If you don’t give Gypsies cigarettes, they throw chestnuts at you. October 21, 2008

06.Oct.08

The bus into Brno from Bratislava was easy and short.  For being a former communist country we noticed the Czech have certainly embraced capitalism. In order to travel from the bus station to the tram station one must walk through a massive modern mall that made even some US malls look like a Mom & Pops store. After a quick tram ride we were at our barely pronounceable destination street, where our new Couchsurfing host Jana met us and walked with us to her place.  She showed us our new living area, a tiny mattress on her floor in an apartment with four people, but hey, it’s FREE! Can’t complain about the location in the city either!

After some chatting we headed out to see the city.  Brno is really not on any tourist trail to speak of.  Our guide book says very little about it, yet it really is quite a wonderful place.  Like everywhere else we have been so far, the architecture is amazing, and from the moment we stepped of the bus a massive black Gothic cathedral has loomed on a hill in the distance, beckoning us with its grandeur.  However, before visiting this monolith we must eat.  Jana suggested a student pub where we ate some delicious Goulash with Czech style potato dumplings accompanied by a pint of the truly exceptional local brew Starobrno.

Then we headed off to see the city.  We ended up not exploring too much today, but we had a lot of fun just wandering the town square, people watching, and buying some groceries to cook a simple pasta dinner back at the apartment.

While we were cooking dinner, Jana’s hippie dreadlocked housemate came home complaining about a group of gypsy kids throwing chestnuts at him because he wouldn’t buy them cigarettes. This amused us to no end because back home the whole “Gypsy” thing is just a big joke, but here there actually are Gypsy’s and apparently often a bit troublesome. Obviously there are tons of false stereotypes, but everyone we have talked to has their “Gypsy story.” Also, I don’t know if we’ve mentioned this by the way, but chestnuts have littered the ground our entire time in Europe so far (so it’s not like the Gypsy’s just happened to be carrying armfuls of chestnuts). Everyday in fact we run into people in parks or other public property with bags picking up as many of the little red-brown balls as they can. Delicious to roast.

After dinner we headed to a nearby bar where they have free internet, cheap beer, and tonight a “Russian theme.” The bar is open all day, but the door is oddly enough locked until dark, apparently to prevent Gypsy’s from wandering in… Now, after all these stories, Jess and I half expect at any moment we turn a corner a Gypsy mother to throw her baby at us while another robs us from behind whilst we catch the baby from falling. It is an old Gypsy trick, but Jess and I won’t fall for it, so we remind each other when we see a Gypsy mother to “just let it drop.” But I digress while being mildly racist. So far Gypsies seem like a totally chill ethnic minority and we haven’t seen what all the locals make a fuss about, still we get a good laugh out of the whole thing.

We used the wireless internet a bit & ordered a few beers as people started trickling in. They served free Whorederves (I’m just going to spell it like that to spite the French and their wacky language) which consisted of dried squid and smoked anchovies? When did we teleport back to Asia? In any case it was actually tasty, though Jess wouldn’t know because she couldn’t stomach the fishy smell. Too bad they haven’t banned smoking in bars here though, because we wandered home smelling like ash.

07.Oct.08

Every important city in Europe has to have a castle, it is like the American equivalent to McDonalds…except they have that in every city here too, though the castles are usually prettier than McD’s. The Brno castle wasn’t anything special, since again that little whorederve Napoleon tore down the outer walls, and the Nazis renovated to make it more of a modern palace rather than a castle. Still it was worth a gander, though the exhibitions and museum were closed on Tuesday. So we simply wandered around the grounds and took a self guided tour of the underground labyrinth of tunnels once used as a brutal prison, and again as a Nazi bunker. Here is the prettiest picture we took, a piece of remaining wall:

Winding down through city and parks we came to that awe-inspiring black monolith I talked about earlier. As always I don’t even bother to remember the name of the Cathedral as it is always something boring like Cathedral of St. John, or St. Paul’s Cathedral, Ascension of the Virgin, blah, blah, blah; how about something like “Doom peak,” or “Tower of Souls?” I guess then it wouldn’t be very catholic, but this country is like 48% atheist so you’d think they’d take the time to rename the Cathedrals something cool. We entered the Tower of Doomed Souls and climbed the haunted stairs to a perfect view above the city! We hung out atop and chatted with a Czech couple about more to see and do while in Czech, then climbed back down the long spiral haunted stairs and explored the cathedral innards. The usual gorgeous stained glass, flowery altar, red carpet, holy water, and no Cathedral is complete with out a golden Jesus on the cross.

For atheists we sure go to church a lot, and the burning sensation on the skin for being a heretic gets easier and easier to bear. We then headed down to the Cathedrals Crypt. I would name it something cool again like Crypt of Pestilence, but this place was creepy as all hell, so I think just “The Crypt” suffices. Storing human bodies in a cool dry place prevents the maggots from infesting, thus only the innards are eaten away by our own bacteria and the skin seals around the body making a perfect mummy (I am reading a book on the science of death right now). It came completely unexpected to us that the crypt would be littered with dreadfully eerie preserved human remains. We expected the usual bones and such, but this place was simply weird. One room contained rows of bodies still wearing deteriorated robes, and clutching crosses, while painted in Latin above read “What you are, we once were, what we are, you will be.” After reading this Jess had to console me as I curled into a ball on the floor and sucked my thumb; softly weeping out of sheer mind-numbing terror. Don’t judge me, you would too! Just look at the picture and tell me it doesn’t stop your heart for a moment…

Now scarred for life we headed to a nearby farmers market and picked up some fresh groceries for a vegetable stir-fry dinner. We cooked, cleaned, went back to the same bar to hang out with our host, drink some beers, and choked on cigarette smoke.

Brno Flickr Photos:

http://flickr.com/photos/flufflebuns/sets/72157607956351749/