A weekend of tasting things

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So, an update then. Well first and foremost I've moved, to a lovely flat right in the heart of New Town, for those who know Prague, less than 10 minutes walk away from Vaclavák, Karlák and Ípák. I've been really enjoying: not having to leave home at 6am to trek from Bílá Hora to industrial parks on the other side of town, being able to walk home from hlavní nádrazí in 10 minutes after completing 4 hour train journeys from Zlín, living just across from a nice vietnamese potraviny as opposed having to go to Kaufland for everything, and finally living in an entirely non-english speaking house. However this is not to say it's entirely Czech speaking - one half of the couple I share the place with hails from the east of Slovakia and speaks mostly Slovak, and this comes at a time when I've been having lots of fun discovering the Slovaks' answer to the "FAIL" meme on facebook. So slowly but surely I am passively picking up yet another language.

I'm still wiling my days away teaching and not writing enough music, or enough actual writing (including on here). At weekends some interesting stuff has happened. We took a trip to Liberec one weekend to stay with some friends of Jitka's and then spent the next day on Ještěd in the boiling sun, which I really enjoyed, although it was generally too hot to walk up such a big hill, especially whilst recovering from at least seven shots of slivovice. Also, Liberec was another "place not to go to because it's shit and/or there's nothing to see there" on my holy list thereof which I'd had compiled for me before my first trip in summer, but hereon belongs in the same list as Plzeň and Banská Bystrica; the list of those such "places not to go to because they're shit and/or there's nothing to see there" which I have now been to, and found actually quite enjoyable. If you're trekking in Czech Republic for a reasonable amount of time, then I recommend going to Ještěd at the very least. And the city isn't too bad; it has a somewhat exaggerated amount of shopping centres, otherwise it's just a normal Bohemian city.

Anyway, last weekend. I guessed it would just be a normal weekend in Zlín, a trip somewhere on the Saturday, the rest of the weekend just spent drinking, maybe socialising a bit, knocking about the city, watching films, playing scrabble and so forth. But it turned out to be pretty intense. On friday night we went out to our favoured wine cellar for just one glass, but ended up coming out having had about 15, as there was a wine tasting session going on. It was a very new experience for me as I've only been drinking wine since my last birthday, and never really drunk much white wine at all. It was almost entirely white, with one glass of red and rosé each included, and not produce you could buy from supermarkets, but instead made exclusively for large companies and tasting sessions.

The social atmosphere was, in my opinion, ruined by the man presenting the wine. He was no wine enthusiast but a crass businessman, and spent far more time and energy boasting about his company's achievements than was practical in front of an audience who were, as one would expect, exponentially losing interest as every glass was poured. Despite this, he insisted on shushing everyone whenever they broke out into conversation. We finally got talking to the people opposite us as the evening came to an end, which meant we stayed for another couple of glasses on top of the 12 samples we had already had.

The next day we continued our tasting in another fashion. We slept til almost midday, then took a bus to a town called Luhačovice, which was the one thing we did plan to do. We were now really entering the heart of the Valašsko region, far removed from Zlín, that huge functionalist circuit board with which I tend to associate it. Being a spa town, Luhačovice reminded me somewhat of Karlovy Vary, although smaller and without the impression that the town is completely owned by Germans and Russians. The unique style of the region was most evident on the station buildings, which were decorated with what looked like giant henna tattoos, and poetry scrawled on the walls in the local dialect. We spent a few hours sampling the local spring water (which I found pretty disgusting) and walking around the large park where the various springs were situated. We had other plans later on in the afternoon, however, so we left it at that and then moved onwards to Uherské Hradiště.

Here, we expected to find absolutely nothing, just somewhere to look around in our hour-and-a-bit wait between the train arriving and our bus to Šarovy, our final destination. But lo and behold, on the town square we stumbled upon an array of tents plastered with brewery logos and a stage with a guy talking rapidly into a microphone. At first we had thought it would be something politically-themed because of the local election, however it was not. It was just what we needed to compliment our wine tasting, a beer festival! We drank a few small beers and sampled this rather innovative way of frying a potato which was basically a huge hand baked crisp on a stick, then just as the guy on stage started giving us a rather energetic rendition of some songs by the Czech rock group kabaty, we headed off to Jitka's parents on the way home for some lasagne and slivovice to finish it all off.

Just a normal weekend in Moravia.

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Photos

Ještěd
The tower contains a hotel, viewing tower, bar and restaurant.

Picture unrelated
No pictures of wine, so here's a new friend I made at Zlín zoo

Uherské Hradiště station
Valasské poems and henna tattoos

Crisp on a stick
To be honest it was more oil than solid

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