From Olomouc to Prague

Thursday 2.9.2010

We got up and started walking around downtown Olomouc. There is this one square where they have a big commemorative sculpted pillar. It was some sort of holiday or anniversary of the city, and an artist was creating a sand sculpture of the capstone mural thing on the pillar. It was pretty cool.

As I mentioned before, I packed very light for the journey, and considering it would be summer, decided not to bring any sort of jacket or sweater. Martha was very concerned about this when she found out and had been insisting I get one since we left Vienna. I had been using a sweater borrowed from the hostel, but we decided to go shopping that day. Like all my other female travelling companions in Europe, Martha wanted to go into a bunch of stores and browse around but not buy anything, and comment on how cute a bunch of items were, and hold up clothing to ask me what I thought, which never elicited much more than a shrug and a noncommittal pair of syllables (this should surprise no one who is familiar with my fashion sense). She also kept insisting I buy jewelry for my female relatives, which didn’t happen. Anyway, we browsed a bunch of stores and met no English speakers. A lot of the clothing stores were kind of designer, and on the expensive side. I found one bookstore which excited me. I was tempted to buy a chemistry book in Czech just for the hell of it, but did not. I did buy a map of Rome in Czech, against my anticipation of going there later. It was a pretty cool little pocket map, and when you opened it, these bigger inner maps kind of unfolded in a cool way. Anyway it was a pretty nice little map, and though some words were in Czech, all of the street names and everything were in Italian, so there was no language barrier. I made great use of it in Rome, and by the end of my Roman adventure it was pretty beaten up. More about that later. I also succeeded in finding a jacket. It was at a second-hand store so it was pretty cheap, and exactly what I wanted: a zip-up with fleece or cotton or something on the inside to keep me warm, but a harder layer (polyester or plastic or something) on the outside to keep the wind out. Also I get to wear it around the United States and tell people I bought it in the Czech Republic. It’s nice because it’s not too hot, and good when the main problem is wind chill, not the actual temperature. Anyway, enough about that. There was also this folk store with a bunch of odds and ends, and among them were some weapons; I saw swords, knives, and an axe.

We also bought vanilla cigarillos, which are these kind of small flavoured ciagrs with a wooden sort of mouthpiece which you use to smoke it, and the wooden mouthpiece is soaked in vanilla flavouring, so it’s altogether delicious. And they’re individually wrapped and you don’t have to cut them so they’re easy to light. Basically, cigarillos would rock pretty hard if they didn’t cause lung cancer. We watched the astronomical clock at noon. An astronomical clock is this thing they have in Europe, where you’ve got a giant tower with a clock on it, but there’s also this other dial with a bunch of hands that kind of tell you wear the celestial bodies are, if you have any idea how to read it. I was told in later in Prague that the astronomical part of an astronomical clock didn’t really work because at the time it was created human understanding of astronomy was not yet entirely accurate. Also that the guy who made the clock for either Olomouc or Prague (I can’t remember which) was murdered by the authorities to prevent him from building another clock for another city, so the Czechs could have the best clock EVAR.

After visiting a café where the servers spoke English (our Aussies had recommended it to us) and our cappuccinos came in square mugs with an adorable little metal pitcher of cream on the side, we said goodbye to Olomouc and got the train to Prague. Our first action, of course, was to find the hostel we’d booked. The building it was in seemed kind of new but we didn’t like it for some reason (I don’t remember why, specifically). Martha in particular didn’t like it. We were in a room with yet another Australian. They were out in force that summer. Later I would meet even more. I asked this Australian, whose name was (and probably still is) Scott, and who was from Brisbane, whether he had heard of Architecture in Helsinki, an Australian band that I particularly enjoy but of which most Americans have never heard. He said he had. Francie and Greg were also familiar with them. Tom had never heard of them. He kept trying to get me to sing one of their songs to see if he’d recognise it, but I only sing in the shower. I eventually had him listen to some tracks on my iPod and he didn’t recognise any.

Anyway, we went out to explore Prague. There was this little corner store we grew to like. They had German Weißbier, iced coffee drinks (I forgot to mention that Martha for some reason loves iced coffee beverages that are sold in refrigerator sections of European stores), and so forth. Martha bought cigarettes (for shame!). We walked around and got street food. Prague has all of these little food stands that sell “German” (nothing like German/Austrian) sausages, this sandwich full of cocktail wieners, a breaded chicken patty sandwich, and this breaded cheese thing. Martha put a whole bunch of mayonnaise all over everything she ate, which I found pretty gross. I don’t like mayonnaise at all, though I’m fond of some mayo-based foods, like ranch dressing and potato salad. We were pretty sure one of the street vendors was over-charging the tourists on purpose to make a little bank for herself. We also walked around by the river and smoked our cigarillos.

Prague! Beer! Zac! Happy!

After a while we settled down on a bench in this park thing in front of a church and had a long philosophical conversation about architecture, and what an architect leaves behind when s/he dies. Do they prefer to be remembered by the beautiful, long-lasting buildings they created, or the personal impacts they made on peoples’ lives, as a human being, maybe a parent or spouse? It was a good conversation. Of course we also talked about religion. We always do that. Martha is a Catholic and a religious studies major, and I find what she has to say interesting. Anyway we talked for quite a while outside of this church, then returned to the hostel.

The philosophy-inspiring church.