I have made it into Brno! I do not have too many notes regarding the train ride here, though I did note that Bratislava had an awful train station (especially for a country's capital). One had to stand in line, rather than take a little receipt-like number like in the ultra-efficient German train stations, in order to buy a ticket; the people who gave one tickets neither spoke English (which was not a problem for me), nor gave one a schedule for the train that one was taking; and there was nowhere to wait for trains except for the steps leading up to the platforms, where whole families could be found waiting for their train. Very few trains entered and left the train station, and the only overhead display for departure and arrival times had slats that manually flipped, like on a billboard. I had to wait over an hour (not such a rarity, really; I should not complain, as most trains in Bratislava leave for other parts of Slovakia) for my train, during which time I saw more beautiful young women than I had seen in the preceding month, I should think. The only points of note from the train ride itself were that the compartment was air-conditioned, there were a great many evergreen forests along the train tracks, and there was no form of notification whatsoever within the train that one had reached thus-and-such a station: the only way to tell where to get off was to be sitting in the right part of the train to be able to see the tiny signs posted outside of each train station through the window or to ask a local. It is also worth noting that Slovakian train officials check one's ticket every time they pass one's compartment, even if they have already done so multiple times; German officials, by contrast, only check the people whose tickets they have not yet seen.
I regretted leaving Slovakia as soon as I got off of the train in Brno. Travelling through Slovakia is more adventurous than travelling through Germany, and I expected that the Czech Republic would be a somewhat Slavic version of Germany. I was wrong to regret having left Slovakia, as I had already seen everything that it had to offer culturally and was not in a position to hike the High Tatras, and I was wrong to think that the Czech Republic was a Slavic Germany - the Czech Republic is as distant from Germany as Spain is from Morocco. It has the same crumbling buildings, cracked sidewalks, bums, alcoholics, and overall atmosphere of decay as Slovakia had, and the streets were empty when I got here, making the city look like a ghost town. (I later learned that nobody was out because it was a national holiday.) I found my hostel easily, which was encouraging; explored all of the city center by foot; and even found a decent tourist office, in which I learned more about places that I could see outside of Brno. Brno itself is not a burgeoning university town, like Heidelberg, but a provincial town that once had enough importance for someone to build a castle above it. It has some pretty monuments, churches, and museums, but it does not appear to be of much historical importance; it is sort of like a low-rent Linz. The Czech language itself is almost impossible to decipher. While Slovakian was like Russian with some modifications, Czech is a mixture of Russian and disaster. "To perform" in Russian is "to get off" in Czech; "shame" is "attention"; ice cream flavors are labeled here as being "commanding," if their advertisement is to be taken seriously; the supermarket that I visited today was "stale"; and the most famous example of Czech's butchering of Russian is that the phrase "horrible vegetables" means "fabulous fruits" in Czech. I am no longer intrigued by the Slavic tincture of languages spoken west of Russia, as one has to murder one's Russian itself in order to make sense in its sister languages. The Czech Republic is clearly no more developed than Slovakia, though it appears to have a larger population and to have had more historical importance. While I should enjoy seeing the areas surrounding Brno and Prague (in addition to Prague itself), it is at moments like this that I wish that I were somewhere more exotic, like France or Italy, though I suppose that one cannot see everything at once. The lesson to be learned from this part of the trip, since I have already seen plenty of poor places in eastern Europe and could surely find more interesting medieval cities in Belgium or northern France (in addition to the ones that I have already seen), is to pick one's travel destinations carefully and align them with one's goals. Such are the lessons to be learned from travel.
I have a few general statements to make before I end this post. One was that the Ukrainian girl with whom I spoke yesterday (or the day before?) spoke perfectly-fine Russian; her reason for insisting, initially, that she did not was that she wanted to assert herself as Ukrainian first and foremost. I have to admit, as much as I like it when people speak Russian, that this is a good sign, as countries from the former Soviet bloc need to move as far away from Russian culture as they can, given that Russia oppressed them for over seventy years and, in some cases, such as Ukraine's, committed genocide in them. I have nothing more than that to say on the topic at present.
I regretted leaving Slovakia as soon as I got off of the train in Brno. Travelling through Slovakia is more adventurous than travelling through Germany, and I expected that the Czech Republic would be a somewhat Slavic version of Germany. I was wrong to regret having left Slovakia, as I had already seen everything that it had to offer culturally and was not in a position to hike the High Tatras, and I was wrong to think that the Czech Republic was a Slavic Germany - the Czech Republic is as distant from Germany as Spain is from Morocco. It has the same crumbling buildings, cracked sidewalks, bums, alcoholics, and overall atmosphere of decay as Slovakia had, and the streets were empty when I got here, making the city look like a ghost town. (I later learned that nobody was out because it was a national holiday.) I found my hostel easily, which was encouraging; explored all of the city center by foot; and even found a decent tourist office, in which I learned more about places that I could see outside of Brno. Brno itself is not a burgeoning university town, like Heidelberg, but a provincial town that once had enough importance for someone to build a castle above it. It has some pretty monuments, churches, and museums, but it does not appear to be of much historical importance; it is sort of like a low-rent Linz. The Czech language itself is almost impossible to decipher. While Slovakian was like Russian with some modifications, Czech is a mixture of Russian and disaster. "To perform" in Russian is "to get off" in Czech; "shame" is "attention"; ice cream flavors are labeled here as being "commanding," if their advertisement is to be taken seriously; the supermarket that I visited today was "stale"; and the most famous example of Czech's butchering of Russian is that the phrase "horrible vegetables" means "fabulous fruits" in Czech. I am no longer intrigued by the Slavic tincture of languages spoken west of Russia, as one has to murder one's Russian itself in order to make sense in its sister languages. The Czech Republic is clearly no more developed than Slovakia, though it appears to have a larger population and to have had more historical importance. While I should enjoy seeing the areas surrounding Brno and Prague (in addition to Prague itself), it is at moments like this that I wish that I were somewhere more exotic, like France or Italy, though I suppose that one cannot see everything at once. The lesson to be learned from this part of the trip, since I have already seen plenty of poor places in eastern Europe and could surely find more interesting medieval cities in Belgium or northern France (in addition to the ones that I have already seen), is to pick one's travel destinations carefully and align them with one's goals. Such are the lessons to be learned from travel.
I have a few general statements to make before I end this post. One was that the Ukrainian girl with whom I spoke yesterday (or the day before?) spoke perfectly-fine Russian; her reason for insisting, initially, that she did not was that she wanted to assert herself as Ukrainian first and foremost. I have to admit, as much as I like it when people speak Russian, that this is a good sign, as countries from the former Soviet bloc need to move as far away from Russian culture as they can, given that Russia oppressed them for over seventy years and, in some cases, such as Ukraine's, committed genocide in them. I have nothing more than that to say on the topic at present.
One of my final notes is that one of the central churches that I saw in Bratislava had an open nave, so to speak: unlike many German churches, which have a multitude of columns all through their interiors, the church in Bratislava had only two supporting pillars near its entrance - the rest of the interior was free of them, creating an illusion of capaciousness. The roof was domed, like the ones of the cathedrals in Budapest and Wurzburg, and it was covered in pictorial drawings (also like the cathedral (or church?) in Wurzburg). Oddest of all, the church had no stained glass whatsoever! I saw a similar church today - similar in that it had no stained glass. It had a honeycomb meeting of pointed arches on its roof, like the cathedral in Strasbourg, and a huge number of elaborate carvings in its walls that were like the "moveable statues" - the ones that, like bookcases, appeared separate from the walls themselves - that I saw in many German cathedrals (in Speyer, Worms, &c.), only the ones in this church were engraved in the walls themselves. If I were less lazy, I would learn some more architectural words (specifically, pertaining to religious architecture) to try to describe what I was seeing, but I cannot be bothered, I am afraid; I am not that much of a fanatic for architecture. (I forgot to mention the degree of elaborateness of the church's interior. Czech churches - at least, if they follow the model of the one that I saw today - were clearly made for showing off. The church here was rolling in wealth.)
I should point out a few things about religion before moving on to my final notes for the day. I am getting sick of religion. I thought that I had seen enough of it in Germany to have grown tired of it, but religion fell out of view for a bit when I visited Eastern Europe, as, while people in that part of the world are surely very pious, they are not as ostentatious about their piety as Germans historically were (at least, from a tourist's point of view). Based on the number of churches in Brno - at least a dozen, or as many (if not more than) as in any city in Slovakia - the Czech were, and might remain, a very god-fearing people. The idea that there is a magic wizard in the sky who will answer our prayers is preposterous, and, while I took Germany's churches and cathedrals more as cultural relics than as institutions of actual religion, one cannot help thinking of religion as such when one sees people being religious. I struggle to reject religion fully, as I do not see the harm in it if it enables people to worship life, find meaning and stability in their lives, enjoy a sense of community, and strive to be better people, but one cannot ignore the degree to which most organized religions are tied in with oppression. Seeing people in prayer often leads me to think that they want someone with a magic wand to solve all of their problems - it is like they are pulling the wool over their very own eyes. On the other hand, if believing in God can help people to believe in goodness, and if people do not insist that their fellow man believe in the same God as they, I do not see the harm in it.
I should note, before passing on to my final two points, that churches with opulent interiors are much more visually attractive than sparer churches. I do not know what this says about them as institutions of worship. I was thinking, last night, that I might want to try to book a room of my own at some point over the next couple of weeks, as, contrary to what I said a few weeks ago, sleeping in dormitories can be much more difficult than sleeping in one's own room. I shared a room last night with a trio of young men from South America who came back from a bar in the middle of the night and would not shut up for about an hour after they got back. While I recognize that small samples of tourists do not accurately represent the social make-up of whole societies, they can very often lead to the formation of stereotypes. Just as American tourists are known as ignorant buffoons, Englishmen consider other English tourists to be drunken boors (This does not match my experience in the slightest bit.), and Russian tourists are known to be rude and belligerent (again, not in the places that I have visited), every Latin American tourist that I have met, with one exception, has been a brainless chatterbox doused in cologne who is principally interested in returning noisily from bars in the middle of the night or, at the very least, using his dormitory for drinking, babbling, listening to unnecessarily-loud music, and partying all night long. The tourists that I have met are a tiny cross-section of Latin American society, but they remind me that, while none of us is strictly representing his country, we do leave lasting impressions on the people whom we meet, and those impressions become associated with our nationalities. The Chinese, Japanese, South Korean, and German tourists whom I have met have, without any exception that jumps to mind, been tidy, courteous, and interesting to talk to. The Americans whom I have met have mostly been harmless loudmouths, while the lone Australian whom I have met was momentarily ashamed of her nationality when she met a countryman whom she described as being, more or less, a stereotypical hillbilly with no knowledge of the outside world. This concludes my thoughts, at present, on people of other nationalities.
My final point was spurred by the behavior of my idiotic roommates: I wondered why it was that people were so fond of going out late at night rather than doing so during the day. Specifically, why do the saturnalia supported by late-night bars and clubs take place so late? Why cannot they start at a more reasonable time, like 6:00 o'clock? I recognize that they cannot very well start any earlier (at least, not on weekdays), as people have to finish work before going out, but I do not understand why they have to continue long into the night. Is there some feature of our circadian rhythm that makes us more prone to bacchanalian behaviors late at night? Is the reason for having late-night bars associated with some historic law(s) forbidding unruly behavior before some certain time of night? Is there something about darkness itself that makes being at a bar or club more exciting? Perhaps the association with other people's being asleep or with one's behavior's being forbidden (by society, if not law) makes one want to be out later rather than earlier; perhaps certain hormones are produced in our bodies when we get excited about being out late that make us want to prolong the night for as long as possible. Whatever the case, I cannot understand why one would rather go to a bar from 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM, midnight to 4:00 AM, or during whatever other late-night window than to do so from, say, 6:00-10:00 PM. Perhaps being in a sort of netherworld between night and day is exciting; I have no idea. The reason for my bringing up circadian rhythms is that I tend to want to be active during the day and to relax in the early evenings, while, on rainy days, I often do not want to leave the house at all. Perhaps one's impulse to productive activity dies down at a certain time of night at which people go out; perhaps going out right when they would naturally be inclined to go to bed primes people for an active night. The very existence of night clubs is one of the more curious phenomena that I have encountered in my life, as I have no idea how people could consider going to them fun.
I have ended my email in time to shave and shower before going to bed. I have little more to say than that this hostel has excellent WiFi, that food here is cheap, and that I wish that I could start my emails earlier in the evening, rather than putting them off, so as to get to bed earlier. I had a mishap in a restaurant today, tipping the waiter much more than I intended because of dealing with a new form of currency and having to rush my decision as to how much to tip (as the waiter was breathing down my neck), and then I bought what may have been more food than necessary in the supermarket; I was tired and a little disoriented (not physically; rather, a little worn out). I am going to try to make up for my rash spending today by making dinner with the groceries that I bought for the next two days, then visiting the same Czech restaurant for more local food (which is quite good), and I will be able to save some money because this hostel offers free breakfasts. I am still quite sick - I am still having frequent stomach cramps, which are quite painful, though not debilitating - and will have to visit the hospital tomorrow to try to arrange a meeting with a doctor, as Brno does not seem to have any equivalent to the walk-in clinic. That about sums things up for now. I need to get to bed soon to get a full night's rest!
My final point was spurred by the behavior of my idiotic roommates: I wondered why it was that people were so fond of going out late at night rather than doing so during the day. Specifically, why do the saturnalia supported by late-night bars and clubs take place so late? Why cannot they start at a more reasonable time, like 6:00 o'clock? I recognize that they cannot very well start any earlier (at least, not on weekdays), as people have to finish work before going out, but I do not understand why they have to continue long into the night. Is there some feature of our circadian rhythm that makes us more prone to bacchanalian behaviors late at night? Is the reason for having late-night bars associated with some historic law(s) forbidding unruly behavior before some certain time of night? Is there something about darkness itself that makes being at a bar or club more exciting? Perhaps the association with other people's being asleep or with one's behavior's being forbidden (by society, if not law) makes one want to be out later rather than earlier; perhaps certain hormones are produced in our bodies when we get excited about being out late that make us want to prolong the night for as long as possible. Whatever the case, I cannot understand why one would rather go to a bar from 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM, midnight to 4:00 AM, or during whatever other late-night window than to do so from, say, 6:00-10:00 PM. Perhaps being in a sort of netherworld between night and day is exciting; I have no idea. The reason for my bringing up circadian rhythms is that I tend to want to be active during the day and to relax in the early evenings, while, on rainy days, I often do not want to leave the house at all. Perhaps one's impulse to productive activity dies down at a certain time of night at which people go out; perhaps going out right when they would naturally be inclined to go to bed primes people for an active night. The very existence of night clubs is one of the more curious phenomena that I have encountered in my life, as I have no idea how people could consider going to them fun.
I have ended my email in time to shave and shower before going to bed. I have little more to say than that this hostel has excellent WiFi, that food here is cheap, and that I wish that I could start my emails earlier in the evening, rather than putting them off, so as to get to bed earlier. I had a mishap in a restaurant today, tipping the waiter much more than I intended because of dealing with a new form of currency and having to rush my decision as to how much to tip (as the waiter was breathing down my neck), and then I bought what may have been more food than necessary in the supermarket; I was tired and a little disoriented (not physically; rather, a little worn out). I am going to try to make up for my rash spending today by making dinner with the groceries that I bought for the next two days, then visiting the same Czech restaurant for more local food (which is quite good), and I will be able to save some money because this hostel offers free breakfasts. I am still quite sick - I am still having frequent stomach cramps, which are quite painful, though not debilitating - and will have to visit the hospital tomorrow to try to arrange a meeting with a doctor, as Brno does not seem to have any equivalent to the walk-in clinic. That about sums things up for now. I need to get to bed soon to get a full night's rest!
This truck is impeding the documentation of man's cultural heritage.
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