We got Czechs all over the place here

Interesting phenomenon on the traffic front. The Czech Republic came by recently, and I check to see if it was a first-time visit. It was not; the Czech Republic had been by once before, but a blog I like is by a guy here so I felt like I should give a proper welcome to the Czech Republic, which famously got short shrift the first time around.* I decided to give the Czech Republic the travelogue treatment.

Before I got to it, I got inundated with visitors from the Czech Republic, "inundated" being a relative term, of course. For a couple days, they trailed only the U.S. in numbers of visitors. Anyway, given the love the Czechs have been showing Eff You, I figured I better get off the dime and reciprocate. So, just in time for Christmas, I bring you the Czech Republic, Eff You style:

The Czech Republic . . . is a landlocked country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the northwest and west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. Prague, the capital, is the largest city, with 1.3 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the historical territories of Bohemia and Moravia, and Czech Silesia.

After a few tumultuous centuries that included basically starting The 30 Years War and stints under the Habsburg, Austrian and Austro-Hungarian empires, the Czech Republic emerged from World War I as Czechoslovakia, an entity that survived until 1993. Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany during World War II. The Sudetenland, the border regions of Czechoslovakia around the western half of the country occupied largely by German-speaking people, actually got occupied in 1938, when Neville Chamberlain and the other European powers achieved "peace in our time" about a year before that claim got blowed up. But I digress.

U.S. Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army liberated part of Czechoslovakia, but the Soviets liberated most of it and rigged the 1946 election so that the Communist Party won. Unhappy with the results -- Czechoslovakia still was holding actual elections, after all -- the Soviets backed a coup in 1948 that left Czechoslovakia a single-party state run by the Soviets and their puppets.

The Czech people were not digging it, so they revolted in 1968, known as the Prague Spring. The Czechs were doing a pretty good job of instituting reforms that inevitably would have weakened Communist control, so the Soviet Union invaded and put a stop to that crap. More than 20 years later, in 1989, came the Velvet Revolution, a peaceful movement that shook off Communism as the Soviet Union slid toward collapse. In 1993, Slovakia and the Czech Republic split into separate nations. The Czech Republic has developed into one of Europe's better economies since then and is a member of NATO and the European Union.

The Czech Republic is a multi-party parliamentary representative democracy. The Prime Minister is the head of government, which includes a two-house Parliament consisting of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The president, formerly chosen by Parliament, now is directly elected by the people. The president is the formal head of state, but has limited, specific powers with respect to the government.

The CR has a varied geography, with significant mountainous areas as well as rolling hills and several major rivers, including the Elbe River, Oder River and the Vltava River, which flows through Prague, the capital and largest city. Prague is pretty:

The CR is doing much better economically than most of the other former Soviet satellite states. It has not adopted the Euro yet (don't do it, guys!) and is doing quite well without it:

The Czech Republic possesses a developed,[51] high-income[52] economy with a per capita GDP rate that is 81% of the European Union average.[53] One of the most stable and prosperous of the post-Communist states, the Czech Republic saw growth of over 6% annually in the three years before the outbreak of the recent global economic crisis. Growth has been led by exports to the European Union, especially Germany, and foreign investment, while domestic demand is reviving.

Oh, yeah -- the Czech Embassy in D.C. is kind of nice, too:

So there you have it. Hope all of our Czech Republic visitors keep coming back. Welcome to Eff You (the proper response, I believe, is "Eff You, too!").

*That might be the first time I ever included three links in one sentence.