The Czech Republic (officially Czech: Cesk� republika help�info), short form in Czech: Cesko IPA: } is a landlocked country in Central Europe and a member state of the European Union. The country has borders with Poland to the north, Germany to the northwest and west, Austria to the south, and Slovakia to the east. The capital and largest city is the historic Prague (Czech: Praha), a major tourist attraction. Other major cities include Brno, Ostrava, Zl�n, Plzen, Pardubice, Hradec Kr�lov�, Cesk� Budejovice, Liberec, Olomouc, and �st� nad Labem.

• See the Moravian wine region by horseback in
• See city
• See Český Krumlov - beautiful city with castle. Member of UNESCO.
• , the yearly freetekno party somewhere in Czech Republic.

Panelaks

Entering Prague on the train, particularly from the southeast, one sees the infamous panelaks, or giant concrete housing blocks. Czech and Slovak housing blocks have a very surreal quality to them - driving past the suburbs late at night is visually reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner. Petrzalka in the Slovak capital of is the biggest panelak complex. Czech writer Iva Pekarkova’s novel does an amazing job of expressing the particular sort of inhumanity panelaks are known for breeding. If someone lives in a building that is an exact copy of all the others for miles around, so alike that even residents get lost, what does that bode for the community living there? In a particularly ironic twist, the real-life panelaks are crumbling as quickly as the communist regime that built them: literally falling apart at the seams.

Alternatively though the Panelaks in contrast to what one finds in Western European or American housing projects, are relatively safe and friendly places albeit it bland. The dark exterior shell hides a generally quite nice internal environment that is usually well maintained by the inhabitants living inside. The majority of people who live there are a cross section of the lower to middle classes of Czech society (including a large number of students and retired elderly people). Haje in Prague at the end of the red (C) metro line is well worth the half hour metro trip to experience a real live communist 'settlement.'

On the bright side, recently more flats in these panelaks have been being bought, changing these developments from Communist compartments into owned and cared-for properties. Unlike in Western Europe, panelaks in the Czech Republic are being lived-in and owned increasingly by the middle class, which tries to paint them lively colors and individualize their appearance inside and out. Some residents in such buildings don't find them isolating at all, and on the contrary feel that they foster a communal atmosphere.