70,000 hockey fans jam square to watch glorious Czech victory
PRAGUE - Linda Pavckova crawled out of bed at 4:30 yesterday morning, donned a red-and white hockey jersey with a Czech crest emblazoned on the front and drove in the dark from the Prague suburb where she lives to Old Town Square.
Jiri Spular woke up an hour earlier, bundled his 4-year-old son into his car and drove three hours to the square from his home in the Moravian town of Olomouc.
Eva Havrankova did not sleep at all that night. She went to a pub near her home in Kolin with a Czech flag painted on her face. She left the pub around 1 a.m. and headed for Prague. The teenager walked to the Czech capital because there were no buses or trains running at that hour.
She arrived in Old Town Square four hours later, in time to watch the Czech Republic face off against Russia in the gold medal game in Nagano, which started at 5:45 a.m. local time.
The three Czechs were among 70,000 enthusiasts who packed the medieval square. Throngs of people stood together in the pre-dawn chill watching the big game on three massive screens specially erected in the square.
The crowd erupted when the Czechs won 1-0 and their exuberant hoots and hollers echoed off the Baroque buildings surrounding the square and rang through the narrow winding streets of the Old Town.
Minutes after the Czech team won the country's first Olympic hockey gold, throngs of revelers headed to Wenceslas Square in the centre of Prague. Teenagers jumped up and down, waving flags chanting, "Mame Zlato!" (We got the the gold!).
Within hours, the crowd had become the largest to assemble in the square since the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
The triumph has rejuvenated a people who suffered through a year of political turmoil, economic woes, and floods. The gold is especially sweet because it was captured by defeating the Russians, with whom the Czechs have a turbulent and often bitter history. Soviet leaders orchestrated a communist coup 50 years ago this week and sent tanks rumbling through the streets of Prague two decades later.
"We started preparing for the celebration when we beat Canada [in the semifinal]," said Prague waiter Zdenek Rava, 25. "The Russians played well but Dominik Hasek doesn't let anything in," he said, referring to the goaltender's stellar performance in the Olympic tournament, where he allowed just six goals in six games and posted two shutouts.
"We love to beat the Russians because our rivalry with them goes back a long way," he said, champagne dripping off his nose. "We deserve this."
The former Czechoslovakia won four silver medals in past Olympics. Czechoslovak teams lost the gold to the Soviet Union in three of those final matches.
"It has been a very difficult year," said pensioner Vaclav Hoker, who walked to the Old Town from his apartment nearby. "This victory is a big boost to our nation," he said while the Czech national anthem blared from loudspeakers.
Added Pavckova, 23: "This gives us hope for the future. It demonstrates that you can achieve anything if you're strong."
While Czechs drove through Prague honking their horns and waving red, white and blue Czech flags, President Vaclav Havel sent a telegram to the Czech team, which is due to arrive today.
"I rejoice with you and the whole nation at your fantastic triumph. The name of Czech hockey and of the Czech Republic is again proclaimed around the world," he said.PRAGUE - When Wing Si Luk decided to leave her job in the Toronto office of a prominent multinational corporation and move to Prague, her family thought she was crazy.
"They thought the idea was really strange," she says. "They were thinking, 'Why would you want to go there?' At home, Prague is perceived as a mysterious place."
But in the five months that have passed since she and her boyfriend, Liam Ross, arrived in Prague, Wing Si has decided that she made the right decision in moving here.
"I came here because I wanted to do something different with my career," explains the 26-year-old Guelph native, who recently landed a job as manager of corporate design services at a French-owned publication in Prague. "And there are more career opportunities here than in Canada."
Encouraged by promising economic indicators (the inflation rate at 9.6 percent is far lower than other countries of the former Soviet Bloc, and gross domestic product is forecast to grow by 4 percent in the coming year) countless foreign companies are setting up shop in this new democracy.
That creates a choice job market for candidates with work experience in the West, and is changing the face of the expatriate community.
The quintessential Westerner
in Prague used to be someone who had arrived with a half-finished
outline of the Great Canadian Novel in his pocket and then fell
in love with the city. Now, the typical expatriate is more likely
to work in the office of a foreign-owned company.
"The expat community is changing," says Canadian Vice
Consul Gavin Buchan. "It is no longer epitomized by the people
who came here immediately after the Velvet Revolution [in 1989]
with no particular focus except a feeling that Prague was a wonderful
city to live in. Now, the expats here tend to be more business-oriented."
Buchan and other observers concede that young romantics still navigate
the cobblestone streets of the city's famous Old Town, and that
Prague still abounds with aspiring poets and authors. But of the
expats who contact the Canadian embassy, Buchan notes, an increasing
number are here on business. (He estimates the Czech Republic has
roughly 2,000 Canadians, but says it's impossible to determine the
exact number since relatively few register with the embassy.)
"Many Americans who came here two or three years ago were young,
transient and in between school years," says U.S. Consul Robert
Mustain, who estimates that about 12,000 Americans currently live
in the Czech Republic. "But now we are seeing people who are
somewhat older and somewhat more professional."
One indication that the expat community is changing, says Mustain,
is that marriage and birth registrations among Americans in this
country have increased.
Nonie Valentine, an American psychologist, reports another sign
of change. She used to counsel many expatriates who come to the
Czech Republic in what she calls creative work.
"They had high hopes and romantic notions of living in a post-revolutionary
society," she says. "But they bumped into some of the
grittier realities of living here and went back disillusioned."
Now, roughly a third of her clients are "beleaguered business
people" who have become frustrated with the local infrastructure.
"They don't know the language, they can't communicate easily
using the phone system and they don't understand the hidden realties
of the business world in this country."
Valentine speculates, "the first glorious wave is kind of over.
There will continue to be new blood here, but it wont be quite as
idealistic and romantic as it was before. I do get a sense that
those in search of adventure and romance are starting to sniff elsewhere."
Yet another sign of change was the death at the end of February
of Prognosis Weekly. The four-year-old English-language newspaper
had chronicled the collective experience of the first wave of foreigners
in Prague.
The transformation of the foreign community is apparent to the president
of Anglictina Express, Milena Kelly. The popular language school
has responded to the growing demands of the foreign community by
offering more Czech courses. Kelly says applications have almost
doubled in the past year. And, she says, she has noticed older students
in class.
"Students are more serious about living here because they have
long-term commitments," she says.
Kelly adds that demand is growing for Czech classes for very young
expats, the children of business people who have moved their families
here.
When not working or learning Czech, many of these business people
meet at stylish restaurants with names such as Monterey Mike's and
Avalon.
Avalon manager Daniel Dayan says his restaurant's patrons (he estimates
50 percent are North American) are primarily entrepreneurs.
"Our business fluctuates according to their schedule,"
he says. "Business is slower during the holiday season when
many of them go home to visit."
An upscale eatery called Potomac, which recently opened at the Prague
Renaissance Hotel, promotes itself as an "all-American"
restaurant.
Though Wing Si has never eaten there, she does frequent other Western-style
establishments. "Half of the places I go to are Czech, but
I have no idea what their names are because they all sound the same
to me," she says.
However, she does remember the names of at least two of her favourite
nightspots: The Roxy and the James Joyce pub.
Wing Si and Liam, who now works at the local office of an American-owned
advertising agency, have much in common with the expatriates they
meet at the James Joyce.
"I came here for a business experience rather than as a backpacker,"
Wing Si says. "And almost all the foreigners I meet are here
for the same reason."
And, she says, her family and friends in Canada now understand that
there is nothing strange about that.