In this issue of Lifestyles Magazine®, our regional focus is on Central Bohemia, and we’re sure you will find some new things about this large region of our country.
Further north, you will learn about the best ski-areas from former competitive skier Jaroslav Zeman. In the process, you will discover he has done quite well in business, too. We also offer a second feature on green automotive alternatives. The Riversimple car looks more like a frog, and shares other amazing similarities. If one drives from London to Aberdeen, the net emission is less than a litre… of water. Norway is our featured country profile, accompanied by an entertaining interview with H.E. Peter Raeder, the former Norwegian ambassador. May his net be full of butterflies.To your health, you will learn about how to avoid the flu from our friends at Santé, as well as some food and wine possibilities.
The Dox Centre for Contemporary Art teaches us about American Bohemia in a preview of Julia Calfee’s photography of the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York. Jazz singer Diana Krall is also profiled.
We are introducing a new feature – “Diversions”, in which people offer observations on any subject other than their current profession. I asked Dr. Pavel Barsa to begin this series, because of events taking place this month marking the first generation following the Soviet occupation. Accompanying his thoughts is an image featured by the Czech Centres in Berlin as part of an exhibition paying tribute to photgrapher Dana Kyndrová. (See www.czechcentres.cz for more details. )
Twenty years ago, Dr. Barsa was part of a group of college students travelling the country during the “revolution” like mischievous henchmen, their mission to disrupt parts of the State’s apparatus. Since then, Dr. Barsa has proven himself a renaissance man, a gifted photographer (see “Afterthoughts”), and as a member of Dr. Petr Suchomel’s “Dream Team” in Liberec, a world class neurosurgeon. They quite literary save lives on a daily basis, both here and around the world; they also saved mine.
Like others we have written about in the past years, they have chosen the harder path without the rewards and ease of Western standards and expectations, and kept the perspective and promise of change from 1989. For me, “Decisions and Duties” offers thoughts on how to make the next twenty years better. http://www.lifestylesmagazine.eu/2010/01/diversions-decisions-and-duties-3/
Thank you, Pavel. May your beard and life grow long, so to speak.
John Brooks Lobkowicz





















