Compact archive July 14, 2006

Do you want to try something more cool than usual walk in hot Prague streets? So what about skydiving?

This is definitely fun at higher level. More precisely the fun starts in 4000 meters altitude. Then you and your tandem partner have a minute of free fall in speed 200 km/h. And than you can see the Czech Republic several minutes from beneath the parachute. you can even try to control the parachute and the drop is like a jump from the chair. Some para companies also offer you a recording the jump at VHS or DVD.

The jump costs about 3500 crowns and there is some companies in surrounding of Prague.

EXS
Impact Prague
Sky service
Jump-Tandem
Tandem centre Prague

This Sunday is 13th final of Czech Bowl, an American football. The match is at Athlete stadium Slavia in Prague 10. The match begin at 1 pm.

Finalists are Prague Lions and only one team from Slovakia Bratislava Monarchs. Monarch team in final match is a great surprise, because they defeated eightfold champion Prague Panthers.

As is was in previous years there is a support cultural programme. AS it was last year the match is under the auspices of an ambassador of USA, Williams J. Cabaniss, who will also visit the match.

An exhibition at Prague Castle called At four feet becomes more attractive. This exhibition shows the history of sitting furniture at the castle.

New piece is an armchair made by world known architect Josip Plecnik (1872-1957) for the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. It was consider that the chair is lost, fortunately it was found at an auction this May. Prague castle administration bought the armchair for 170 thousands crown.

Two moths was the armchair restored and now visitors can see this rare piece of furniture. The chair is made from exclusive materials in limited edition. “It can be easily compared with value of sculptures,” said a trustee of the exposition Adriana Primusova. Josip Plecnik was invited to Prague Castle by president Masaryk to design an architectonic rebuilding and arrangement of Prague Castle.

The exhibition is in Belvedere (Queen Anne’s Summer Palace) at Prague Castle every day except Monday until the end of October.

As statistics says, tourists still visits the same monuments and objects for sightseeing. People mostly visits recommended places. Most usual is that tourist spent in Prague two of three days in historical centre. The third day is mostly individual and tourists are willing to travel to distant places, even out of Prague.

Most popular during a year is definitely Prague Castle. 2,100,000 people it visited and most popular is St.Vitus Cathedral, Old Royal Palace, Golden Lane and Daliborka tower.
The second is zoo in Troja 1,215,000 people visit is. The number mostly depends on opening of new pavilions. The third is Jewish museum – 633.300 visitors. People mostly visits Old Jewish cemetery and Pinkas Synagogue.
4) National Gallery with 466 000 visitors. Most popular is Veletrzni palace (Trade Fair Palace).
5) Old Town City Hall 397 000
6) National Museum
7) Petrin tower and the Mirror maze – 315 000
8) Botanical garden -307 000

The number of visitors strongly depend on weather. Open places like the castle or a zoo has a smaller number of tourists in a rain or in colder weather places places with a roof are more popular in these days.

Prague transport service suggests changes in night trams. Fortunately the reason is totally comprehensible.

Night trams and buses can be invaluable help in late night hours, their work starts in 11pm and they journey ends in early morning hours at about four or five am. They substitute day buses, trams and metro. This service in dark hours brings some problems.

Many passengers are homeless, drunk, or without ticket. Drivers of tram have problems with them. Some of them are aggressive and they refuses to leave the tram. Drunk people can easily filthy a vehicle. So it was decided to have a tram conductor in each tram. This new position brings new need of finance so it is expected that cost for a ride will be about 40 CZK. Passengers with long-term season tickets won’t pay any additional money.

Skoda company celebrates. It produced 10,000,000th car in a history. First car was made in year 1905. Speed of produce is rapidly raising. First five millions was made durin 86 years, the following only in 15 years. The chief of Skoda expects, that another ten millions would take only twenty years.

Skoda Auto has its origin in Bohemia in years, when Czech Republic was only a piece of Austria-Hungary territory. First models of cars was made in numbers of hundreds. Most cars of similar type were made in communistic era. It were models from Skoda 105 to Skoda 120 built betwwen year 1976 and 1990 and their number was over two millions.

One million cars reached models from new era: Favorit, Felicia, Octavia and Fabia. A little bit older Octavia in two types- normal and combi- is still very popular, it is produced more than Fabia. Octavia Combi Elegance 2.0 Tdi was the ten millionth car.

Skoda produces cars in Czech Republic – towns Mlada Boleslav, Vrchlabi, Kvasiny- Kazachstan, China and Russia. Cars produced in present time are models of cars Octavia in many versions, Fabia, Superb and as a brand new car Roomster. In 2009 the Skoda will start a production of a new car: an off road named Yeti.

Official sites of Skoda Auto are here.