Published in The Prague Post, c. 2000. Text from the author's final draft; the printed version may differ slightly.
Koláč or rather kolac (pronounced koh-lahtch) is one of the few contributions Czech has made to the English vocabulary, albeit only used in selected regions of the United States (i.e. Minnesota, Texas or Nebraska). It can be likened to a sweet two-inch pizza, meaning that it has a large crust and a filling made of some sweet substance such as plum-jam, sweet cream cheese, or poppy-seed. It has to be made of yeast-based dough and therefore cannot be really be translated as cake even though that is its most commonly used English equivalent. Also the English idiom a piece of cake seems to imply that it is something easy, on the other hand, the Czech saying Bez práce nejsou koláče (Without work, there are no cakes) makes it clear that without a good amount of sweat and toil, nobody can enjoy their koláč. Another controversial saying Koláč se rychle přejí, ale chleba nikdy states that while you never grow tired of bread, eating koláčes every day will get old pretty fast. Well, I don't know.
As I said, koláč is limited to very specific type of pastry but there are many other kinds of sweets that exact their influence on Czech tooths. To stick to the pizza metaphor, a calzone equivalent of koláč is buchta which is basically the same thing except that the filling is inside and it is cube-shaped. The filling can be tvaroh (sweet cheese curds), povidla (special plumb-made jam) and mák (poppy seed). In fact, the latter is so popular that the Czech settlers in the new world gave rise to a saying that you can always tell a Czech by the poppy seed in their teeth. Buchta plays an important role in Czech mythology. The Czech dullard turned princess getter was always equipped with a pack of buchtas which he then traded in for a magic sword at the nearest turn by being nice to an old man and sharing his lunch. Yes, it is true, buchta can be served as full lunch which can be baffling to a foreigner used to his BigMac with large fries.
The closest Czech comes to a cake is dort. Most cakes (except perhaps fish cakes) can be translated as dort. It is what you get on your birthday (occasionally with a girl in bikini baked into it) to blow off candles on and share with your friends. There is not much that can be said about it because it comes in so many varieties, mostly circular, and with special kind of cake dough called piškot as its base.
Of special importance are two seasonal pastries that are extremely important. They are vánočka a woven loaf-size cake which is an indispensable decoration of the Czech Christmas table. And mazanec round Easter cake made of the same dough but in the shape of a round loaf of bread. Easter has another sweet called Beránek (little lamb) a lamb shaped cake made of slightly different dough than mazanec. Christmas is of course also the time of baking cookies called vánoční cukroví which comes in all shapes and sizes.
That is not the limit of delights available to the Czech sweets-lovers. First, there is a variety of pastries. Your friendly neighborhood bakery will supply you with kobliha a doughnut with filling inside, or vdolek with the filling on top. Šáteček (also the name for a little triangular scarf) is just like buchta but in a triangular shape. Hřeben is a comb-shaped šáteček not very popular with bald people but otherwise a bakery staple. There are also two popular foreigners on the pastry shelves croisant and piroh plus many many others that haven't received widely recognized names.
If you want to say you've been to the Czech Republic you should not omit štrůdl officially called jablečný závin which is a delicious apple pie the Czechs share with Germans. To neglect bábovka in your studies would be a sin. It is a popular grandmother's cake as the name suggests and is a frequent accompaniment to a cup coffee and grandmotherly interrogation.
If you want to display indepth knowledge of Czech culture, learn about two regional specialities. Hořické trubičky are wafer tubes made in the East-Bohemian town of Hořice and very popular with the country's youths. Another one is perník (ginger-bread) which is what the city of Pardubice excels in alongside the slightly more famous semtex. Gingerbread hearts available at country fairs are a popular way of expressing affection to the opposite sex and if you describe your latest victory over a drunk in the pub to a Czech audience with the words Ukázal jsem mu zač je v Pardubicích perník (I showed him how much perník is in Pardubice) they won't even know you came from another planet.
Many of these words and sweets they denote date back to the 14th century and they hold a special place in Czech heart and occasionally stomachs. If you really want to understand what being a Czech is all about go out and try them all. It's a sweet sweet world.
+:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------:+:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------:+:-------------------------------------------------------------------:+ | {width="1.8847222222222222in" height="1.3430555555555554in"} | {width="1.1222222222222222in" height="0.9791666666666666in"} | {width="1.8847222222222222in" height="1.0in"} | | | | | | koláče | buchta | loupáček | | | | | | | | http://www.vedia.cz/sen | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+