Magazine

Photo: YouTube
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In Magazine: a class of graduates wow their school with a near-naked dance act, a newly-married couple is suing a wedding agency for wrecking their wedding day, a fraudster dupes forty people in Prague with a ludicrous offer and people in Brno have a new communication platform – one of the city’s trams.

Photo: YouTube
The male graduates of the Jan Kepler grammar school in Prague have become an Internet hit with a dance act they performed for their schoolmates, teachers and parents at their graduation party. At precisely midnight the dozen or so young men took the floor stark naked with only something resembling black ping-pong paddles in their hands to hide their private parts. Despite the late hour and alcohol consumed at the party they went through the elaborate dance creation without putting a foot wrong. The class got a standing ovation and the video which appeared on 9GAG has been seen by some 90 thousand viewers.


Illustrative photo: archive of Radio Prague
A newly-married couple has taken a wedding agency to court for failing to arrange a church wedding on the day the couple had asked for after consulting a numerologist about which date would secure harmony and wedded bliss. Although the agency reserved the right day in the local church it failed to deliver some documents on time and the pastor refused to perform the ceremony without them. The couple was wedded several days later and say they suffered a shock by getting the marriage off on the wrong foot, so to speak. In any case they are now demanding 68,000 crowns in compensation for the psychological damage suffered –and maybe because now they will have to work that much harder to make the marriage a success.


Photo: Filip Jandourek
The police have caught up with a fraudster who duped over forty people in Prague. The man who frequented trams and busses, dressed as a ticket inspector, offered to extend the validity of people’s Opencards (an electronic payment card for transport in Prague) for a year for the price of just 500 crowns, when the regular fee is 5,000. Amazingly dozens of people readily handed over the money and the fake ticket inspector became increasingly brash – approaching people in the street, shopping malls and even a nightclub. On one occasion he reportedly made the offer to extend the card of an ice-cream vendor for just 50 crowns and a free ice-cream.


Photo: Kristýna Maková
Given the Internet and mobile phones people do not really have a problem communicating these days, but the Brno transport authority has decided to get involved and has offered one of its trams as a platform for public exchange. People can write whatever message they like – voice their opinion, share a grievance, tell a joke, declare love, paint a picture or write a poem and it will be placed on the inside of the tram in spaces usually reserved for advertisements. No ads, phone numbers or emails are allowed and the messages will appear on a first-come-first served basis. Seventy-two messages will be put up at a time and replaced each month. The Brno transport authority says the campaign is its way of communicating better with the public and making the daily trip to work for commuters more entertaining.


Photo: archive of Radio Prague
March is traditionally marked as national reading month in the Czech Republic and libraries have organized lots of events to encourage people to devote more time to reading. For instance the library in Lipník nad Bečvou uses the occasion to offload books of which it has too many copies. And rather than inviting people to come and choose, it puts them on busses in the Přerov region –turning them into mobile libraries. Commuters can pick up a book start reading and if they like it, take it home for free. The event is in its third year and the library says that all their donations are snapped up. Old magazines are distributed in doctors and dentists waiting rooms and other places where people need to while away time around the city.