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The season of Advent is upon us. The word comes from the Latin “adventus”, which means arrival coming, as Christians awaited the second coming of Jesus. While for the faithful Advent is about repentance, it is also a joyful time, marked by traditional Czech goodies and music.

Regarded by many outsiders as a Romany ghetto, Brno’s Zábrdovice district is commonly referred to by the nickname “Bronx”. Now a new project entitled Městská galerie (Municipal Gallery) is brightening up the area with huge murals by leading Czech artists, such as František Skála and Eva Koťátková. The man behind it is writer and publisher Martin Reiner, who has an apartment there.

The publishing house Kher was established by students of Romani language and culture at Charles University some eight years ago. The aim was to support and promote not just literature but use of the minority language itself. The latest book from Kher, which means “home” in Romani, is a collection of short stories about the spirits of the dead – an anthology published in large part thanks to a crowdfunding campaign.

The administration of the Krkonoše National Park in the north-west of the Czech Republic has been reviving fruit orchards and alleys at the foothills of the country’s highest mountains. It has already planted dozens of fruit trees, mainly apples, pears and cherries, which used to be part of the landscape for centuries.

A new documentary on the late rock star Frank Zappa contains multiple references to Prague. Zappa was the first major Western musician to visit the city after the Velvet Revolution and performed his last ever concert there in 1991. But why was he so popular with the Czech underground?

President Miloš Zeman has asked the Czech counter-intelligence service, BIS, to give him detailed information on Russian operations in the country, including the names of specific spies and their Czech collaborators. That’s according to a report published by news site iRozhlas on Monday. Security experts warn that if the request were met some BIS operations could be compromised. I discussed the matter with a former chief of Czech Military Intelligence, Andor Šándor.

With the easing of coronavirus restrictions, schoolchildren are gradually returning to the classroom, at least in part, much to the relief of parents. Distance learning has proved challenging for many students, especially for foreign children struggling with the Czech language.

The visionary world of architect Jan Kaplický is captured in the hugely impressive new coffee table book Jan Kaplický: Pro budoucnost a pro krásu (For the Future and for Beauty). The hefty monograph is the fruit of 10 years of work by his friend Ivan Margolius, himself also a Prague-born architect who made a life and career in the UK. It traces his beginnings in Czechoslovakia, the story of the highly progressive Future Systems studio and the realisation of some of Kaplický’s space-age designs, alongside interviews with many of his closest associates. I discussed the late architect’s evolution, relationship to his native country and much more with Ivan Margolius.

With the onset of winter weather Prague is preparing to open its shelters for the homeless. The municipality also wants to test homeless people for coronavirus and has special care facilities for those who test positive.

To mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Karel Jaromír Erben, one of the greatest Czech poets of all time, the London-based publishing house Jantar has released a special illustrated version of Kytice or A Bouquet of Folk Legends, Erben’s famous collection of poems.