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Published: July 13th 2013
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M July 1 – So today I began another trip. I must admit that I was having misgivings about this one. I never stay home and just relax, which is something I’ve always been bad at but desperately need. It would be great to spend time at home like a normal person, but when the time comes, I never think that way. In my mind, six weeks off means six weeks of travel, which I’m starting to realize is not necessarily normal for most people. So I am missing time at home again. Have I finished packing so I can be relaxed with my last day? Oh no. I had to spend another 90 minutes or more frantically trying on clothes and trying to decide what to bring. No matter how many trips I take, I never have a clue about which clothes and shoes to bring, and never learn from past mistakes. It’s really amazing. I’m sure I brought far too many clothes, and I am generally a light packer. I have no idea what that’s about. I spent a little time with the boy and the cats before heading off on the train to Zurich to catch my flight
to Vienna. I was at the Zurich airport just the day before, dropping off my good friends who were moving back to the states, so I was already a bit sad and emotional about being there again so soon. Luckily, a coworker and her family were on the train with me, so that kept me occupied for the whole journey to Zurich.
Checking in was easy and before I knew it, I was in Vienna. From the airport I was catching a bus to Brno, in the Czech Republic. I had almost an hour and a half to wait before the bus went, so I first went out to check on the location of the bus where I met this weird French-German woman who is engaged to an American. We talked for a few minutes and then I went back into the airport to get some food. There was a decent supermarket, so I grabbed a nice bread, some brie and a water and went to find a place to consume it. I have never been particularly graceful, and that eating experience proved that yet again. Before I knew it I was covered in crumbs. I also noticed as
I was eating that the bread cost 4x as much as expected, and then saw that they charged me for the wrong one. So after eating, I got up my nerve to ask for my money back. It worked! Luckily they believed me, because the proof was in my belly. The bus ride was a couple hours long, and I finished watching the new Dexter and then watched the new True Blood that I brought with me. Then, I started watching How to Train Your Dragon, as the bus had individual movie screens and options – far better than Delta’s overseas flights, I might add. I love that movie. The stewardess even brought us hot chocolate. So eating poorly for six weeks was in full swing. We arrived around 9:30pm and Yvonne met me at the stop. It was nice to see her again so soon – we had met up in Boston for dinner in October while I was visiting. She took me home and I got to see her greyhound Sunny again, who I hadn’t seen since I moved from Boston. We stayed up way too late talking and then I started to crash, so the night came
to a swift end. Up early tomorrow for a day trip!
W July 3 – We decided to take it easy and sightsee around Brno today. There were many places that I wanted to see that she hadn’t yet, so we took advantage of the time and the good weather to do just that. We had lunch at a hip little café, and then started at the Capuchin monastery, where they have a crypt that mummifies bodies naturally with air flow. We had a good look at the bodies, one of which was a woman who they think might have accidentally been buried alive, due to the position of her body. Another was a chimney sweep and still had his boots on. From there we went to the cathedral, and then to the castle. Here we walked around the parts that were used for prison and torture. Pretty cool. This is where my camera battery died. Pretty sad. But it was a nice stop. We walked around the outside of the castle and took in the views of the town. From the castle we started off towards the Mendel museum, at the Abbey where he used to live and
work. I was afraid we would not have time to get there and look around as Yvonne had to get home to walk her dog before Czech class, but it worked out great for time. I got to read and see more about Mendel, the guy who started to learn about and figure out genetics. This in a time when we did not know anything about genes or DNA. But he learned how traits were passed on from two parents to their offspring and how to determine the likelihood of such events. He used pea plants to do this, and this is what I still teach my students about today. Yay bio! Yay Mendel! Once Yvonne was back from her class, we decided to grab some dinner at another nearby hipster café. She asked if they had vegetarian food, and they said “We have only vegetarian food.” A perfect ending.
F July 5 – My last day in Brno. Our original plan consisted of a day trip to another town named Telc, but it would have taken four hours by train. I’m not sure if the connections are always bad or if it was due to the holiday today,
but either way we decided last night that we would just relax and enjoy the day in Brno. And that we did. Between breakfast, lunch, laundry and some more tv, we did not leave the apartment until 2pm. I also spent a lot of time to try to make reservations for the next few days. My goal for this trip was to couchsurf through much of it, but I had gotten no hits for Bratislava and the other towns in Slovakia didn’t really have much to choose from. So I made some reservations and some emails about possible reservations to try to get myself sorted. Then we went out for a walk where we were rained on. It was the first bad weather on the trip, after the longest and cloudiest winter ever, not too bad. And luckily it did not rain too long or rain again after it ended, contrary to the forecast. We did duck into a café and Yvonne had a coffee she had seen the other day, so that was good. When we came back to the apartment afterwards, Yvonne took Sunny over to her dog walkers for the weekend, since she would be out of
town. I used the time to reorder and repack my things for my trip to Bratislava tomorrow. All of a sudden Sunny was gone and I felt sad that it happened so quickly and I didn’t have any pictures of her, but luckily Yvonne forgot something and came back and I said good bye and took some pictures. J When Yvonne came back we went to another local café and I had a burger (so good) and then we came home and watched another episode of True Blood before bed.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
I always look forward to reading about your annual vacations...
some TBers write about an extended trip and we never hear from them again. So reading blogs by those who faithfully return year after year is great to see.