The Czech landscape is exceedingly varied. Moravia, the eastern part of the country, is also quite hilly. The Czech Republic also leases the Moldauhafen, a 30,square-metre 7. The territory reverts to Germany in According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the territory of the Czech Republic can be subdivided into four ecoregions: the Central European mixed forests, Pannonian mixed forests, Western European broadleaf forests and Carpathian montane conifer forests.
There are four national parks in the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic has a temperate continental climate, with relatively hot summers and cold, cloudy and snowy winters. The temperature difference between summer and winter is relatively high, due to the landlocked geographical position.
Within the Czech Republic, temperatures vary greatly, depending on the elevation. In general, at higher altitudes, the temperatures decrease and precipitation increases. Another important factor is the distribution of the mountains; therefore, the climate is quite varied. The country's capital, Prague, has a similar average temperature, although this is influenced by urban factors. The coldest month is usually January, followed by February and December.
During these months, there is usually snow in the mountains and sometimes in the major cities and lowlands. During March, April and May, the temperature usually increases rapidly, especially during April, when the temperature and weather tends to vary widely during the day. Spring is also characterized by high water levels in the rivers, due to melting snow with occasional flooding. The warmest month of the year is July, followed by August and June.
Summer is also characterized by rain and storms. Autumn generally begins in September, which is still relatively warm and dry.
By the end of November, temperatures usually range around the freezing point. Most rain falls during the summer. Sporadic rainfall is relatively constant throughout the year in Prague, the average number of days per month experiencing at least 0. Growth has been led by exports to the European Union, especially Germany, and foreign investment, while domestic demand is reviving. Most of the economy has been privatised, including the banks and telecommunications.
The current centre-right government plans to continue with privatisation, including the energy industry and the Prague airport. A survey in cooperation with the Czech Economic Association found that the majority of Czech economists favor continued liberalization in most sectors of the economy.
The country is part of the Schengen Area from 1 May , having abolished border controls, completely opening its borders with all of its neighbours, Germany, Austria, Poland and Slovakia, on 21 December The last Czech government led by social democrats had expressed a desire to adopt the euro in , but the current centre-right government suspended that plan in An exact date has not been set up, but the Finance Ministry described adoption by as realistic, if public finance reform passes.
However, the most recent draft of the euro adoption plan omits giving any date. Although the country is economically better positioned than other EU Members to adopt the euro, the change is not expected before , due to political reluctance on the matter.
In , it handled Of that number, 2, km 1, In , according to the Czech Statistical Office, Russia, via pipelines through Ukraine and to a lesser extent, Norway, via pipelines through Germany, supply the Czech Republic with liquid and natural gas. The Czech Republic is reducing its dependence on highly polluting low-grade brown coal as a source of energy. Natural gas is procured from Russian Gazprom, roughly three-fourths of domestic consumption and from Norwegian companies, which make up most of the remaining one-fourth.
Russian gas is imported via Ukraine Druzhba pipeline , Norwegian gas is transported through Germany. Gas consumption approx. South Moravia has small oil and gas deposits. The road network in the Czech Republic is 55, km 34, The Czech Republic ranks in the top 10 countries worldwide with the fastest average internet speed. By the beginning of , there were over mostly local WISPs, with about , subscribers in The Czech Republic has a rich scientific tradition.
Important inventions include the modern contact lens, the separation of modern blood types, and the production of the Semtex plastic explosive. Prominent scientists who lived and worked in historically Czech lands include:. The Czech economy gets a substantial income from tourism. In , Prague was the sixth most visited city in Europe. In , the total earnings from tourism reached In , however, there was a slump in tourist numbers in Prague, possibly due to the strong Czech koruna crown making the country too expensive for visitors, compared to the level of services that were available.
The country's reputation has also suffered with guidebooks and tourists reporting overcharging by taxi drivers and pickpocketing problems. Also, the Czech Republic as a whole generally has a low crime rate. For tourists, the Czech Republic is considered a safe destination to visit.
The low crime rate makes most cities and towns safe to walk around even after dark. There are several centres of tourist activity. The historic city of Prague is the primary tourist attraction, [ citation needed ] as the city is also the most common point of entry for tourists visiting other parts of the country. The country is also famous for its love of puppetry and marionettes with a number of puppet festivals throughout the country.
According to preliminary results of the census, the majority of the inhabitants of the Czech Republic are Czechs According to some estimates, there are about , Romani people in the Czech Republic. There were , foreigners residing in the country in October , according to the Czech Interior Ministry, with the largest groups being Ukrainian , , Slovak 75, , Vietnamese 61, , Russian 29, , Polish 19, , German 14, , Moldovan 10, , Bulgarian 6, , Mongolian 5, , American 5, , Chinese 5, , British 4, , Belarusian 4, , Serbian 4, , Romanian 4, , Kazakh 3, , Austrian 3, , Italian 2, , Dutch 2, , French 2, , Croatian 2, , Bosnian 2, , Armenian 2, , Uzbek 1, , Macedonian 1, and Japanese 1, The Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia, , according to the census, was virtually annihilated by the Nazi Germans during the Holocaust.
There were approximately 4, Jews in the Czech Republic in The former Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, is of Jewish origin and faith. Estimates of Czech fertility rate in are among the lowest in the world at 1. About 77, new foreigners settle down in the Czech Republic every year.
Vietnamese immigrants began settling in the Czech Republic during the Communist period, when they were invited as guest workers by the Czechoslovak government. In , there were about 70, Vietnamese in the Czech Republic. In contrast to Ukrainians, Vietnamese come to the Czech Republic to live permanently. At the turn of the 20th century, Chicago was the city with the third largest Czech population, after Prague and Vienna.
According to the US census, there are 1,, Americans of full or partial Czech descent. The Czech Republic has one of the least religious populations on Earth. Historically, the Czech people have been characterised as "tolerant and even indifferent towards religion". According to the census, From to and further to the adherence to Roman Catholicism decreased from Music in the Czech Republic has its roots in more than 1, year old sacred music the first surviving references come from the end of the 10th century , in the traditional folk music of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and in the long-term high-culture classical music tradition.
Since the early eras of artificial music, Czech musicians and composers have often been influenced by genuine folk music. Czech literature is the literature written by Czechs or other inhabitants of the Czech state, mostly in the Czech language, although other languages like Old Church Slavonic, Latin or German have been also used, especially in the past.
Czech authors who had written in the German language, such as Franz Kafka, are usually excluded from the corpus of Czech literature, regardless of their own national self-identification.
Czech literature is divided into several main time periods: the Middle Ages; the Hussite period; the years of re-Catholicization and the baroque; the Enlightenment and Czech reawakening in the 19th century; the avantgarde of the interwar period; the years under Communism and the Prague Spring; and the literature of the post-Communist Czech Republic.
Czech literature and culture played a major role on at least two occasions, when Czechs lived under oppression and political activity was suppressed. On both of these occasions, in the early 19th century and then again in the s, the Czechs used their cultural and literary effort to strive for political freedom, establishing a confident, politically aware nation.
Theatre of the Czech Republic has rich tradition with roots in the Middle Ages. In the 19th century, the theatre played an important role in the national awakening movement and later, in the 20th century it became a part of the modern European theatre art.
The Czech Republic is known worldwide for their individually made, mouth blown and decorated art glass and crystal. One of the best Czech painter and decorative artist was Alphonse Mucha — mainly known for art nouveau posters and his cycle of 20 large canvases named The Slav Epic, which depicts the history of Czechs and other Slavic peoples.
Czech cuisine is marked by a strong emphasis on meat dishes. Nevertheless, the border was not clearly defined at some points and, in some areas, the border cut across streets, access roads and communities that had co-existed for centuries. People living or owning property in the border area, however, did not stop experiencing practical problems until both new countries entered the Schengen Agreement Area, after which the borders became less significant.
Most federal assets were divided in a ratio of 2 to 1 the approximate ratio between the Czech and Slovak population within Czechoslovakia , including army equipment, rail and airliner infrastructure. Some minor disputes e.
Initially the old Czechoslovak currency, the Czechoslovak koruna, was still used in both countries. Fears of economic loss on the Czech side caused the two states to adopt two national currencies as early as 8 February At the beginning, the currencies had an equal exchange rate, but later on, for most of the time, the value of the Slovak koruna was lower than that of the Czech koruna up to ca.
Since 2 August , the two currencies were distinguished by different stamps first affixed to and then printed on the old Czechoslovak koruna banknotes. Neither the Czech Republic nor Slovakia sought recognition as the sole successor state to Czechoslovakia. Therefore, Czechoslovakia's membership in the UN ceased upon dissolution of the country, but on 19 January the Czech and Slovak Republics were admitted to the UN as new and separate states.
With respect to other international treaties the Czechs and Slovaks agreed to honour the treaty obligations of Czechoslovakia. The Slovaks transmitted a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations on 19 May expressing their intent to remain a party to all treaties signed and ratified by Czechoslovakia, and to ratify those treaties signed but not ratified before dissolution of Czechoslovakia. This letter acknowledged that under international law all treaties signed and ratified by Czechoslovakia would remain in force.
For example, both countries are recognized as signatories of the Antarctic Treaty from the date Czechoslovakia signed the agreement back in However, it was not a factor in the dissolution of Czechoslovakia since it did not enter into force until The dissolution had some negative impact on the two economies, especially in , as traditional links needed to accommodate the bureaucracy of international trade were severed, but the impact was considerably less than expected by many people.
Many Czechs hoped that dissolution would quickly start an era of high economic growth in the Czech Republic without the need to "sponsor the less developed Slovakia". Similarly others looked forward to a stand-alone, unexploited Slovakia which might become a new "economic tiger". The growth of the Slovak GDP, however, has been consistently higher than the Czech one since and the margin between the two states is closing.
Furthermore, Slovakia has overtaken the Czech Republic in terms of economic reforms aimed at approaching the economic conditions of the West. One of the outcomes so far has been the acceptance of Slovakia into the Euro Area in , which the Czech Republic still does not fully qualify for on account of the missing reforms, some of which are required for accession.
While the wealth of the Czech Rep. One of the problems not solved during dissolution was the question of a large number of Roma living in the Czech Republic, who were born and officially registered in today's Slovakia. Most of them did not re-register their official place of stay during the months before dissolution, and so the question of their citizenship was left open. The Czech Nationality Act allowed a grant of automatic citizenship only to those born on Czech territory.
For others, the right to citizenship required proof of a five-year period of residence, an "unobjectionable" criminal record, significant fees and a complicated bureaucratic process; this reportedly excluded a rather large percentage of Roma.
The Slovak government did not want to grant citizenship to non-residents. Significant numbers of Roma living in Czech orphanages did not have their legal status clarified, and were released from care as adult non-citizens without any right to work or live in the Czech Republic. Under pressure from the European Union, the Czech government made amendments to its nationality law in and which effectively solved the problem; however, compensation has not been provided to those rendered stateless in In the former Czechoslovakia, the first television channel was a federal one and the Czech and Slovak languages were used in equal ratios in the TV news there, although foreign films and TV series were almost exclusively dubbed into Czech, for example.
This and the fact that both languages are very similar made almost all people of both nations passively bilingual, i. After the dissolution in s the new TV channels in the Czech Republic practically stopped using Slovak, and young Czech people now have a much lower understanding of the Slovak language.
Also, the number of Slovak-language books and newspapers sold in the Czech Republic dropped drastically. On Slovak state TV, it is common to have daily at least one newscast from the Czech Republic in prime time news. Further, for economic reasons, many TV programmes on Slovak TV channels are still dubbed into Czech, some films in cinemas are subtitled in Czech and there are far more Czech-language books and periodicals on the market than before the dissolution.
Young Slovak people still have the same knowledge if not better of the Czech language as their predecessors. Even today, in Slovakia, Czech may be used automatically in all judicial proceedings, plus all documents written in Czech are acknowledged by Slovak authorities, and vice versa.
Further, the Slovak Official Language Act passed in did reconfirm the right of Czechs to use their language in all official communication when dealing with Slovak authorities however, the Act explicitly limited the use of Czech in Slovakia only to persons with Czech as their mother tongue. On the territory of the Czech Republic there are four national parks Krkonose, Sumava, Podyji and Czech Switzerland which are subject to the strictest rules to assure their protection.
On the territory of the Czech Republic there are numerous cold and hot natural mineral water springs which are used for curative and convalescent treatments in areas where there are also spas.
Many of these sources also serve for the production of mineral and table water. The Czech Republic has a long-standing tradition in industrial production.
The composition of its industries is being restructured to typically correspond to a small but mature market economy. In recent years the share of food production has increased, while there has been a decline in the engineering segment, which, however, continues to be the most important industrial branch in the Czech Republic.
The most developed areas in consumer goods production are the traditional branches manufacturing textiles and clothing, shoes, porcelain, ceramics and costume jewellery. The most significant areas in food production are industries processing flour, sugar, meat and brewing beer. There is a long prevailing tradition in breeding freshwater fish and in this connection fish-farming in the numerous man-made lakes is well developed.
Hops are an important export article. About the Czech Republic Area: 78, sq. History The earliest historic evidence of ethnic groups who settled in the Czech basin at the beginning of 4th century B. Architecture Thanks to its position in the heart of Europe the country has been confronted with various cultural influences and architectural styles in the course of its history.
Natural wealth The natural wealth in the Czech Republic is protected in many areas which have officially been declared nature reserves.
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