Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but it's thought that Vietnamese guest work-
ers may total as many as 60,000. Indeed, the Vietnamese surname Nguyen is now re-
portedly the 9th most common family name in the country, according to a survey con-
Prague or the western Bohemian city of Cheb. Many make a living by running neigh-
bourhood grocery shops, known in Czech as a
večerka
.
RESTITUTION FOR CHURCHES
For the past 20 years, Czech courts have been busy adjudicating disputes
between former property holders who saw their property seized by the commun-
ists in the late 1940s and '50s, and the current owners - often the state.
While the law is messy, in general if you lost property in the confiscations, you
had a decent chance of getting it back. That is, unless you were a church. For
years, both Catholic and Protestant groups had been lobbying the government
to gain back their nationalised lands, churches and buildings. That effort finally
bore fruit in early 2012, with a landmark government ruling to provide compens-
ation to the churches, and in many cases to return their land and buildings.
While the details are yet to be worked out, the compensation - which could
run to many billions of euros - will unfold over the next 30 years. The payouts
are expected to be a big boost for the beleaguered church groups in their efforts
to shore up their ranks.
A MODERN-DAY LACK OF FAITH
Despite having an active and often violent religious history that stretches back several
centuries, Czechs take a much more hands-off approach to the question of religion
these days. While hard data is hard to come by, surveys indicate that more than half of
all Czechs are either atheists or agnostics. Just 40% or so of the population professes a
belief in God.
Among believers, the largest church is the Roman Catholic Church, which claims
membership of around a third of the population (though some surveys put this number
far lower). Compare this to neighbouring Poland, where 90% of the population say
