Pen pals in Czechia

Most Czechs have two days a year when friends might wish them well: their birthday and their name day. The Czech calendar assigns a first name to almost every date, and on yours, colleagues, family and friends may congratulate you, sometimes with flowers or a small gift. If your pen pal is called Jan, Petra or Tomáš, ask when their svátek is; it is an easy way to show you have been paying attention.

Getting the name right

The country's short English name is Czechia, alongside the longer Czech Republic. You may still meet people who think of it as part of Czechoslovakia, but that state split peacefully into Czechia and Slovakia at the start of 1993, so for anyone of school age it has always been its own country. The official language is Czech. Czech and Slovak are close enough that speakers of one usually follow the other without much trouble, but they are separate languages.

Czech has a reputation for being hard, mostly because of its consonant clusters and the letter ř. If you are learning it, a pen pal is a patient way to practise reading real, informal Czech, and if your pen pal is learning English or German, you can trade corrections. Ahoj is the friendly "hi"; Czechs also use it to say goodbye.

Christmas comes on the 24th

The main Christmas celebration is on the evening of 24 December, Štědrý den. The traditional dinner is fried carp with potato salad, often after a day of eating very little, and some families keep the live carp in the bath for a day or two beforehand. Presents appear under the tree after dinner, brought not by Father Christmas but by Ježíšek, "little Jesus". Earlier in the month, on the evening of 5 December, Saint Nicholas does the rounds with an angel and a devil, checking on children's behaviour.

Weekends at the chata

Many Czech families have, or have relatives with, a chata or chalupa: a cottage or old farmhouse in the countryside where they spend weekends and summer holidays, gardening, walking, picking mushrooms or simply doing repairs. On a Friday afternoon, a good number of city dwellers head out of town. If your pen pal mentions going "to the cottage", there is usually a story attached.

School days tend to start early, often around eight o'clock. The school year runs from the beginning of September to the end of June, then the long summer holiday covers July and August. Lunch is commonly the main hot meal of the day, often beginning with a bowl of soup.

Questions to start with

• When is your name day, and does anyone in your family make a fuss of it?
• Does your family have a cottage, and what do you actually do there?
• What would you serve a visitor who wanted to try proper Czech food at home?
• What is something about your town that tourists in Prague never see?

International post within Europe is usually manageable but not always quick, so a postcard for Christmas or a name day makes a nice extra on top of messages. For more ideas, see our guide to learning about a country.