Mailbox

Today in Mailbox: the fermented bread drink “kvass”, the new director of Prague Zoo, Czech Oscar winners. Listeners quoted: David Eldridge, John, Rassem Ben Brahim.

Hello and welcome to Mailbox. First let me say thank you for all your Christmas greetings that are arriving from all corners of the world.

Now let’s get to the listeners’ questions and comments. David Eldridge writes from England:

“I became involved in investigating the history of the mainly Slavic drink ‘kvass’, a fermented bread drink. I can find almost no reference to this drink in Czech culture. Has this drink a role in Czech history? I can remember buying a bottle of soft drink many years ago in Czechoslovakia that had a furry looking object floating around in it which I thought at the time was just a foreign object but now I realise it may have been kvass with some deliberately added sweet fruit to add a little carbonation to the drink by fermenting. I would be interested to know if there is any Czech tradition of kvass or any other similar low alcohol fermented drink.”

Kvass is a Russian drink and it has no tradition in Czech cuisine. In recent years bottled kvass has become available in shops that sell Russian or Ukrainian food. The drink you mention could have been kombucha which is a fermented tea drink. The cloudy object floating in it is the kombucha mushroom. The drink is also Russian in origin and can be readily bought in this country, mainly in health food shops.

A listener who signed himself as John responds to Radio Prague’s report on former Czech Radio Online director Miroslav Bobek becoming the new head of Prague Zoo.

“I applaud the new director Miroslav Bobek of Prague Zoo who is taking over in the future and his ideas on allowing the public more information on the animals’ habitat and the plants associated with the animals that are in the zoo exhibits. I find the idea a positive direction and hopefully it will give others a new appreciation for the animals in the zoo and also for domestic animals and their place in the country now and in the past. But most importantly the animals’ place in the future, domestic as well as the animals from around the world that are residing at the Prague Zoo.”

Rassem Ben Brahim from Tunisia would like to know:

“Who won an Oscar in your country?”

'Kolya'

The country has three Best Foreign Language Film awards under its belt: Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’s “The Shop on Main Street” won one in 1966, in 1968 it was “Closely Watched Trains” by Jiří Menzel, and in 1997 “Kolya” by director Jan Svěrák. The Czech born American director Miloš Forman has won two Best Director Academy Awards: in 1976 for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and in 1985 for “Amadeus”. Among other Czech Oscar winners let me just mention the 2007 Best Original Song Academy Award won by the Czech-Irish duo Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard for “Falling Slowly” featured in the film “Once”.

Thank you for all your letters and reception reports and please keep them coming. We are running out of time now so as usual let me repeat our quiz question for this month:

In December we are asking you to send us the name of the Austrian author interested in mysticism and the occult who spent two decades of his life in Prague around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. His most famous novel takes place in and around Prague’s old Jewish Ghetto.

Your answers need to reach us by the end of December at [email protected] or Radio Prague, 12099 Prague. Next week Radio Prague will broadcast special Christmas programmes so join us for those if you can but Mailbox will be back next week at its usual time.