Emily O'Dell in Prague
All morning, I’ve been busy making plans for my upcoming trip to Bohemia. Unfortunately, I’ll be getting there after the Trutnov Open Air Festival, one of the country’s most iconic music festivals, and a favorite of underground music fanatics. Whenever I tell my Czech friends how proud I am of being Czechoslovak, they say, “well, at least someone is.” By contrast, the church-going Slovaks, as opposed to the (proudly) atheist Czechs, are a proud national bunch–as I find every year when I go to the NJ Slovak Festival (yes, that’s really a thing). I haven’t been back to the Czech Republic since I lived there doing research on religion a few years ago– but this trip the mood in Prague will certainly be different. Since a wire-tapping scandal this summer led to the resignation of the prime minister–with his replacement set to resign today after last week’s vote of no-confidence, my Czech friends have been plunged into even an even deeper depression than usual.
But where some cynics see corruption, others see opportunity. Today the NYTimes has an article about a new tour of locations in Prague related to corruption and cronyism called the “Crony Safari”, an idea cooked up by–what else–a philosopher, performance artist turned tour operator:
“Among the stops: the towering villa of a powerful lobbyist nicknamed Lord Voldemort; an elite school where bags of cash are said to buy a degree; and a single, barely visible address registered by nearly 600 companies.”
Perhaps the more corruption proliferates globally in this so-called era of economic instability, these kinds of tours will proliferate too–since, as Mr. Sourek (the Czech tour operator notes) notes, corruption is a growth business that’s always recession-proof.
