Compact archive July 19, 2006

The sixth festival of juggling starts today and will continue until Sunday. Czech Juggling Convention 2006 will be inspired by its European counterpart (the biggest international juggling event) which has many years of experience.

The festival will be opened tonight by Theatre Continuo and their free open air performance “Too much to the touch” in Park Vítkov. The next day is the real start of the festival workshops where all of the participants can exchange their experience and techniques.

The tickets can be purchased for the separate days or for the entire festival. Workshops about juggling, dance and various techniques and moves are designed both for the professionals as well as for the public. The other items of the programme include surely exciting fire battle, music concerts and parties. More details are accessible on the official site.

What about trying to find out where your boundaries of strength lie and whether you fear? What about testing your stamina?

You must overcome your fear, your team must be strongly connected together. Testing yourself is super experience. Who can run down the rock, ride water scooter, fly above the canyon hundreds meters in 100 m high, etc.?

After six years in Decin the opportunity to experience an unprecedented challenge reaches the capital city. Saturday 22 July will definitely be an exciting day for the watchers, who can try their own “small challenge”, but much more for the participants of Adrenalin Challenge Prague 2006 .

The competition for three-member teams is designed to test the abilities, strength and courage of the members as well as to enhance their teamwork. The disciplines will include for example abseiling from Vysehrad mountain or becoming familiar with Vltava river whilst trying to jet ski.

There is also the possibility of enjoying the complementary programme such as races of dragon ships, fire show and dances. Barman show as well as combat sports are also expected to belong among the highlights of the day.

More about the previous years in Decin can be read here where the quotation was taken from .

Problems with overpriced Prague taxi are decreasing, but you can still met some cheater. Travellers should know that Prague has maximum costs of taxi service and each taxi driver has to give a ticket to passenger after ride. Now taxi drivers and companies will have more duties.

Most important is that maximum costs will be higher for a little.
Lump sum will be 40 crowns, one kilometer costs 28 crowns and a one minute of waiting will be 6 crowns. The changes starts with year 2007. Now the costs are 34 crowns of fixed rate, 25 crowns for a kilometer and 5 crowns costs one minute of waiting.
No taxi driver in Prague can want more.

Next change is that Prague will allow to drivers to wait at city taxi posts only if cars would accept Prague’s requirements. Cars will have to be at least in lower class no older than eight years. They will have to have yellow color and air condition. This order starts in year 2009.

Here is a list of some Prague taxi services.

I’ve for you another review from Prague. You can read here about The Museum of Decorative Arts, Crucifix and Calvary or Lennon’s Wall. The author author comments most popular sightseeing of Prague like Astronomical clock.
The story also link to some photos.

After the museum, we decided to wade into the growing crowd of tourists (and the people ready to sell the tourists a bunch of crap). That’s right: We walked over the Charles Bridge (Karlův Most) where I stopped to rub the statue of St. John of Nepomuk. Apparently this means that I will return to Prague in the future. I also stopped to take a picture of the “Crucifix and Calvary” (sousoší Kříže s Kalvárií). To be quite honest, I had no clue that this was a famous statue. I stopped because the golden Hebrew text seemed so out of place on a crucifix. According to Wikipedia, this text was added in 1696 as a punishment for a Prague Jew who had been convicted of “debasing the Holy Cross.”

The article continues here.

The Supreme Administrative Court cancelled the change of the town planning scheme allowing the construction of another Prague Ruzyne Airport runway. This decision presents a serious obstacle in airport’s planned big expansion.

The reasons for the decision were the mistakes done whilst allowing the change of the town planning scheme. The people living in the affected area (mainly Nebusice) voted against the new runway already in 2004 referendum. The complaints of the people fearing the increase in noise levels were not properly addressed. The Czech Ministry of Environment was reported also to have disagreed. The influence of the runway on the environment has to be considered more thoroughly.

The new runway is an absolute must for the planned capacity increase which is viewed as necessary. For example, between the years 2004 and 2005 the number of passengers who checked-in at Ruzyne rose by ten per cent. Recently, the airport provided service for 10.8 million passengers – a total exceeding the number of people living in the entire Czech Republic.

The expansion represents a significant investment ranging between 5 and 7 bn Czech Crowns. The runway was expected to be completed by the year 2009 and to be succeeded by further expansion. Given the decision of the court it remains to be seen to what extent the capacity-enlargement will be delayed or whether it will take place at all.

James Blunt’s Prague Concert 2008 Here

Brightly shining British star with his band Zero arrived to Prague yesterday to sing the very same evening in Lumbeho garden. The concert for ten thousand fans lasted approximately 80 minutes and was (not at all surprisingly) sold out.

James Blunt, who was a soldier in Kosovo and admitted he would like to organize for Kosovo a charity concert, sang the touching songs from his first and only album Back To Bedlam. Nevertheless, he also claimed to be halfway through preparation for the release of his second album.

The winner of two Brit Awards gave to Prague Castle gardens a tree as a gift. It should serve as a replacement for the pear-tree that had to be chopped down when the stage was built.

Blunt’s morning programme included a special private tour of the Prague Castle offered only to distinguished guests. The star expressed his liking for Prague, which he considers a beautiful end to a part of his tour. He even wants to spend here four days of his holiday. James Blunt has a reason to have a special relationship to Prague since his girlfriend is Czech top model Perta Nemcova.

One of the largest world stock exchanges will open a new IT development centre in Prague. The capital city will thus become the third largest centre of Frankfurt Deutsche Börse Group after Frankfurt and Luxembourg. Software centre will be developing new IT programmes for the whole group of German stock exchange. Its future role will also be internalizing some of the formerly external tasks.

The software centre is expected to employ around 40 experts in the course of this year. The total number of staff members was said to rise up to 150 till the year 2008. The Czech Stock Exchange does not fear the drain of its own experts because it utilizes a different system. This move by its German counterpart is therefore equivalent to an arrival of any other foreign investor from the IT area.

A careful economic comparison of potential locations in several central European countries showed that Prague was the best choice given the level of human capital of Czech IT professionals. Not only does Prague represent a place with highly qualified IT experts but the future employees also meet the requirements concerning knowledge of English and German languages.

This move by German Börse confirms that Prague becomes increasingly in the spot light of foreign investors.