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Around Town

Name dropping

By Benjamin Thomas Cunningham
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 15th, 2007 issue

It was a restaurant euphemistically known as “the Dog and Duck,” and any foreigner worth his or her salt knew how to get there 17 years ago as Prague was opening up again to the outside world.

The fairy-tale city felt like the edge of a new frontier to newbie foreigners from the West, with all manner of folks coming and going with surprising regularity. (Actually, we’re surprised by how many people are still coming and going. But that’s another story.)
Jo Weaver ruled the “brat pack” at the D&D, which may or may not have been in what she calls the “grotty basement” of what is now Caffrey’s Irish Bar. Now the president of the British Chamber of Commerce, Weaver got to see firsthand all the wild behavior of her foreigner buddies.
Armed with her little black book and a fax machine, she proceeded to put out “This is where you hear it first,” a gossip column that she wrote anonymously — though not for long. That’s because hardly anyone had a fax machine besides her.
“I smuggled it into the country. Only a few of us had them, so it was quite easy to figure out,” Weaver says, laughing.
One of the original gang is now vice president of marketing at Czech Airlines, according to Weaver. Steven Davis, another one of the crew, is vice president at property developer Orco Property Group.
“Most of the people who were in our brat pack are still here now and very successful,” Weaver says. “We were lunatics, really.”
These days, Wi-Fi cafés on practically every corner of the city have replaced the old fax machines and, as we all know, calling people on cell phones has already given way to text messages because of the expense.  
But in the grand Weaver tradition of those early days, here’s the lowdown on the summer party put on by the British Chamber of Commerce and the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Aug. 9.
Richard Lappin, a bigwig at International Power, was there with his friend Jaroslav Marcen. Marcen was sans girlfriend Lucie, who does hair and makeup for Czech TV personalities and movie stars.
Marcen, project director of Project Eurocampus, confided that he imported the thick pile carpet for the hotel renovations. The massive hotel was built as a Soviet getaway, he added, a twinkle in his eye.
Miriam Antonová and Yvonne Sinram represented the German Chamber admirably, suggesting fun weekend outings and hiking and skiing venues in their home country.
Lawyer Jan Hart (KŠD Šťovíček) gave us the scoop on a Czech law we’ve been wondering about. We also stood in line with Lukáš Poddaný, a lawyer at Ambruz & Dark (affiliated with PricewaterhouseCoopers) for a mojito, made with the real ingredients — hard-to-find turbinado sugar and crushed mint.
The crowd numbered more than 300 people. Bernard Bauer, Weaver’s counterpart over at the German Chamber, spoke before folks started filtering outside to the patio after a brief respite from the rain.
Also on the scene were Radomír Šimek from Siemens and Vladimíra Svobodová, office manager at Pinnacle Real Estate.
Steven Whittaker told us about agriculture and crops. He’s a marketing and sales strategy manager at BASF, the Chemical Company.
Bert Stiers came through with Weaver later in the evening.
And we can’t forget to mention Markus Rovekamp, director of corporate development and strategy at RWE Transgasnet. Folks from Unipetrol and PricewaterhouseCoopers also crowded into the party en masse.
A pink rose was the parting gift.
One man who hadn’t seen the British Chamber workers hand a flower to his girlfriend nervously asked her where she got it.
Maybe gossip isn’t dead after all.

Benjamin Thomas Cunningham can be reached at bcunningham@praguepost.com


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