said, my father was even expelled from "Pionýr" (bad reputation here...). I do not underestimate the communist influences on Czech culture and mentality. I only point out that blaming everything on communism is very modish today even if the connection between those thing is senseless. I would attribute that lack of enthusiasm to the prudish times of the Austrian empire that really compelled to supress expressing emotions for about one hundred and fifty years, because the emotions were considered irrational and undesirable. In accord with the German model, only the reason, prudeness and above all else seriousness were required. Emotions were beyond these patterns and were to be internalised and not to be shown off. And this is true especially in school formation of that time. German and Austrian schools were extremely strict in these matters... and it was always reason, reason, reason, reason. Thus I would be very careful before saying that "something stems from communism". If the people did not have much to smile... why there are so many jokes from this period (even, or I should say *especially* jokes on politics)? Perhaps because the poor people did not have anything other to smile? Really, be attentif whenever someone attributes anything to the communism. Especially today, when we are living in not very joyful times, because the stupid stupid media before the elections caused the separation of the nation to two main political opinions, but not in the traditional way... today it is much more aggressive (I am so glad that we are such lazy and nation - probably because of the communism - and this struggle is only on the level of words and not deeds). And "communism" is the most favoured scarecrow used by both sides (mostly the rightist one, but the leftists do not use it very much less...), and moreover, the communism became an EXCUSE for everything. If something goes wrong, it is because of the communist past (not to mention that those who are calling the others "communists" and excusing everything by its "communist past" were very often communists themselves - it is really ridiculous if one day a celebrity is criticising the past era and another it is revealed that she subscribed to Anticharta... or one famous actress - that had the fortune to act in almost every single film in those days... I wonder why - says that her father was hardly prosecuted by then's police, and sure he was! he was a thief and stole in shops as was later revealed!).
Having spent a little more time living here in Brno, the grumpy looks are practically unseen by me now. I tend to either ignore them or, if they are staring at me because I am speaking English, I have started to stare right back at them with one of my beautiful Aussie smiles. It gets to them every time ! :wink: ! The scary thing here for me now is that, as with Tanja "not smiling whilst in public", I have started to notice that I too, am trying not to smile all the time in public because of my wanting to fit in as much as possible with the locals! ! I hope I dont forget to smile when we go back to Australia for the summer - it is unheard of for Aussies not to smile in public - and (hicc) believe us when we say we have every reason to smile - the communists never got a look in over the past 200 years) Sorry, but I had to place a punt in this post for everyone who is really, totally besotted with hashing over the past.
