(11.04.2012 I've been off the grid in Zdiar, Slovakia and getting caught up now)

I am too fucking old for shared dormitories in hostels. No thanks... don’t need to do it anymore. These thoughts crystallized while spending a single night at the Hostel Mitte in the city center of Brno. I love the community idea of hostels, meeting people, sharing stories, and finding likeminded people to potentially continue traveling with... but I just can’t do it anymore... not after the Mitte. After checking in and paying for a couple of nights, I headed out for a walk around town, dinner and a drink at a cafe. I got back around midnight, and there was some guy absolutely sawing logs... loud... It’s not the first time I have slept in a room with someone who snores. But in my experience, I’ve found that it will go on and off for an hour or so, then eventually die down. Not this time. This guy was non-stop throughout the entire night. I eventually fell asleep around 3:00, not 15 minutes later an Aussie couple came into the room, turned the lights on and put on music... are you kidding me? The big guy was still snoring away, so I fell back asleep around 5:00 this time. At 6:00 the couple in the next room started going at it. Hostel walls are pretty thin. I felt like I was there with them... but without being the one who gets to enjoy it... So I checked out and figured I would do something else... anything else... and luckily found a cheap room (cheaper than the hostel!) on Airbnb.

Brno is the capital of Moravia, the region that is the eastern third of the Czech Republic. It is the second biggest city in the country, and a lot less touristed that Prague, which was quite nice. It is a college town with a great cafe and bar culture. As much as I enjoyed that part of it, I was here for the architecture, namely Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat. Here is a little fact that all you architecture folks probably already knew, that was news to me... I always thought that his first name, or middle name, was Mies... Mies van der Rohe. His first name is actually Ludwig (maybe I knew that), and Mies was his mother’s last name, Van der Rohe his father’s.

Generally I just wandered around Brno, saw a little bit of architecture, sat in cafe’s, toured the castle and moved around from hostel to bed to couch. The highlight was the tour of the Villa Tugendhat, but I’ll post something separate on that. Had a good night out with Jan, my Airbnb host, putting down a bunch of pivo. Then curled up in different cafe’s around town: Spolek, the boho student lounge where everyone wears black and enjoy’s long pulls on cigarettes; Podnebi, a well lit little place tucked behind the main street with a garden facing the castle; Cafe Franz, a high design little place close to the center with great food, wine and beer; Cafe Tungsram, a hip little spot near the train station; and finally Cafe Era, a colorful functionalist cafe/ restaurant with great food and wine, near the Villa Tugendhat. I ate some traditional Czech food, and ordered a pork knuckle, without really understanding what it was. They brought out leg on a sword, stuck in a butcher block cutting board, with a chainsaw for carving. I was sitting by myself drinking a beer and everyone turned to look at me when the food arrived, and kept watching, waiting for me to start carving... it was a stressful dinner! I asked the waitress if she could assist me with this endeavor, and she not so kindly refused. I went from the hostel in the city center to the room with Jan and Olga, but they were leaving Saturday, so I found a couch (which turned out to be a bed in a private room!) with Daniel in a flat over near Villa Tugendhat for my final night.

Daniel was a really cool guy. A Spaniard from Madrid, he met a Czech girl, had some kids and has been living in the Czech Republic for the last twelve years. He is a professor of Spanish Literature at one of the local universities and was my resource for all the cafes. Despite doing homework with his daughter, practicing cello with his son, writing a lecture for a conference in Mexico, doing laundry, preparing for his trip and following the Atletico Madrid game, he was able to provide me with great suggestions for touring around the city. As a Spaniard living in a country where people tend to be more austere, he had an interesting perspective. He really appreciates the fact that when you get a smile from someone, they really mean it, unlike Spain, where there is this false sense of cordiality.

On my last day I toured the Spilberk Castle and casemates. It is a nice place, on a hilltop overlooking the city. Not too dissimilar to lots of castles in central Europe. The big difference being that the foundations of the castle, the casemates, became the dungeons known as the Prison of Nations, where enemies of the Austro-Hungarian empire were incarcerated. The prison closed in 1853, but was reopened by the occupying Nazi’s in WWII.

Other random observations from my few days in Brno. When trams pass by, they make a sound like a child screaming. It is really disconcerting while wandering around. There are these great mini storefront wine vendors everywhere. You can bring up an empty plastic water bottle, point to the wine you are interested in, and they fill it up for about $1.50. There is a modern astronomical clock in the main square that looks like a giant dildo. When there are firework celebrations in town (and there are a lot of these, people in Brno are a bunch of pyro’s), they put a special covering over the giant dildo clock that looks like a massive rubber. The younger folks in town gather and cheer on the installation of the massive prophylactic.