Surprising Brno august 8 2010

---

It takes only 2 hours from Vienna to Brno by train. Meanwhile you pass the beautiful hilly landscape of Moravia. It reminds me a little of Toscane in Italy.
But what to do in Brno?
Actually we had only one reason to see Brno and that was to visit the Mendel museum.
But who was Mendel?
Well, Mendel is the founder of genetics. You know the man who came up with the mathematical laws of hereditary, the stuff your teacher biology tried to make clear to you and never succeeded fully. I know, because I was one of them, I mean one of those teachers.

We are looking for Grisha, when we come out of the station with our heavy rucksacks.
But who is Grisha?
Grisha is one of the pupils of the school I used to teach at, the Ring van Putten in Spijkenisse.
Secondly he is a close friend of my son Robin.
And last but definitely not least, he teached me how to behave like a Russian. Grisha is namely a Russian, more exact a Belo Russian. Grisha looks like a Russian, speaks like a Russian, behaves like a Russian and I think he even thinks like a Russian. Once we met in Saint Petersburg. To enter Petrograd foreigners have to pay far more then locals. So Grisha learned me to behave like a Russian, so I could pass with less money. I ducked away in my coat as I was told, walked without looking to the guards and passed my exam "Behaving like Russians".
But what is Grisha doing in Brno?
He tells us while he drives us in his brand new Volvo to his brand new house at the border of Brno. He works as a logistic manager for a Dutch company in Brno.

In the afternoon we visit the monastery Mendel worked at as an abbot. Apart from his spiritual work he did experiments with green peas and found the laws of hereditary. Actually it was brilliant what he did, but no one was interested. He sent even one of is manuscripts to Charles Darwin, but he was also not interested. He even never opened the manuscript. Later his manuscripts were rediscovered by Tschermak, Correns and Hugo de Vries. Hugo de Vries was a Dutchman and we are so proud on him, that we call him even the Dutch Darwin. To be honest Hugo de Vries did not mention Mendel´s name when he published his ideas. From that time on it became clear that Mendels genetics offered the cornerstone of Darwin´s evolutiontheorie, the missing link so to say.
We take some pictures of the monastery and indeed in the garden we find some pea plants. Rests of Mendel´s experiments or just an touristical attraction?
Around the corner we find in a cellar a restaurant and we celebrate our succes with a delicious Moravian dinner with red wine.

---