I just got back from a long walk through the beautiful city-center of Brno( pronounce Bernow), Czech Republic. I started the trip to time correctly with the gastro-intestinal-events (GIE's) I have been experiencing since I ate one slice of one small fresh tomato in Shahabad, India...
SO... after I did my wash I went down stairs and asked the receptionist if they had any (showing her the one packet of Imodium I had already used) and she had no clue, but sent me to the only Pharmacy they had open on Sunday. When I asked if the "H" I was pointing to was this hotel and she said yeah, so off I went with a map. I located the pharmacy just fine, went inside and they did not speak English, until I showed her the packet I had. She reached behind her to the "H - I" drawer and pulled out exactly what I needed. I bought it and went off to explore... after I popped two in my mouth.
The city is centered around a grand place with trolley shuttles going by every five minutes or so. There were people walking around all over, but after China and India, it seemed empty. What surprised me was the number of McDonald's within only about 12 square blocks... 6 of them! They were the only stores open and so did a brisk business.
I went inside one of the 8 cathedrals that are in the same area that is named for St. Peter and St. Paul. The architecture was marvelous and there were seven 100 foot tall stained glass windows depicting the lives of Peter and Paul... each with 50 panels each (yes, I counted them). There were also 15 full sized sculptures of different figures huge oil paintings and probably 50 cherubs (Sp?). It was very nice to see. I spent about one hour sitting on a bench watching people go by drinking McDonald's drinks and headed back to the "H" I had pointed out earlier.
It started raining, thunder happened followed by a real drencher with a horizontal river of rain, which I avoided mostly by ducking into a doorway. In the doorway, I met a young guy who had two cell phones! He was on both of them at the same time... I motioned "you have TWO cell phones?" he laughed, asked me if I spoke German and then said that he did not have two, he had 5 cell phones and it was a passion as he reached in his sack and pulled all of them out to show me... now I have seen something unusual for sure.
The "H" I was trying to get to was not the same way I remembered coming from and when I was in front of it it was for sure not my "H"... so I went in anyway. The receptionist spoke great English and helped me locate the right spot, which it turns out was not very far away... with, buy the way, no "H" on the map representing the largest hotel in the city. humph!
On the way to Brno from Vienna airport the landscape was wonderful. It is gentle rolling agricultural plots of about 80 acre plots. The wheat was being harvested by combines and the other fields were all full of different crops including three foot tall sunflowers in full bloom. I also saw a doe nibbling on something in the middle of one of the open fallow (look it up) fields. We spent some amount of time in the middle of these fields on tractor trails because...
As we were entering the small village of Hainsburg the driver saw a buss and about eight cars backed up behind it at the bottom of the small hill that led into the center of town. The two cars in front of us turned left to circumvent the backup, so my driver did the same. We spent the next twenty minutes trying to get back to the road we had just been on. I thought at first that the driver knew exactly where he he was going... until he started muttering under his breath, and we saw the same two cars also looking for the way back as well. I enjoyed seeing the other parts of the village, so it wasn't a problem.
We made it back on to the right road and went about 2kms only to find that the road was closed... so we turned (of course) left up a rise to go around.... with about 50 other cars doing the same thing. We circled around for about 15 minutes once ending in a farmer's courtyard making a U-turn along with everyone else. Because we were on a rise, I could see the exact same thing happening with the cars that turned right on the other side of the highway we were supposed to be on. It was the stuff for movies.
We got to the end of the not so well marked self defined tractor trail detour about 8 cars behind a bus that had to drive partway into a cornfield to make the tight 90 degree right hand turn to get back to the highway. We got on the highway and there looking bewildered coming the other way was a bus driver wondering if he could make the cross-country-looking trip from where we had just exited.
The only other surprise I had was to see a nice gas station on the way towards Brno with the brand "On The Run"... I thought I was in Charlotte! I could not believe that that brand was over here, and with the exact same building style, logo, colors et al. Oh well, I suppose we are in a global economy for sure.
I will pass along my India adventures next post....Dennis.
5 years ago
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