Royal Ricc Brno

I'm actually typing this between Prague and Brno, but I will change buses a Brno, and head towards Vienna from there...<br><br>I love internet on buses, but this one isn't that great, and cuts out pretty often...<br>I'll bein Vienna around 3:30pm this afternoon<br><br>word.<br>

The queue for tickets snaked out of the door. We seemed to be behind a German biker gang, all keen to see the caves too. The cable car down to the entrance drops precipitously. It is far scarier than the one in Zakopane, because it is so steep. <br><br>We had to wait for the tour to start. I bought Mel a green adventurine elephant for his collection. I also worked out why Eartha has started ...

... to understand it. The gist of the story was:<br><br>The area is riddled with holes, which animals can fall down into the cave system. One day a woman walked out to work on her land, but forgot the stake to tie her goat to. So, she tied the goat to the sail of the windmill and walked back to get the stake. The wind blew and the windmill turned and the goat got hung. Not to dwell on tragedy, they ate the goat. <br><br>I didn't quite get the joke, but you could buy drawings of ...

... which they responded with agreement and a laugh. Milosh the Colonel also forced me and his wife to have a conversation in Ukrainian, where I felt like a fool trying to communicate with this native fluent speaker with my god awful Lemko-infused Ukrainian. But I did learn a few interesting things about her. Despite growing up in the city of Mikolayiv, located in a heavily Russified part of Ukraine, she spoke perfect pure ...

... first time I flew it, everyone started clapping upon the landing, which wasn't even a good one. At the time, I thought "thank God someone paid for the landing!". I wasn't that upset at having to pay for the guitar, just surprised. That is, until she told me it would cost 40 euros. That's 63 dollars. That's more than the flight cost. Literally. I could feel my detestation for this place swelling back up into my stomach. She then told me I had to go pay for it in a different ...

... There isn't a lot to do, but the architecture is awesome and the people are friendly. And it's about half as expensive as Prague! The cathedral is that of St.'s Peter and Paul. The view from the top is incredible. The snow disappeared about 2 weeks ago we're told, thank God. Hopefully it won't be too cold while we're here, but I'm not banking on that.

... wine was Frankova, see if you find it in the states. There were about 5 of us, and we met some cool native people that come to the university here. They spoke okay English and told us some of the best places to go here in Brno. Called it a night with a night caper at hotel bar, and headed off to bed at midnight. Woke up at 7, went to St. Peter and Paul Cathedral children's mass. It was a really good service. Even though it was in Czech, I knew every single ...

... So yesterday I called Josef Nemcek, the father of my aunt's Slovakian foreign exchange student whom I met this summer. He only spoke Slovak to me on the phone. It was kind of a tough phone call, to say the least. I couldn't remember how to say Sunday in Czech and I said Monday accidentally because they sound the same. Oops. This could be quite interesting. No, I will call them again and get ahold of Sebastian before I go. And I will call when Katka is ...

... though was way different. It's called Horem Padem (Up and Down) and it tells the stories of a bunch of different modern Czech people and the stories are intertwined so it's really clever. The movie would definitely shock a lot of people back home and burst the "sweet, innocent Old Country" bubble a lot of people have about the Czech Republic. I don't mean the vulgarity would be too shocking, we have that in America obviously, but the issues it brings up, like ...

... a coffee shop, but did have a crypt containing dessicated remains of various benefactors of the monastery, plus a few monks - one of whom was still holding his rosary! Just around the corner was the Cabbage Market, which was full of cheap local produce considering the high levels of interbreeding that take place in the area. Mullets were extra. The further you ...