Between Prague and Dresden

Ugh. Czechia. Shudder. The latest indecency to be inflicted upon this poor country.

Sounds like Bad Schandau, and it is in Germany. The border area is particularly grim and industrial/post-industrial, but you can immediately tell once you're in Germany because everything looks much prettier.

Thank you for your quick response and information. I apologize for using an offensive term while speaking of the Czech Republic. I did not realize that the term was negative.

I don't think it's negative; it's just new. But seemingly inconsistently used. The website of the country's embassy in Washington DC uses both "Czech Republic" and "Czechia" on its home page!

Last June when I was taking a day trip to Brno from Vienna, I got into a conversation with a guy on the train who turned out to be Czech instead of Austrian. He spoke fluent German and used the term "Czechia" The term must be in everyday use.

Term Czechia is not in everyday use. Ha! Even my spellcheck corrected it to just Czech. Czechs wanted something shorter than Czech Republic so they came up with Czechia. Similar like Slovak Republic = Slovakia. Or Russian Federation = Russia, etc.
Czechs when they speak Czech are not using word Czechia but Cesko (pronounced Chesko). For Czechs Czechia sounds similar like Cechy (pronounced Chekhee) which in English would be Bohemia - the western province of Czech republic (the eastern one is called Moravia - Morava in Czech language). So that's why most Czechs don't like that word because they feel it's not about all Czech Republic but just about its western part - Cechy. In English language it does not have that connotation so I don't have problem with it.

Thanks Ilja for the explanation. The guy and I were talking about various chateaux. He said, "Es sind viele schöne Schlösser in Czechia." That was the context.

He said, "Es sind viele schöne Schlösser in Czechia." That was the
context.

Since this is German: in Germany many people called Czechoslovakia and the CR "Tschechei". During the 70s and 80s this wasn't a problem, but when the Czech Republic was founded it became a big no-no and the politically correct do-gooders on both sides of the border discovered that Germans used a Nazi term for decades. A huge campaign was started to introduce the politically correct term "Tschechien", which sounded very strange to German ears, but that's the official term now.

On topic: there is no resort-like place with a lake on the outskirts of Dresden. I guess you have seen one of the small towns of Saxon/Bohemian Switzerland, probably Bad Schandau, Wehlen or Rathen. They however are more than 30min away from Dresden, and there are no lakes, just the Elbe river. The train runs on the left side of the river, the towns are on the right side.

Google maps are now calling it Czechia.

During the 1970s (that's when I followed the names and went there in 1973), I heard Germans also call "Czechoslovakia" the CSSR, obviously since it was in the Soviet block and the official name of the country.

Official name was Ceskoslovenska socialisticka republika - initials CSSR, shortly Ceskoslovensko, in German - Tschechoslowakei, in English - Czechoslovakia.

In the 1970s I addressed ( private) correspondence to the country after listing the street and city address from the US and (West) Germany using all three names, "Czechoslovakia" in English when mailing from the US and "Tschechoslowakei" when mailing from Germany. There were times too that I put "CSSR" when mailing from both countries.