Víkend

(Translation: the weekend)

I just got in from my weekend in Moravia, and I am exhausted. Not that I hadn't been looking forward to this trip, but I had been skeptical about how much I would enjoy visiting another location within the Czech Republic. I had been disappointed that I wasn't going to be visiting another country, but I am definitely glad that we went. Brno (pronounced without any vowels between the r and the n - it isn't a Sacha Baron Cohen movie) was a great little city that reminded me a lot of Providence.

Saturday brought a lot of places and a lot of laughs. It started at breakfast with Jill recounting her experience from the previous night. She was in a local Brno establishment when she went looking for a bathroom. She asked a guy where the bathroom where the bathroom was, and he started speaking in Czech. She informed him that she spoke English and didn't understand, and he became excited and asked her if she was American. She responded that she was and he immediately began raving about Derek Jeter. A die-hard Red Sox fan, Jill knocked his glass out of his hand. Luckily I was not there to witness the Red Sox being the cause of the deterioration of American-Czech relations.

The day continued with a guided walking tour of the city of Brno. It had a few beautiful old buildings, but a lot of the buildings were very plain functional Soviet architecture. We saw the town hall and Saint Peter and Paul's Cathedral. They were both beautiful. After that we broke for lunch and my friends and I wandered to a farmers' market and bought grapes.

Now is a great time to tell you about the famous drink in Moravia. We were warned multiple times before leaving that we should not do much more with this drink than a mild sampling. Called burcak (with some accents on letters that I am missing), it is a young wine that has not completely fermented. It is not sold commercially. Instead it is available only in this region, and is sold all over the city at homemade stands that look like lemonade stands. It is one of the sweetest drinks I have ever tasted, and you cannot taste any alcohol. However, it is much stronger than a glass of wine, which is what makes it so dangerous. We were even told that if we bought it we wouldn't be allowed to bring it on the bus because it often causes the plastic containers to explode as it continues fermenting. Everyone in the states is definitely missing out on burcak.

After we wandered around town we went to the Mendel museum. Most of you probably forgot who Mendel was after high school biology, but those of us geeks on the trip actually found this trip pretty interesting. We toured a museum that talked all about Mendel's experiments and life. We even got to see the garden where he grew his famous peas. It was pretty interesting.

The best part of the day was our visit to the museum and memorial at the Austerlitz battlefield. Austerlitz was the decisive battle in the Napoleonic wars, and we went to this strange but high-tec museum there where they had strange reanactments of the battle on hidden TV screens. The best part was the location because it was high on a hill so we had a gorgeous view for miles. They also had this really interesting monument that was tall but you could also go inside the bottom. They told us before going in that the acoustics inside were designed so that if you stood in one corner and whispered into the corner it could be heard in the opposite corner. I thought they were joking, but when we went inside everyone tried it and it really worked. Pretty sad that we were so amused by that.

We spent the evening downtown in Brno getting dinner and having a low-key night sitting outside at several different establishments.

Today was a bit more of a busy day. We were supposed to go to a church first, but my friend Alex had not had a low-key night last night and left her purse in a cab. A Norwegian girl had found it and called another girl on our trip from Alex's phone so our whole bus spent half the morning trying to find the Norwegian girl's dorm to get the purse back. Funny but frustrating.

Once that had all been sorted out we went to a small town called Adamov to see an amazing hand carved altar. After that came THE BEST PART OF THE TRIP. We toured caves in Moravia that are one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The pictures I took don't even begin to do it justice! We walked through these caves for about half an hour before getting on boats to float through the underground river. It was all breath taking. Looking around our group was funny 'cause everyone walked around with looks of amazement on their faces. The caves were probably my favorite part of the trip so far.

After the caves we stopped at the church we were supposed to see in the morning (which was beautiful of course), and then we headed back to Prague. I am exhausted from our busy weekend, but it was a lot of fun. Language class starts tomorrow from 2-6:45, so that should be interesting. I can't wait to know more than the basics.

It's been great to hear from all of you, and I'll be getting a few postcards in the mail soon!