Last week the Czech Republic celebrated the 20 year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which began on 17 November 1989. Various events were held to mark this occasion here in Olomouc, including free concerts on the town square and films of the events of 20 years ago. There was also an open air museum of communism, complete with the statues of Lenin and Stalin which previously stood in the town (modelled above by the lovely Mrs Sweney), mock queues for bananas, touts selling “Tuzex” coupons, which back in the days were the currency with which Western goods had to be bought, uniformed guards, a checkpoint, vehicles previously used by the security services and various other items to remind us of how shabby things really used to be. Disillusionment with the post-revolutionary situation has set in here with some ferocity, and it was impossible not to note how one of Olomouc's student revolutionary leaders quickly transformed himself into a high-ranking politician, who is now notorious for his alleged links to organised crime. Nevertheless, overall the celebration was intended to be an uplifting and encouraging experience, the point being that no matter how dissatisfied people might be with their lot these days, things are still nowhere near as grim as they were then – now we can look back at these things and laugh about the bad old days, but let's not forget how bad they were etc.

I have to say, never having experienced any of this, I felt slightly envious of those who had been involved in, or at least surrounded by such momentous events while I was quietly and unimaginatively beginning my university degree in the Free West. The fall of Thatcher in Britain the following year could hardly compare to the euphoria of 89 in the Eastern Bloc (in fact I remember feeling distinctly un-euphoric when the bitch went, knowing full well that the Tories were back in with a fighting chance of winning the next election). Walking around the square last Tuesday I felt that this was undoubtedly a commendable celebration. Czechoslovakia in the post-68 “normalisation” period may not have been quite such a dire and dangerous place as it was under the Nazis, but it didn't seem like much fun either and not for the first time I felt rather humbled seeing this in contrast with the lack of genuine hardship or oppression in my own life.

On the other hand I've often felt confused when I've talked to some people old enough to remember the revolutionary days and the times that preceded them. Some have of course been righteously scathing about the communists, and I've never doubted that they had good reason. In other cases however I've felt a little lost for words when a seemingly decent and likeable, if somewhat docile and unintellectual individual admitted to having been a fervent communist supporter throughout the normalisation years and even beyond, on occasion expressing nostalgic sentiments.

Last week, in our conversation class I took the opportunity to ask one of my students for his reflections on the past 20 years. My student is a bank manager, approaching sixty years of age, and contrary to the stereotypical image of bank managers, particularly in the current climate, is a thoughtful and intelligent man, with moderately left-leaning views. He started off by talking about how the banking system had changed, which was of little interest to me, but it killed some time in which we'd have otherwise probably been engaged in tedious grammar exercises. Still, what about life in general? He then went on to remark upon how there were far more goods in the shops these days and how we were now spoilt for choice, even if it has been at the price of the old securities. What else? Well, it's nice that we can travel abroad, he acknowledged. After all in the 70s and 80s we could only travel to other Soviet bloc countries, and if we were lucky enough to get a permit, to what was then Yugoslavia (which I've heard several times before and always reminds me that during my childhood, before holidays abroad became affordable for the masses, the most exotic place we ever visited was North Wales). By this point I was getting frustrated. What about political life? Hm, well you've seen our president and our other politicians, he shrugged. Even so, it must be better than the previous regime, surely? Back then most of us didn't think about it so much. Maybe a few students and bohemian dissident types (mostly a Prague-centred elite anyway) got in a flap, the rest of us got on with our work and thought about putting food on the table.

What about freedom of expression, isn't that important? At least now you can complain about the situation you're in these days, whereas before you couldn't even do that. His answer definitively closed the conversation: Czechs have always complained. Not complain as in protest, but complain as in grumble. That's how it was then, that's how it is now.

Evidently it wasn't just the party top brass who viewed political freedoms as superfluous bourgeois luxuries. I decided to open the grammar book.

It's that time of year again.

Yes, I know this is yet another return to an already frenetically milked theme, but let's face it, I exhausted my “range” long ago. And with Christmas looming, it's also kind of inevitable. A few days ago my friend Martin, who works for a publishing house in Prague, sent me a copy of “The Atheist's Guide to Christmas”. Martin is naturally well aware of my views on religion and so may have thought it might appeal, but was primarily interested in whether I thought it would go down well here or not – his boss, who no doubt has a keener business sense than either of us, is apparently considering having it translated into Czech and published here.

Immediately the obvious question that came to my mind was why on earth was Martin, a Czech, asking me what I thought might sell to Czechs? I still haven't had a satisfactory answer to that one, still, it's flattering that he values my opinion so much. On the surface of things it might sound like a good idea to market the book here, since the Czech Republic is possibly the most godless country in Europe, at least in terms of the number of people who freely and unselfconsciously classify themselves as atheists. Added to that of course, Christmas comes every year, so even if it's too late to get the book translated and on the shelves for this year's Christmas frenzy, there may be potential for it to become a perennial classic, an alternative bible even.

On the other hand, I couldn't help feeling that precisely because atheism is such a commonplace, prosaic phenomenon here, the whole exercise might be rather pointless, and as such, likely to be ignored. It might be partly due to the influence of communism here that religion has simply not played a very large role in this country in recent times – although of course communism didn't prevent religion from remaining a major force in neighbouring Poland or even Slovakia. Whatever the case, Czechs generally don't have as much reason to loathe religion as much as those who have been brought up in Britain, or worse, Ireland, the USA, or Poland for that matter. Surely anyone who deliberately goes out and buys an “atheist's guide” to anything does so out of some kind of antipathy to religion, whereas few people here feel anything more than indifference.

Having briefly skimmed through the book (or pdf. file, to be more precise), I can only say that my doubts have been compounded. Not only is it replete with cultural references to 1970s Britain – how are Czechs supposed to relate to Scalextric, Raleigh bikes, Bernard Matthews turkeys or Wizzard? – but on top of all that its stated aim is to be “the atheist book it's safe to leave around your granny”. Well what's the fucking sense in that? If you're going to publish a book that's meant to appeal to those who are pissed off up to their eyeballs with religious bullshit, why then frustrate your constituency by being so bloody nice about it? There are writings by some atheist “big hitters” such as Dawkins, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre and also some respected music critics such as David Stubbs and Simon Price, so there might be some cause for the militant atheist to hope for a bit of merciless cleric-bashing, but this has to be weighed up against the rather dispiriting fact that there are also contributions from such luminaries as Claire Rayner and Simon le Bon (which I have to admit I haven't read in any great detail, but really, for fuck's sake!). And it's also a blatantly obvious fact that whilst Dawkins might be able to construct a coherent scientific argument, he's a fucking atrocious writer and believe me, he excels himself in this particular work. The boring old tosser.

When all's said and done, what self-respecting atheist needs a “guide” to anything anyway? Surely we're adult enough to read “serious” atheist texts, and I suppose if I was being generous I might include the God Delusion in those, but frankly it's shit, so I won't. But for Christ's sake (eh?), haven't there been enough brilliant and entertaining atheist thinkers for us to consult without the need for us to turn to this cheap, patronising, bite-sized whimper of platitudes?

A waste of time, in any language.

Lollobrigida - Volim Te

Aaahh, don't cry!

Yeah, bite it bitch!

I didn't want to write about the evil bastard while he was at the centre of attention of the whole of Europe and so obviously loving it, but now he's finally bitten the bullet and signed the bloody thing, and so will now be shuffling ignominiously off the European centre stage, I feel quite justified about sticking the knife in his back as he does so. This isn't because I'm particularly pro-European, if anything I feel quite Eurosceptic myself (for entirely different reasons than Klaus, I hasten to add). It's also not as if I've read the Lisbon treaty myself – how many people actually have? So I can't really say whether it's a good or bad thing, I suspect I'd disapprove but don't have the intellectual rigour, or perhaps more realistically, a sufficiently high boredom threshold to find out. I certainly disapprove of the way it was forced through, the British referendum wriggled around on a legal technicality, the Irish the only nation balloted, who after voting against it were made to vote again until they said yes.

But just as I feel the usual dismally familiar mixture of resignation and disgust at the low machinations above, this is a mere minor irritant compared to the acutely personal loathing and contempt I harbour in relation to the president's recent conduct. This human pile of dog shit is one itch I am just going to have to fucking scratch. The whole affair of his dragging out the inevitable was patently about his own ego gratification and fuck all else. If the Eurocrats were abject bad losers in their response to the Irish No vote, then Klaus trumped even them by his deplorably lame attempt to throw spanners in the works at the last moment, appealing on typically pedantic, nitpicking grounds, cheapened further by his grotesque attempt to parade himself as a drum-beating patriot. Some Czechs fell for it, but a great many simply wanted to fucking puke. He still isn't as unpopular as I'd like him to be here, but the more educated sections of the population are increasingly regarding him as an appalling embarrassment afflicting the nation, whilst he's long been reviled as a clownish figure throughout the rest of Europe.

And what did he actually achieve? Well, he did negotiate an opt-out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (cheers Vašek! Fucking rights – who needs em?), but this is no more than those other European champions of humanitarianism Britain and Poland got. He's had his moment of posturing like a cunt on a European stage, but the game's pretty much up. No doubt he'll find all kinds of ingenious ways to make our toes curl with vicarious shame and pure, naked hate throughout the rest of his presidency, and unfortunately there's plenty of fucking time left to go. But the fact is, for all his transparently empty grandstanding on this issue, he's capitulated. Choke on it.

And on the same day the European Court of Human Rights ruled that it's illegal to display crucifixes in Italian schools, which is bound to have millions of superstitious, prancing mamma's boys apoplectic with their hilariously banal fulminations. The shitbags.

Maybe I should reconsider my Eurosceptic tendencies if the EU can be used as a tool both to humiliate Klaus and antagonise vapid papist hypocrites. Not a bad day, all in all.

UGGGGG!!!

Dizzee Rascal - Sirens

This one's dedicated to.... the Countryside Alliance

It’s been another lazy old summer for me, right enough. The Czech Republic seems to more or less close down anyway for the entirety of July and August, as these supposedly poor Central Europeans disappear to their second homes in the country for two months at a time, so there’s not much point in me hanging around either. One holiday of hiking in Slovakia, another of mostly drinking back in the UK, and finally in September when there was a danger of work coming my way, a tour of the Balkans.

All started in heartening style with what’s now become an annual visit to Novi Sad, spent as always in the excellent company of George and Sandra Almosthole and the rest of the crew centred around the mighty TONA. This year I deliberately chose to go down in September for a number of reasons – I wanted to see Novi Sad without the madness of Exit and the swarms of British either chewing their own faces off on cheap drugs or attempting to find cheap drugs, in addition to which I planned to avoid the crowded beaches and inflated prices once I got to the coast, as well as the unbearable July heat. On the first point the Exit-free Novi Sad was refreshingly calm by comparison, though still not entirely sedate despite Princess Almosthole’s newfound sobriety, whilst as far as the weather went for the first few days things were no better than on my previous visits and my Northern European constitution suffered badly as a result. The obvious highlight was the rehearsal/private gig performed by Tona in a room approximately 4 metres square, which sounded so ferocious that the normally urbane and placid Siniša announced afterwards “I feel like going out and fighting someone”. Thankfully we didn’t quite go that far, but we did head out for a rather rambunctious evening, joining up with Boris and Filip later, both of whom were on raging form. Let it be stated for the record that the diminutive Englishman was not to be defeated by the macho Serbs.

On the subject of diminutives and drinking, I detected a note of derision on the part of the Serbs for the rather less macho Czechs, including the use of diminutives in their language. When I’ve attempted to speak Serbian I’ve been exhorted to “say it like a man!”, and have learned that instead of converting the word “pivo” for beer to the admittedly twee “pivečko” as the Czechs sometimes do, the Serbs go in the opposite direction and inflate it into a butch “pivčuga” (or something). Yeah, yeah, all well and good my testosterone-fuelled Serbian friends, but can you actually drink it? Can you match your allegedly wimpish Czech cousins beer for beer? In fact if I have one reservation about Southern Europe generally it would be its lack of a pub culture. There are café bars aplenty (they might as well be bloody French!), but it seems that the further south you go, the less places there are serving decent draught beer, and I suppose that one beneficial (?) effect of this was that during my holiday I actually drank far less than I would have done if I’d stayed at home in CZ. I’ve said before and I’ll say again that one day I intend to return the favour to my Novosadian hosts, and so once Serbia’s visa requirement has been waived I’m expecting and certainly hoping for a mass influx of Serbs here in Olomouc. To that I now add the following: come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!

Provocative, moi? Hard as nails, us English.

In Novi Sad I also managed to add to my growing number of Serbian T-shirts, which make up almost half of my collection these days. Thanks to generous gifts from George and Filip I am now the proud owner of an official Tona shirt, as well as another slightly more patriotic offering which I made a tactical decision not to wear during the Albanian leg of the trip.

Next up, after a satisfyingly inebriated afternoon at Filip’s place (now that’s a Serb who CAN drink), was a very cheap and comfortable night train, couchette included, to Podgorica, on which I managed both to sleep like a baby and catch the incredible views of the Black Mountains the next morning, and from there to the superb town of Kotor, which is like a smaller, less tourist-infested Dubrovnik, and where I was able to enjoy an enormous seafood feast for very reasonable prices. After that was Ulcinj, which was little more than a stopping point for the next leg of the journey down to Tirana, and which, looking back, was probably the nadir of the trip. There was little to see here, but the main problem was that at this point I was travelling alone and it didn’t seem an easy place to meet people. Added to this was a rather uncomfortable part of an evening spent in a bar watching the football – I’d resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to find anywhere showing the England-Croatia game, so settled for Serbia-France instead. Of course this meant that I found myself surrounded by boisterous, nationalistic Serbs (in an Albanian-dominated town), some wearing “Kosovo is Serbia” T-shirts, and the fact that they were all drinking coffee (they can’t handle their beer, those Serbs) rather than anything stronger did nothing to detract from the threatening atmosphere. I left at half time and went to another place (I confess it was yet another fucking “Irish” pub, but it was the only place in town I could find serving draught beer) run by Albanians, who were a great deal less intimidating. My spirits were also lifted a little when I learned that England had beaten Croatia 5-1.

With the majority of the population of Ulcinj being Albanian, my impressions of Albania began even before I reached the border, and my first one was this: the entire economy is built upon bakeries and car washes, which reminds me that back in Coventry also my dad always goes to the Albanians to get his car washed. Over the border it was the same, one car wash next to another all along the road from Shkodër to Tirana, where I also noticed that at least every second car in Albania is a Mercedes, albeit more often than not a fairly run-down 1970s model. On the bus to Shkodër I met a couple of fellow travellers and we decided to go for a quick breakfast before heading to Tirana, though we baulked at the “local speciality”, which turned out to be sheep’s brains, opting for omelette instead. After breakfast, out on the street drivers of various minibuses departing, seemingly all at the same time, for Tirana made enthusiastic attempts to secure our custom, despite the fact that there were clearly not enough seats for the three of us and nowhere for us to store our rucksacks. Once seated in a larger bus we continued to attract a large amount of attention, including staring and laughing, from the locals, who were very friendly but evidently quite nonplussed to hear exotic foreigners speaking a weird language.

Tirana itself was immediately fairly overwhelming, not exactly pretty but definitely lively to the point of chaotic, according to my companions more like a South American city than a Southern European one. Since neither of them had much time to hang around we headed immediately for the Sky Tower – some snobs might call it a cheesy tourist experience but it’s a thoroughly worthwhile one, in a slowly revolving bar at the top of a skyscraper, a sort of horizontal version of the London Eye with the added bonus of beer on tap (even if it is pissy Tuborg). The beer may cost twice the price of a beer at ground level, but given the fact that admission’s free, it’s a bargain. After that I headed for the hostel, which contrary to the information on the flier was far from easy to find. This became a bit of a theme in Albania generally, since very often the streets literally have no name (this is not just an excuse to quote vapid U2 lyrics) and when they do there’s rarely a signpost to tell you, meaning that in almost every case it’s necessary to phone wherever you’re staying to get directions. Later on Max and Harvin, fellow Balkan enthusiasts who I met in Bosnia a couple of years ago, arrived in the city from Mother Theresa airport, and over the next day or so we got to see more of the city, including the national museum on Skanderbeg square, which boasts a superb socialist realist mural and in a burst of typically Albanian post-socialist surrealism has toddlers buzzing about on quad bikes on the square in front of the building. As well as the regular exhibits documenting the country’s origins and history, the upper floor contains amusingly trite propaganda obviously written when Enver Hoxha was still alive.

When I told people I was going to Albania I encountered the standard knee-jerk reactions from the ultra-conservative Czechs, i.e. “you’ll never come back alive, it’s full of bandits and mafia” etc. Although self-flagellating about their nation in some respects, the aspirational Czechs also have a paradoxical tendency to regard themselves as the cream of the former Eastern Bloc. It’s customary for many to whine about how they’re not as rich as the Germans or British whilst, precisely because of this misplaced inferiority complex, desperately trying to disassociate themselves from the likes of poorer countries such as Romania and Albania – probably the worst insult for Czechs would be to call them “East European”. I’d like to make it clear here that I’ve never felt safer than I did in Albania, where many people still leave their doors open, or the doors of their Mercedes unlocked with the keys in the ignition. No doubt crime does exist and there’s evidently an Albanian mafia operating internationally, but within Albania I certainly felt safer than anywhere I’ve been in Britain, or in pickpockets’ paradise Prague (though of course ALL crime in Prague is committed by Albanians, Romanians, Ukrainians and let’s not forget the gypsies).

As well as Tirana we managed to take in Berat, an extremely picturesque, Unesco-protected town in the mountains, a far cry from the typical stereotype of Albania, and Saranda, probably Albania’s biggest coastal resort, almost within swimming distance of Corfu – in total three wildly different locations. However, whilst some of the stereotypes are based on pure prejudice, others are clearly true. Albania is without doubt poor and extremely dirty. On bus journeys, in between Hoxha’s bunkers it’s common to see what, as Martin noted, looks like blue snow collecting in ravines in the mountains, which turns out to be sky-blue carrier bags full of refuse, and on urban housing estates in Saranda it seemed the norm to find cows wondering around eating rubbish from enormous piles of the stuff left to rot by the side of the road.

Albania also seems to be a country in flux. A large proportion of the buildings, cars, shops etc. are for sale, the Albanian for which is “shitet”. In addition both Tirana and Saranda are full of half-finished constructions and in places appear like building sites. Most of the time there didn’t seem to be much work going on, so whether they will ever be finished or not I have no idea. Perhaps in a few years, if or when the new buildings are completed, Saranda will become a luxury seaside destination for Western Europeans, and there is already no shortage of shops selling tourist tat, but if so it has a monumental cleaning operation ahead of itself. The deserted beach just beneath our hostel looked inviting enough from our balcony, but to attract larger numbers of holidaymakers it would first be a good idea to clear away all the fag ends, broken glass and dog shit*.

After surviving a minor earth tremor on my last night in Saranda, waking up to find the bed shaking quite dramatically, all of this was brought home to me rather brutally on the final leg of my journey in Corfu, where the difference in the standard of the beaches and towns was immediately striking, and although I’d enjoyed Albania immensely this felt like a holiday from a holiday. I ended up wishing I’d left myself more time to enjoy the island’s shamefully obvious and passé creature comforts, but I had to catch my similarly unadventurous and bourgeois flight back to Prague.

So now back to reality. And possibly to the doctor’s, if that dose of the shits I picked up down in the Balkans doesn’t clear up soon.

*Profuse thanks to Agnieszka, who may have saved me from a severely traumatic experience.

Shit, ludicrously overrated bands of the 90s and beyond.

Now shut up and piss off.

BIRTH SCHOOL WORK DEATH THE GODFATHERS

For recent convert Carl

Great forgotten bands of the 80s: The Godfathers

Courtesy of Mr Impostume’s magnanimity, while I was down in London I received a CD copy of an album I hadn’t heard in a very long time, the mighty Hit By Hit, the Godfathers’ debut. The title itself is a nicely bold, arrogant statement of intent and given the band’s name and image a neat, if not wildly adventurous play on words, and though in reality no tune on the album came anywhere near to being a hit there’s not a single track on it that didn’t deserve to be.

Even back then the Godfathers were unashamedly retro, combining the look of the Kray Twins with no-nonsense, punky rock n roll. Emerging in the mid to late 80s, they came at a difficult time. The early 80s post-punk and synth-pop boom had petered out and the charts were almost without exception full of abysmal shit, whilst outside of the mainstream the artier of the goths could, with a little effort, cross over to the avant-garde rock of Sonic Youth, Big Black and the hip grungy and/or industrial bands that came in their wake, and fans of jangly indie pop could, with a little effort and heaps of drugs, cross over via the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays into the rave scene. Where did the Godfathers fit in? They didn’t. With their hard rock stance they could perhaps have appealed to the more yobbish end of the goth scene, but in their sharp gangster suits they made even that difficult, vaunting their withering scorn for the black-clad herd.

Hit By Hit and their second album Birth School Work Death were packed with blinding punk-pop songs overlain with muscular, heavily Steve Jones-inspired riffing and raucous terrace chanting to underline their tough, very British image, years before Britpop or before Guy Ritchie got in on the mockney villain act. It’s surely of no small significance that they were produced by Vic Maile, the man who produced the legendary Ace of Spades (which is not only possibly the greatest rock n roll album of all time but also, tellingly, head and shoulders above Motorhead’s previous recorded output). The result was that at their peak they sounded tight as fuck, so tight in fact that they seemed close to snapping. Their desperation is worn on their sleeve throughout, the lyrical content a calamitous mixture of stress, for example in “This Damn Nation”, painfully uncontrollable lust (“I Want You”, “Can’t Leave Her Alone”), and on the title track of the second album bitter resignation in the glorious line “I’ve been abused and I’ve been confused and I’ve kissed Margaret Fatcher’s shoes”, whilst the transparency of their wiseguy fronting on the thuggish “Cause I Said So” is tragically exposed by the beautiful “It’s So Hard”, which leaves little doubt that they’re not half as hard as they wish they were (although the ill-considered “Just Like You” is just plain soppy).

A large part of the thrill lies in their contradictions: A blatantly retro band who were in some ways ahead of their time, brutalised Thatcher-haters who glorified the starkest, deadliest form of capitalism (80s Britain’s counterpart to gangsta rap?), East End hardmen on the verge of tears. The Strangest Boys indeed. The revival is nigh!