The Good Soldier Svejk

Culture stop!

My bosses recently visited the City of Prague in the Czech Republic for a meeting with our European counterparts. I heard it's a wonderful city so I bugged one of my Slovak colleagues to get me something traditionally Czech, preferably a famous pair. He came back to Manila with a Czech patch for my travel bag and two small figurines of famous Czech characters: The Good Soldier Svejk ("because you have a thing for soldiers") and the Golem ("because it looks funny").

I have no pictures yet of my actual two but they are now happily looking at me from my office desk. I find them soo sweet. Hehe. And the story of Josef Svejk equally interesting. It is apparently an unfinished series, I don't know why: (excerpts from Wikipedia)

My Svejk wears a green uniform. I think mine wore a Russian uniform by mistake

(one of the plots of his many anecdotes)

The story begins in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I. Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the war effort. Through possibly-feigned idiocy or incompetence he repeatedly manages to frustrate military authority and expose its stupidity in a form of passive resistance: the reader is left unclear, however, as to whether Švejk is genuinely incompetent, or acting quite deliberately with dumb insolence.

He's probably really famous because I also found a Facebook fan page and a Flickr photo set of all the cartoons from the original book.

The other one, the Golem - has a pretty colorful story as well! He is famous around Europe and have been used as an inspiration for many movies and sci-fi characters.

Depending on the version of the legend, under Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed. To protect the Jewish community, the rabbi constructed the Golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava river, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. As this golem grew, it became increasingly violent, killing gentiles and spreading fear. A different story tells of a golem falling in love, and when rejected, he became the violent monster as seen in most accounts. Some versions have the golem eventually turning on its creator and perhaps even attacking other Jews.