A Czech Mystery

Some years ago, we went to Prague for a few days and visited the Národní technické muzeum v Praze (National Technical Museum in Prague). Among the displays were some beautifully restored classical cars.

But something was wrong. The Czech Republic is a landlocked country situated in the middle of Europe but these cars had right hand steering wheels. They were designed for driving on the left hand side of the road.

Sherlock and Doctor Watson immediately investigated. Little grey cells went into overdrive, Kojak sucked a lollipop – sorry, I got carried away there.

We asked a museum attendant. This was more difficult than it sounds.  Our Czech was limited to the few phrases needed to get around. His English was nearly as non-existent. It took some time, a little German, some pointing at our phrase book, and a lot of gesticulation to get the answer. 

According to him, after the Nazis invaded in 1939, Hitler decreed that Czechoslovakia should drive on the right – NOW!  That made sense and we knew that the same thing had happened in Austria.

There the matter rested till last Saturday when The Guardian published a review of a book about China. To illustrate the book, a picture of the Caiyunba Bridge over the Yangtze was shown, with one, lonely car in view – definitely driving on the left, though China drives on the right. Closer examination (and a flurry of googling) showed that the car was on a slip road and the photo was probably taken in 2007 when the bridge was opened.

That led us back to the Czech issue of changing the flow of traffic from left to right. We discovered an article on Wikipedia which claimed that the Czech government had planned to change to driving on the right‘within a reasonable time’ as early as 1925 and had just not got around to it.  H’mm!  No sources given. In fact the article had a header saying that citations were needed.

More searches revealed quotes from the Wikipedia article, often lifted verbatim (plagiarism is rife on the web) and nothing with authoritative sources.

Short of contacting the Czech Embassy, who may not know as the Czech Republic was part of Czechoslovakia in the period we are talking about, it remains one of the many little niggling mysteries which constantly plague our inquisitive minds.

Unless you know the answer?

Crete - In Praise of Books

Every so often, I curl up and ride with Irma Kurtz on Greyhound buses across America, travel the very edge of Great Britain with Paul Theroux (or laugh at our British foibles with Bill Bryson).  I sometimes sail the Aegean Sea with Mimi Lafollette Summerville.  I may never do any of those exact journeys in the flesh but, in my imagination, I have been there -  thanks to the authors.

Sometimes, it works the other way.  I bought a new copy of ‘Aegean Summer’ in a bookshop in Heraklion and turned to the chapter ‘Cretan Interlude’ while having a coffee and read ‘Noon found us, as planned, at the Taverna in front of the Morosini Fountain.’  I looked up – and there it was.  I was sitting where the author sat with her family in the summer of 1965.

My interest in Crete didn’t start with a travel book, though.  It was Mary Renault’s first novel about Theseus, ‘The King Must Die’ that sparked my interest in the Minoan civilisation when it was first published in 1958.  At that time, most of the books I read were borrowed from the Public Library and I finally bought my own copy in Heraklion in 2005 when I fulfilled my ambition of visiting Crete and Knossos.

Books mentioned:
The King Must Die by Mary Renault
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson,  
The Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux
Aegean Summer by Mimi Lafollette Summerskill 
The Great American Bus Ride by Irma Kurtz


My trip was a Christmas present from Alan and Jon.   As it happened, one of Alan's students came from Crete and her parents met me from the plane and took me to my hotel in Heraklion and said, quite casually, "You must come for dinner with us tonight."  This was all in a mix of their inadequate English and my even less adequate Greek!  I was a little reluctant to impose but, having sampled Greek hospitality before, I knew better than to refuse.

"We'll pick you up at 10 o'clock." To cut a long story short, they insisted in taking me out every night (at 10 o'clock) and each night I rolled back into the hotel at about 2 in the morning having been to a different restaurant and being the only non Cretan there. It ranged from large places - in one of which I was toasted with shouts of 'Manchester United' by a group of youngsters, who were celebrating their own success in a local league, to a small cafe where you could hardly raise your elbows but served the most gorgeous fresh seafood I have ever tasted. That was the one where a young man suddenly produced his guitar and played a succession of traditional songs and everyone joined in.

On hearing that Vickie (Alan's daughter) was getting married and I needed an outfit, the student's mother marched me off to a local boutique and I was treated to a hilarious couple of hours where I tried on various outfits and more and more women arrived and poked me and tweaked the clothes and expressed quite blunt opinions till I had chosen one which met their satisfaction. It didn't quite fit so the proprietor got on the phone and within 10 minutes a seamstress had arrived and I was wearing the dress, inside out, while she adjusted the seams with pins - with advice and comments from all the locals. Two hours later, it was delivered to the hotel, fitted perfectly and was duly worn at the wedding in North Carolina and was worn for many formal occasions after that.