For readers from across the Pond who don't already know, Josef Fritzl is presently being held in custody in Amsetten, Austria after keeping his daughter captive in his Amsetten windowless cellar for 24 years, siring 7 children with her at the same time. There are even reports emanating from the Czech press in this morning's papers that Fritzl may also be connected to several missing persons cases with prostitutes canvassing towns for johns on the Austria-Czech border.

Reading through such sensationalistic accounts, it makes one wonder just how exactly things like this can happen in our otherwise placid Central European region.

Indeed, such perversions are possible in any country of the globe, though allow me to kindly share a theory which was posited last night courtesy of one of my Czech contacts. It concerns our absence of a sea coast in this nation, nor access to large bodies of water.

According to my colleague -- a Bohemian, born and raised, who observed the great wide sea for the first time somewhere in her early '20s -- looking out across the vast expanse of a seaside affords one a sense of awe and majesty. You look out across the hugeness of the water to realize just how small you are on the planet, forcing you to cease being so (damned!) inward-looking and self-absorbed. Breathing in the salty-tinged sea air and hearing the gulls cry is like healing balm. The experience, say those who have seen snow or the sea for the first time in their lives, is endlessly liberating.

The incidence of suicides in our part of the world, similar to dark Scandinavia -- albeit for entirely different reasons -- is higher than the EU average. My colleague believes much of this has to do with the dour greyness of our Czech cities, and the fact we aren't able to make the quasi-spiritual connection with the ocean that would otherwise give us a sense of inner calm.

In defence of her/my claim, I'll admit that our European Mediterranean confreres are plagued by their own share of problems, equally as societally-destructive. A raging summer sun which beats down merciless 40-degree heat on its inhabitants, packed like sardines in their metal coffins during peak afternoon rush-hour traffic, leading to slapfests and kerfuffles in the street (which I've witnessed in Bucharest, for example) isn't exactly what I'd call la dolce vita. Moreover, having spoiled fruit and tomatoes, not to mention other assorted tschotschkes and gewgaws, forcibly chucked your way because you said something that didn't accord with societal norms (egs. Italy, Greece, Croatia) isn't what I'd call "normal" living either.

Living in a landlocked country is hardly a picnic.

In times past, the womb-like protection of the Bohemian and Moravian crater served our people in good stead. It ensured protection against invading hordes -- especially from the mongrel Magyars and other assorted Huns (save for March 1939's infamy, when Czechoslovak Armed Forces grunts were clearly ready and willing to take on the Nazis, armed with hedgehog fortifications no less, a Czechoslovak military innovation) -- to keep our racial pool intact and our unique language a going concern, sustaining and nourishing ourselves to this day.

Yet it somehow also harms us.

It creates an unnecessary despondency in an otherwise open society and globe. It causes us to peer far too often inwardly, focussing on our infinitessimally small foibles at the expense of far more vital priorities as 21st-century global citizens.

I can't really determine how the following mental connection was made, but as I watched Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade two nights ago on DVD -- a shocking fictionalized expose on female genital mutilation in Burkina Faso -- I somehow got to thinking how there are much bigger problems plaguing the world than our sometimes petty silliness, what I tell one of my completely underachieving Czech colleagues -- despite talents to the contrary -- questioning your "smysl existence," your meaning of life, as it were.

Our tendency towards self-absorption can be said to be borne of comments like President Klaus' which go along the lines of Cesko being dissolved into the European collective "...like a teaspoon of sugar in the European coffee."

So what's the uniquely Czech remedy?

More travel.

More exposure to things taking place abroad.

More study of foreign languages. And spend your money, folks! Join the world, despite your strong reluctance to do so or the Czech preponderance to remain home, ostrich-like.

We cannot do anything about our geography -- a dual-edged sword, as described above -- yet there's heaps we can do to modify our attitudes towards it.

--ADM