ROB CAMERON

The Slovak government has approved a plan to shoot around a quarter of the country’s brown bears, after a man was mauled to death while walking in a forest. A total of 350 out of an estimated 1,300 animals will be culled under the plan. “We can’t live in a country where people are afraid to go into the woods,” Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

Czech beavers made global headlines earlier this year when it emerged they’d saved taxpayers millions by building a series of dams that created an area of wetland – exactly what local authorities wanted to achieve with a project that had got bogged down in a legal dispute. The meadow – in the Brdy protected nature area – is now the perfect habitat for amphibians and rare crayfish.

Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, has claimed the opposition is planning a “Maidan”-style coup, referring to the popular uprising that toppled Ukraine‘s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Fico, who survived an assassination attempt last May, quoted from what he said was a classified report ahead of a motion of no-confidence.

Catastrophic floods have swept through Central Europe, leading to dozens of deaths and widespread destruction of houses and infrastructure. In the Czech Republic, the worst flooding has been in central and eastern parts of the country, especially North Moravia, where around a dozen people have lost their lives. Towns such as Krnov and Jeseník have been completely cut off.

Milena Fleischmann was nine when she boarded a train in Prague to begin a new life in England. She was clutching a card, showing she had been granted leave by His Majesty’s Government to enter the U.K. – one of only a handful of Jewish children allowed to do so. Only decades later did she learn that her escape from the Nazis had been organised by Sir Nicholas Winton.

Robert Fico describes himself as a leftist and a social democrat. But his Smer party is in government with the far-right, and his language is increasingly vitriolic and nationalist. He’s blamed the assassination attempt of May 2024 on the liberal opposition as well as his pro-peace stance, and says Vladimir Putin has been ‘wrongly demonised’ by the west.

Slovakia’s populist government has caused alarm with plans to abolish the country’s public broadcaster, prompting renewed fears for the independence of the Slovak media. The move is being spearheaded by Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová, who previously co-hosted an online TV channel promoting pro-Russian narratives and disinformation about Covid.

Robert Fico might have promised to send “not one more round of ammunition” to Ukraine, but he wasn’t speaking for all Slovaks. When the government cut off state-supplied military aid, citizens banded together, raising €1m for artillery shells within 48 hours. They included Otto Simko, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor and veteran of the Slovak National Uprising.

Peter Pellegrini has been elected president of Slovakia. A former prime minister, Mr Pellegrini is an ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico, and shares the PM’s opposition to arming Ukraine. Mr Pellegrini’s campaign echoed some of Fico’s Moscow-friendly rhetoric, vowing after his victory “to ensure that Slovakia remains on the side of peace and not on the side of war”.

Whooping cough is on the rise across Europe, and the Czech Republic is no exception. However, a week marked by confusion surrounding official guidance and a controversial public appearance by Prague’s mayor left some wondering if anything was learned from Covid-19. By the end of 2024, the number of infections had risen tenfold to 36,000.

Slovaks are voting in early elections following the collapse of the former centre-right government. Leading most polls is the populist SMER party of Robert Fico, who has pledged an immediate end to Slovak military support for Ukraine. But Fico’s former party colleague turned rival, Peter Pellegrini, is also likely to play a decisive role in forming the new government.

A Czech primary school teacher is due to face trial for spreading Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine to her pupils. Martina Bednarova told children last April there was “no war” in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. On the contrary, she claimed, Ukrainian soldiers were murdering the Russian-speaking inhabitants of the Donbas.

Police in the Czech Republic are seeking information on a stolen racehorse allegedly belonging to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. Zazou, a thoroughbred worth some £17,000, disappeared between Friday evening and Saturday morning. The 16-year-old bay was reportedly one of two of Mr Kadyrov’s horses still stabled in the Czech Republic.

Petr Pavel was an unlikely choice for president of a country which has shied away from militarism. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed everything. Pavel – once head of the Czech armed forces and number two at NATO – defeated former PM Andrej Babiš by a clear margin in January 2023, and gave his first international TV interview to the BBC.

January 1st, 2023 marked the 30th anniversary of the break-up of Czechoslovakia; one of the few cases in history when a state has been divided up without a single life being lost. Today the Czech Republic and Slovakia enjoy a harmonious, friction-free friendship – tinged with a touch of regret perhaps for what was once a happy marriage.

Demolition work is to start on a Czech pig farm built on the site of a Nazi-era concentration camp for Roma. It ends decades of often bitter dispute between the farm’s owners, the government and Roma rights groups. The camp was staffed by Czech guards, rather than the Nazi SS, and none of them were convicted after the war.

Councillors in the Slovak village of Varin have rejected a request from state prosecutors to rename the country’s sole street sign honouring Slovakia’s wartime fascist leader, Monsignor Jozef Tiso. The village – in the Zilina region – bears a street named “Dr Jozef Tiso Street”. Earlier this year, activists tore down the street sign in the latest instalment in a long-running saga.

Russian military equipment captured by the Ukrainian armed forces has gone on display in the Czech capital, Prague. “Russian propaganda likes to scare people that their tanks can reach Prague, Berlin or Paris. Ukrainians demonstrate – only in the form of scrap,” Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrsky told the BBC.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent millions fleeing across the country’s western borders – including to Slovakia. Some were passing through, on their way to stay with friends and family further west, but many had nowhere to go – and no idea when they would be able to go home. And among the great tide of exhausted and disoriented people were thousands of foreign students.

One of the more bewildering aspects of the Covid crisis in the Czech Republic is the hostility and aggression directed at health workers. But it is a problem that existed before the pandemic, and is unlikely to end with it. “A year ago people were applauding health workers. Now they’re cursing them,” said Dr Milan Kubek, head of the Czech Medical Chamber.

The people of the Czech Republic go to the polls this weekend, as billionaire-turned-politician Andrej Babiš seeks another four years in office. Mr Babiš, leader of the populist ANO party, faces a tough challenge from the centre-right opposition and also has the far right nipping at his heels. And his fate is intertwined with the health of ailing President Miloš Zeman.

Pope Francis has begun a four-day visit to Slovakia, the first papal visit to the country in 18 years. Typically, he’s going out of his way to embrace the most excluded members of society. He’s spending 70 hours in Slovakia, after just seven in Hungary, and commentators believe Francis was sending a very subtle message to Viktor Orban in Budapest.

Czech-Russian relations were already chilly before the invasion of Ukraine; today they are icy, verging on frozen. Revelations that Moscow’s notorious GRU spy agency had blown up a Czech arms dump in 2014 led to a spate of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions. The annual flashpoint is the anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Czechoslovakia – or rather the eastern two-thirds of it.

Slovakia was the second country in the EU to order Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine – but the decision caused political turmoil as the mercurial prime minister Igor Matovič flew to Moscow to make the purchase without informing anyone. Slovakia’s medicines regulator refused to certify the vaccine – which was not approved in the EU – so supplies of Sputnik sat unused on the shelves.

150,000 Jews from across Europe were interned in the Terezín – or Theresienstadt – ghetto during WW2. It was a transit camp – where Jews were gathered before being sent eastwards to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps. Conditions at Terezín were horrific, and some 35,000 died there. But eighty years on, the buildings themselves are falling into ruin.

Czech authorities have pleaded with people to respect Covid restrictions over Easter. The plan is for children to go back to school in a week’s time, but they say that could be jeopardised if people mingle now in big numbers. The infection numbers are now falling, albeit slowly. The country is no longer at the very apex of the European charts. But it’s not far behind.

Governments everywhere are struggling to vaccinate their citizens against Covid, partly due to public resistance and disinformation. Czech anti-vaxxers made international headlines by wearing yellow Stars of David. The message was clear: those who refuse the Covid vaccine will be ostracised just as Jews were in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

Initially praised for its Covid response – including a cottage industry sewing hundreds of thousands of homemade face masks – by autumn 2020 the Czech Republic had some of the worst infection and mortality statistics in the world. In November, the Czech Army was called in to transform an exhibition grounds on the northern outskirts of Prague into a field hospital.

Visits from British partygoers and other tourists were an early casualty of the coronavirus pandemic for the Slovak capital Bratislava – and now it is struggling to claw back its depleted industry. Slovakia was praised for its swift and decisive response to the virus – which included shutting its borders to tourists – but it has come at a price.

Life in the Czech Republic is slowly returning to normal after lockdowns introduced at the beginning of the pandemic. On Monday, many children were back in school classrooms and swimming pools, zoos and castles were reopened.But the major milestone for a nation of beer-drinkers is that from now on, restaurants, bars and pubs can once again serve people indoors.

A Czech politician in hiding amid allegations of a Russian assassination plot says he believes the threat against him is credible and he fears for his life. Three Prague politicians are under 24-hour police guard because of the alleged plot to poison them – claims categorically denied by Moscow. The BBC spoke to him from an undisclosed location under police guard.

A random face in a documentary about the Prague Spring led to a wild goose chase to track down its owner. It belonged to Zdeněk ‘Sid’ Kučera, a jazz trumpeter and singer whose band was filmed performing Georgie Fame’s Bonnie and Clyde in a Prague club. Sid emigrated not long after the Soviet tanks arrived – but finally got in touch from his adopted home in Switzerland.

Slovakia votes on Saturday in its first general election since an investigative journalist and his fiancée were murdered in 2018. The shooting of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová shocked the nation and toppled PM Robert Fico, but his Smer-SD party remains in office. Polls are tight, and support has swelled for an ultra-nationalist party.

The thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution against the Communist regime has been overshadowed by contemporary protests against the country’s prime minister, Andrej Babiš. An estimated 200,000 people packed Letná plain – scene of the largest protests in 1989 – while Mr Babiš was heckled as he lit a candle to students beaten by riot police on Národní street.

The so-called Velvet Revolution precipitated the end of communism in Czechoslovakia. Three locations in Prague symbolise the regime and its downfall. They include a controversial statue to Ivan Stepanovich Konev, the Soviet general whose forces liberated much of the country in 1945, but also oversaw the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising.

For decades, archaeologists have grappled with the identity of a 10th-Century skeleton discovered at Prague Castle. The remains were exploited by both the Nazis and Soviets for ideological purposes, claiming it as proof of a pre-existing Germanic – or Slavic – presence. But attempts to pin a clear ethnic label on a 1,000-year-old corpse perhaps reveal more about us than him.

Mobile operators say the number of people who attended a demonstration against Prime Minister Andrej Babiš on Sunday was just shy of 300,000, making it the largest mass protest since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Protestors want the billionaire businessman to step down over a criminal investigation into allegations of EU subsidy fraud.

Thousands have attended protest rallies across Slovakia in memory of murdered journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, shot in a targeted killing a year ago. Kuciak had been investigating alleged corruption linked to Italian organised crime – a story which would, after his death, bring down the government. It remains unclear who ordered the killings.

For a quarter of a century tourists and locals passing through the bottom of Prague’s Wenceslas Square were stepping unaware on Jewish gravestones. They were looted from abandoned cemeteries in the 1980s and cut up to make cobbles. The truth about the stones came to light thanks to the head of Prague’s Jewish Museum – who slipped a few into his pocket as a young man.

Czech counter-intelligence has issued stark warnings of intensified espionage activity by Russia and China. Both countries are pursuing a long-term strategy of undermining the West, according to the Security Information Service (BIS). Moscow has continued its hybrid warfare strategy to gain influence over this EU and Nato member, it says.

Czechs are marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, when a 250,000-strong invasion force from five Warsaw Pact countries invaded the country from the north, east and south. They were sent by Moscow to crush the so-called Prague Spring – the liberalising reforms of Czechoslovak communist leader Alexander Dubcek.

The murder of reporter Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová convulsed Slovak society. The wave of public anger and disgust led to the fall of Prime Minister Robert Fico and ultimately the election of liberal Zuzana Čaputová as president. There was also hope (short-lived) that Slovakia could untie the Gordian knot between high-level politics and endemic corruption.

In 2018 allegations were made by a former Czechoslovak spy that the then opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been a paid informer for the country’s communist era secret police, the StB. Mr Corbyn emphatically denied the claims, but a few sheaves of old paper still have the power to throw lives into turmoil.

A class photo from a primary school in the northern city of Teplice led to a torrent of abuse and even death threats. The photo, of first graders at ZŠ Plynárenská primary school, showed rows of happy, smiling children with one difference – only a handful of them were white. Teplice is home to a large Roma minority, and also has many immigrants from Vietnam and Gulf states.

Czechs go to the polls this weekend in the first round of a presidential election. The two-day vote is being seen as a referendum on the outspoken 73-year-old incumbent Milos Zeman, and the direction of the country. Zeman has angered many with his tilt towards Moscow and Beijing, and not everyone cares for his sarcastic – and politically incorrect – humour.

Czech voters are likely to hand power to controversial billionaire Andrej Babiš, the country’s second-richest man who ran on an anti-corruption platform but is himself under investigation. The campaign has been dominated by big themes including euro adoption, immigration and the relationship with Russia, but also some more obscure ones, such as the price of butter.

Plans to rehabilitate a pre-war Jewish cemetery in the Czech town of Prostějov have run into fierce local opposition, torpedoed by deliberate misinformation and anti-Semitism. Tombstones from the town’s old Jewish cemetery were looted and handed out to locals in 1943 – and many of them still pave people’s backyards and cellars.

When communism collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe, previously unobtainable goods flooded the market. Today, shops and supermarkets offer broadly the same food and drink as in the West – a tangible result of global capitalism. But something is dawning on Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Hungarians: the labels are the same, but the contents might not be.

By the time Ai Weiwei unveiled his epic ‘Law Of The Journey’ at Prague’s National Gallery, Europe’s refugee crisis had largely disappeared from the front pages. But the flow of people continued, and with it opposition – especially in Central Europe – to providing shelter. The Czech government’s attitude, the artist said, was unacceptable, “because it’s morally wrong.”

A new unit has been set up at the Czech interior ministry to counter the spread of fake news and disinformation. The Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats will seek to alert people to stories and posts that are demonstrably false, much of it published on either Russian or pro-Russia websites. But not everyone is convinced it can succeed.

A Czech DNA expert is carrying out tests on clothes belonging to the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. The tests should provide a definitive answer to an explosive claim that has fascinated readers for almost a century. Was Masaryk – champion of Slav rights and father of the Czechoslovak state – the illegitimate son of the Austro-Hungarian emperor?

The assassination of senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík in 1942 was one of the outstanding feats of daring in World War Two. The killing led to terrible reprisals, not least for the pair themselves, who were surrounded and killed by the Germans. But one question has long troubled historians: where are their bodies?

Events are being held in the Czech capital Prague to mark the 700th anniversary of the birth of Charles IV, who was King of Bohemia and then Holy Roman Emperor. The events – taking place at a number of famous landmarks in the city which bear his name – will be attended by a distant descendant, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg.

The government of the Czech Republic is making a new push to use ‘Czechia’ – the official short name of the country in English – pointing out that few people say ‘the Federal Republic of Germany’ instead of ‘Germany’, or ‘the Russian Federation’ for ‘Russia’. However, the short form is struggling to find recognition – both at home and abroad.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is defying EU officials in the migrant crisis – and may win re-election on Saturday. Slovak voters will decide whether to give his Smer party another four years in office. Fico told a crowd of supporters in a packed sports hall in Bratislava he would not “bring one single Muslim to Slovakia’ as part of an EU quota system.

Tomáš Baťa built the world’s greatest shoe empire out of a tiny family workshop by using revolutionary methods that still find application today. From his high-rise, red-brick headquarters in Zlín, Baťa oversaw an empire of 1,825 outlets in Czechoslovakia and another 660 across the globe. Entire towns – in Europe, India and South America – are still named after him.

The Czech town of Loděnice just to the south of Prague has become the global capital of vinyl, thanks to some canny business decisions made in the 1990s. Vinyl is back, and it’s big business – and there’s a good chance your limited edition Coldplay or U2 disc was made at the GZ media company. Last year made it made some 20 million records.

The Czech police force has come under fire for writing numbers on the arms of migrants at Breclav railway station. Some said the images were reminiscent of the Holocaust, when prisoners at Auschwitz were systematically tattooed with serial numbers. But the Czech authorities appeared unaware of the visual connotations, and said they were simply administrative.

Thousands of people have protested against Czech President Miloš Zeman on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which ended communist rule. Demonstrators carried football-style red cards as a warning to Mr Zeman, while others threw eggs. One accidentally hit the German president. Many are angry with Mr Zeman, who they see as too sympathetic to Russia.

Scotland went to the polls on September 18th, 2014 to decide whether to leave the United Kingdom and begin a new chapter as an independent state. The only country in Europe that has peacefully divided in recent decades is Czechoslovakia, which split into two on January 1st, 1993, without a drop of blood being spilt. So what advice would Czechs and Slovaks give the Scots?

The grandson of British wartime leader Winston Churchill has unveiled a statue in the Czech capital Prague dedicated to the 2,500 Czech and Slovak airmen who fought in Britain’s Royal Air Force. The monument, called the Winged Lion, is a gift from Prague’s British expatriate community in gratitude for the airmen’s contribution during World War Two.

A company has started offering whistle-stop tours of ostentatious villas, over-budget public construction projects and the echoey corridors of local government to highlight the problem of rampant corruption. “Corruption is not just money spent in the wrong way. Corruption is trust misused,” said Petr Sourek, founder of ‘Corrupt Tour’ – the world’s first corruption tour agency.

The Czech Republic may be a landlocked country but its historical borders once stretched as far as the Adriatic. People still yearn for the sea – there were even plans in the 1970s to build a tunnel to Yugoslavia. Most have to content themselves with an annual trip to Greece or Croatia, but a pair of Czech adventurers are building a boat… out of plastic bottles.

Holidays can expose the traveller to cultures, languages and adventures they would never have experienced at home. Trying to recreate them many years later however can be a bit of a challenge. In the summer of 2012, I returned to the idyllic town of Vimperk in South Bohemia – the place where twenty years previously I’d decided to start a new life.

Václav Havel died at his country home – Hrádeček – on the morning of Sunday, December 18th, 2011. He’d appeared a few months previously at the unveiling of a statue to Woodrow Wilson, looking frail and gaunt. However his death – at the age of 75 – still came as a great shock. Havel’s state funeral five days later was a momentous and immensely moving experience.

The story of the late Nicholas Winton, the British stockbroker who helped save hundreds of mostly Jewish children from the Nazis, has been immortalised in books, documentaries and films – most recently One Life. In 2011, Sir Nicholas was in Prague to attend the premiere of the film Nicky’s Family, and to meet some of those he had helped to save.

A Czech travel agency is offering package holidays for people nostalgic for the trade union perks of Communist Czechoslovakia, when factory workers were bussed off to recuperate from the daily grind. For a modest sum, guests can stay at a grim-looking hotel in Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains, to relive the sights, sounds, and smells of pre-1989 holidays.

The anniversary of the Velvet Revolution on November 17th 1989 is now a national holiday. It’s an opportunity to look back on a defining moment and take the temperature of Czech (and Slovak) society. For the 20th anniversary, those who were at the heart of the revolution – including the shy playwright who became president – shared their memories and thoughts.

The Dalai Lama has long been a regular guest at the Forum 2000 conference, the annual meeting of minds organised by the late president Václav Havel. In 2006, his appearance came just days after North Korea claimed it had successfully detonated a nuclear device, an event that caused a shudder of alarm throughout the world.

The United States is the world’s most powerful economy, but most of that power is still derived from fossil fuels. When I toured the marshalling yards of Nebraska in 2006, more than half of the country’s electricity was still being produced by burning coal. Twenty years later it’s slipped into second place behind gas – but Americans still rely on the black stuff for 19% of their power.

Not sure whether Bono has ever been to Tirana but in 2004 it was still in a strange state of semi-awakening from the forty-year fever dream of Communist hardliner Enver Hoxha. The old street signs had been torn down – but Albania’s new authorities couldn’t agree on new ones. This made finding your way round the city a rather surreal experience.

Born Marie Jana Körbelová in Prague, Madeleine Albright (1937 – 2022) spent the war in London. After the Communist coup of 1948, her family emigrated to the U.S., where she later became the first female Secretary of State. “What I learnt as a result of being born here was that when the United States was not involved – as in Munich – terrible things happened.”

A brown bear that injured five people during a rampage in a Slovak town has been shot dead, Environment Minister Tomas Taraba says. However, opposition politicians believe hunters may have shot a different bear, and are calling for answers. Controlling Slovakia’s bear population has become a highly politicised issue under the new populist-nationalist government.

Czech MPs have approved an amendment tightening gun legislation, a month after the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. The amendment – which was proposed before the killings – must still pass through the Senate and be signed by the president, and will not come into force until 2026. It’s far from revolutionary, so would it even have made a difference?

A Czech village priest caused uproar when he stamped on pumpkins left by local children near his church. “Leaving the rectory on Sunday evening, I saw numerous symbols of the satanic feast of ‘Halloween’ placed in front of our sacred grounds,” he wrote in an apology. “But try to remember that my duty as a priest is to protect children and families from hidden evil.”

Police in Slovakia have fined a car owner whose dog was caught on a speed camera sitting behind the wheel. The owner of the Skoda car insisted that his pet – a brown hunting dog – had suddenly leapt into his lap. It’s not clear if the fine – issued to the owner, rather than the dog – was for speeding, or for failing to secure the pet in a moving vehicle.

People in many areas of the Czech Republic have been advised by the fire brigade to keep their windows closed as they fight a big forest fire. Parts of the Bohemian Switzerland national park, which sits on the German border, have been burning since Sunday. Homes have been destroyed and the smell of smoke has reached the capital Prague 100km to the south.

It’s long been the stuff of science fiction, but could the flying car ever become a viable means of transport? Professor Štefan Klein of Nitra, Slovakia passionately believes it could. His AirCar can transform from sports car to aircraft in just over two minutes. Running on regular petrol and able to carry two people, it has a range of some 1,000km in the air.

Women in the Czech Republic may soon be able to take non-gendered versions of their surnames, after MPs backed a change in the law. In Czech, the ending ová is added automatically to almost all female surnames, even foreign ones, and they can only be dropped in very limited circumstances. It’s been that way for centuries … but could be about to change.

For years, Polish women have been evading their country’s strict abortion laws by seeking medical help to terminate unwanted pregnancies abroad. One such country is the Czech Republic, where access to abortion is legal, safe and provided on demand. Thousands are believed to have had abortions that would have been denied to them in Poland.

“Populism is not the only way to resolve frustrations,” said Zuzana Caputova. Rays of spring sunshine poured through the windows of a Bratislava café for her first TV interview with the international media since she was elected Slovakia’s first female president. She’s a liberal, pro-EU figure using words like “truth”, “tolerance” and “compassion” – a rarity these days in Central Europe.

Czech scientists are offering people the chance to send a message from Mars to Earth. Eleven audio files will make the journey from Earth to Mars – and one of the recorded messages will then be beamed back here to Earth. The competition – which is open to anyone in the world – is part of the Exomars Rover project, which is due to land on the Red Planet in 2021.

The Czech lower house is to begin debating a bill to introduce same-sex marriage. If successful, the Czech Republic would become the first country in the former eastern bloc to allow gay people to marry – similar legislation was introduced in Slovenia, but was later overturned in a referendum. However even some prominent gay politicians are against.

A 16-year-old girl Scout pictured standing up to a far-right skinhead has told the BBC she was not afraid of neo-Nazis and wanted more young people to stand up to fascism. Lucie Myslikova, a film and animation student from the Czech city of Brno, was captured in her uniform confronting a shaven-headed demonstrator.

Jezeří castle sits on the border between two worlds. Surrounded by lush forest, it’s a splendid example of Bohemian baroque – Beethoven’s Third Symphony was performed here for the very first time. But just a few hundred metres away is a barren, moon-crater landscape – site of the largest open cast lignite mine in the country. And local villages find themselves under threat.

When the EU’s Schengen zone expanded in 2007 to include much of Central and Eastern Europe, one of the least enthusiastic countries was Austria, where fear of foreigners has long dominated the national debate. But in the far east of Austria, along the River Danube that forms the border with Slovakia, the reality of Schengen has changed both attitudes and lives.

“Could you,” I once asked a train-mad friend “travel right across the Czech Republic using only the slow, stopping trains?” The answer was yes, as I and another friend proved in 2007. We spent 19 days covering 2,000 kilometres, setting foot in over 80 towns and villages, and crossing the border into Germany, Poland, Slovakia and Austria. This is an audio diary of that journey.