Today, the oldest domestic travel company Čedok has over 40 branches, thanks to which roughly 270,000 clients go on their dream vacation to five continents every year. Jaroslava Koubková (101) is one of the ladies who guided the tourists. “I worked at the branch in Mladá Boleslav for 28 years, from 1960 to 1988,” she told Blesku. That is also why the oldest living former employee became the godmother of the book Svatopluka Rady entitled History written by Čedok. “So much has changed during that time! If I were young, I would be somewhere else every year. No clauses and permissions, today you will arrange everything by email,” she confided. When the author of the title wished for a sequel written by a successor in a hotel on the moon in 100 years, she added: “I’ll wait for that! Airplanes and rockets, that’s something amazing, the future,” the witness added.
A three-hour round trip through Prague cost 35 crowns in 1937. | Chedok
First steps
The predecessor of Čedok, located in Hybernská Street, was an information office for visitors to Prague. The company was founded in 1920 by Ministerial Councilor Ctibor Fiala and Chief Ministerial Commissioner of the Ministry of Railways Igor Geryk. Already in the 1920s, the travel agency published the first tour catalog and traveler’s checks. In addition to domestic tourism in the metropolis or to spas, they went to Europe, Scandinavia, but also Africa. Just like today, Yugoslavia played first. Mrs. Koubková also visited her fifty times. “And at the age of 86, I started traveling to the Alps. I remember President Masaryk, who said: The more you speak, the more you see, the more human you are,” she said.
Journeys milestones of history
The world was moved by politics, wars, regimes, Čedok remained. For example, in 1939, on the eve of the 2nd St. war, the company was involved in the organization of eight train transports from Prague to London, by which Sir Nicholas Winton took 669 Jewish children to safety from the Nazi rampage. After the war subsided, ten days after the liberation of the republic, Čedok came under the National Administration. Prisoners from concentration camps were returning home in his coaches. And already on June 6, 1945, he took overseas tourists on the first sightseeing tours of Prague. He survived the nationalization when he took Czechoslovaks to ROH recreation and returned 20,000 of them to the country in August 1968 under the grip of communists. He survived the stormy 90s. Čedok has been a joint-stock company since the end of 1993, in 2016 it was taken over by Polish Itaka.
Jaroslava Koubková is a legend of Čedok and also traveled a lot with him, but at the age of 101, she prefers to spend her time at the cottage in Český Raj. | Shine – Tonda Tran
No shortage of stories
Mrs. Koubková proves that during the years of selling tours there were also funny moments. “If I had to say one, it would be the one when I checked in the band to Germany. Each musician had a leave clause, the band leader took them all. Suddenly I got a call from the border: How dare you send the whole band without permission?! – The conductor left them in the sideboard at home,” she recalled. “I told them to wait, that I would arrange for someone to bring them. In the end, Mrs. Kapelníková went with them. And again they called from the border: I’m begging you, it’s terrible! They welcome every German or Czech and play him a song! – They already wanted to release them even without clauses,” she concluded.
You know that… • …you can purchase the book History written by Čedok on the Čedok website. The author Svatopluk Rada himself worked for the company for over 30 years. • …the company’s logo symbolized a stork, our traveling bird, the pavéza recalled the traveling past of the Czech knights.