Blogs from Ostrava, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic, Europe

Với blog này, tôi muốn lưu lại suy nghĩ và những cái mình cảm nhận được khi quan sát cuộc sống của công đồng người Việt Nam ở xứ người. - Ostrava là 1 thành phố với tôi, cũ kỹ, có vài nơi hiện đại, nhưng nhìn chung là không đẹp. - Tàu điện ở đây chạy tùm lum, và tôi không biết làm sao để bắt được xe lửa để đi. - Khá giống Balan - Thích cách quan tâm tới gia đình của con người ở đây, cuối tuần, đi chơi với người yêu, đưa vợ con đi công viên chụp hình, cưỡi ngựa, đạp e, kayak - Xài 1 thứ tiền khác gọi là Cu, tiếng khác (tiếng Anh không phổ biến) - Eduroam xài được cả ở Balan và Séc, thấy lạ ... read more

Today, I did Ostrava Zoo. I will not be doing an exhibit by exhibit 50 million word review but I will be generally discussing the zoo – the good points, bad points and my general opinions. Ostrava Zoo is located in Ostrava (obviously) which is a city in the Czech Republic and fairly near to the Polish border. I’m going to be honest here and say that Ostrava is really quite a depressing city, it is an industrial city and the skyline is covered with the towers of factories, some are shut-down and rusting and some are still bellowing smoke. There used to be lots of coal mining going on around the city (though this has stopped now, I believe completely) and as a result there are lots of huge slag heaps and old railways for ... read more

Nazdar! It’s been a little while since my last update, but this past week has been so absolutely insane that this is my first time to sit down and have a few free minutes to do something besides work, etc. Well, here we go. Last Friday morning, I hopped on the train and started my four hour journey into the east. Although Havlíčkův Brod lies right along the stretch between Prague and Brno (almost in the dead center, to be exact), the train connections here are otherwise atrocious. I can get to Prague and Brno very easily, there are trains leaving every two hours, but otherwise, it takes a while to get anywhere else (since I typically have to go to either Prague or Brno and then connect). Anyways, I headed down to my favorite city ... read more

If I had to choose one word to describe what we did today, it would be the word walk, because basically that’s all we did. We woke up, had the complimentary breakfast in the hotel, and just walked. Not far from our hotel was situated not another famous tourist attraction, but the most famous attraction, Stodolni Street. This street is literally crazy, it was crowded with people. The atmosphere was hyper and upbeat and had somewhat of a music-based theme. Whether you’re an oldies type of person or a new, hip, today type of person, anyone could find their type of music. Abby and I stuck together and explored every single type of music that was there. It was pretty fun!! Another feature that this street contained was something that I’ll never forget; I swear there ... read more

Today we slept in, I don’t think our bodies are used to the time change yet. But once we were up and about, we used our handy-dandy map and found the first museum we were planning to go to on this trip. We went to a Mining Museum! It’s not something we would usually do, but traveling is all about exploring and learning about new things, so that’s how we started! I have to say, it was pretty cool! Our tour guide was a sweet older woman, who was born and raised in Ostrava. She was really nice and showed us parts of the museum that weren’t usually part of the tour! Abby and I felt so special! The museum contained many underground caves that we got to walk into. It was a little scary, but ... read more