I managed to do the impossible today: I had an enjoyable day in the Czech Republic. In spite of the country's lack of infrastructure and its derelictness, I managed to spend my time profitably for a day and even get back to my hostel at a reasonable hour. I will have to keep this post short, as I am exhausted and want to shower before bed. My writing somewhat late today is not strictly my fault: I had some work to do before starting this blog post and was busy watching Youtube videos earlier in the evening.
I started my day by failing to find the tourist office, which as no surprise, as it is located such that one can only find it by miracle and has no chance of finding it twice over on the same trip. I knew, from my lone visit to the tourist office, when the train to Blansko would be, and I knew when I had to leave for the famous caves near Skalny Mlyn, but I had also heard that I might need a reservation, of which I had none, to see them, as it was peak tourist season. If this were a developed nation, the people working at the tourist office would have made reservations for me when I first visited it and decided to see the caves on Monday. Alas, this is the Czech Republic, where nothing ever goes quite right, so I had to make do with the hope that I could sort things out when I got there.
The landscape to the east of Brno (I think that we were going east) was not entirely repugnant. There were some wooded hills and, closer Blansko, a sparkling blue lake, in which people were swimming and next to which people were sunbathing, including one man who was naked. The bus station at Blansko was right next to the train station, and a driver there directed me to the stop for Skalny Mlyn. After a failed attempt to get a two-way ticket that resulted in some confusion and a short bus ride, I was in Skalny Mlyn, surrounded by towering hills and dense, state-protected forests.
I do not have time to describe the site that I visited, as is usually the case; suffice it to say that these caves were vastly better than the ones in Aggtelek. The caves at Skalny Mlyn were much more extensive than those at Aggtelek, and the tours through them (there were several caves) were better-paced. The component of one tour that consisted of a boat ride through some very low-lying caves was almost otherworldly: the tour guide was saying things that were mostly incomprehensible in an echoing voice; we passed other, motionless tour boats with silent tour operators who were waiting their turn to pick people up; one could see drips of water like congealed slime on the nearby rocks; and at times the rock walls appeared to disappear entirely in the water, as though they ended at its surface. I will have to content myself to saying that I enjoyed my trip and that, since I am now afraid of taking food with me that has a chance of spoiling, I took only water. A single ice cream bar had the unenviable task of sustaining me for the whole afternoon.
I have not yet described the hostel itself; it is the best, and the strangest, that I have so far visited. Its strengths lie in the fact that people here are, unlike in most hostels, quiet after 10:00 PM; the people working at the reception desk are (like in most hostels) friendly and knowledgeable about local attractions; the beds are comfortable and even have sheets draped over them to create the (pleasant) illusion of privacy; one gets a complementary towel here; the WiFi service is good; breakfasts is included in the price of the hostel (which is a plus not because it is cheaper than one could get on one's own, but because it is healthier than one's breakfast would otherwise tend to be); and so on. I have met some very nice people here, including a couple from Hong Kong (who described horrifying working hours at their jobs) and a group of people from England, who discouraged me from visiting Bradford or Gloucester, and I have enjoyed being in an area with an active night life (perhaps because I am five stories, rather than one or two, above it). The sounds that come through the window are interesting and form a pleasant background noise to almost any activity, including sleeping. The building itself in which the hostel is located is a Soviet disaster. Its front entrance reeks of cigarettes; it has an unlit spiral staircase; and it has the oddest elevator that I have ever used. The elevator has two doors, one of which one opens manually, and makes no noise when it reaches one's destination; it is barely big enough to fit two people. The only indication that it exists is its single light displaying which floor it is on. While it would work fine if more sunlight made it into the building's vestibule, it can be unnerving approaching its outer door in almost pitch darkness.
My other notes are scattered. I have continued to be rankled by people's not speaking anything but Czech here. While many young people speak English and many old people speak Russian, the middle-aged people who form the bulk of the Czech Republic's tourism personnel (i.e., who work in transport) speak only Czech, as I have mentioned. Any country in which one does not have recourse to English, French, German, or, to a lesser degree, Italian (which, obviously, held some sway in the 17th century; that is where we got such words as chiaroscuro, stanza, and tempo), is obviously quite separate from world culture - that is, any such European country is separate from European culture, as those were the principal languages, especially the first two, in which the sciences and arts were developed for at least two hundred years. I have similarly been incensed by the requirement that one pay to use restrooms here (I have not done so; I use the bushes.), as I consider such requirement of payment usury. It should be one's inalienable right to use public restrooms, just as it should be one's right to breathe the air or look at shop windows. If people here (or anywhere else; the cause of my anger just struck me today) want to charge money for restrooms, they may as well charge one for walking the streets.
A man the other day had a fantastic Google shirt on, which read "I'm feeling lucky" on the back, only I felt sorry for him, as he was sitting in the waiting room of a hospital and might not even have known what his shirt said. It surprises me that people obey the non-smoking rules on platforms in train stations here given how much they like cigarettes; while people smoke less here than in the last few countries (really, any of them) that I have visited, they still smoke enough to make it surprising that a ban on smoking in certain places should work. I had other minor notes of less importance. My final major thought, beyond my usual lament that I would like more time to write (perhaps watching Youtube videos should be a lower priority; I often delay writing these letters to relax first), is that I might be spoiled from having spent so much time in very advanced countries like Germany, France, and Austria before visiting Eastern Europe. That is, while I have complained bitterly about Eastern Europe and will continue to do so, it might not be Eastern Europe's fault that it sucks so much. It might be my fault, rather, for having had unrealistic expectations for it and for wishing that the tourist infrastructure of every country that I visit lead me around by the hand and treat me like a king. Perhaps I need to toughen up a bit - or perhaps I would do better to stick to more-developed countries. For all of their hidden gems, countries like this one are most likely to infuriate one most of the time that one spends in them. I would not be surprised if Prague had a better infrastructure than Brno, but if the only reasonably-developed city in a country is its capital, it has little to brag about.
I started my day by failing to find the tourist office, which as no surprise, as it is located such that one can only find it by miracle and has no chance of finding it twice over on the same trip. I knew, from my lone visit to the tourist office, when the train to Blansko would be, and I knew when I had to leave for the famous caves near Skalny Mlyn, but I had also heard that I might need a reservation, of which I had none, to see them, as it was peak tourist season. If this were a developed nation, the people working at the tourist office would have made reservations for me when I first visited it and decided to see the caves on Monday. Alas, this is the Czech Republic, where nothing ever goes quite right, so I had to make do with the hope that I could sort things out when I got there.
The landscape to the east of Brno (I think that we were going east) was not entirely repugnant. There were some wooded hills and, closer Blansko, a sparkling blue lake, in which people were swimming and next to which people were sunbathing, including one man who was naked. The bus station at Blansko was right next to the train station, and a driver there directed me to the stop for Skalny Mlyn. After a failed attempt to get a two-way ticket that resulted in some confusion and a short bus ride, I was in Skalny Mlyn, surrounded by towering hills and dense, state-protected forests.
I do not have time to describe the site that I visited, as is usually the case; suffice it to say that these caves were vastly better than the ones in Aggtelek. The caves at Skalny Mlyn were much more extensive than those at Aggtelek, and the tours through them (there were several caves) were better-paced. The component of one tour that consisted of a boat ride through some very low-lying caves was almost otherworldly: the tour guide was saying things that were mostly incomprehensible in an echoing voice; we passed other, motionless tour boats with silent tour operators who were waiting their turn to pick people up; one could see drips of water like congealed slime on the nearby rocks; and at times the rock walls appeared to disappear entirely in the water, as though they ended at its surface. I will have to content myself to saying that I enjoyed my trip and that, since I am now afraid of taking food with me that has a chance of spoiling, I took only water. A single ice cream bar had the unenviable task of sustaining me for the whole afternoon.
I have not yet described the hostel itself; it is the best, and the strangest, that I have so far visited. Its strengths lie in the fact that people here are, unlike in most hostels, quiet after 10:00 PM; the people working at the reception desk are (like in most hostels) friendly and knowledgeable about local attractions; the beds are comfortable and even have sheets draped over them to create the (pleasant) illusion of privacy; one gets a complementary towel here; the WiFi service is good; breakfasts is included in the price of the hostel (which is a plus not because it is cheaper than one could get on one's own, but because it is healthier than one's breakfast would otherwise tend to be); and so on. I have met some very nice people here, including a couple from Hong Kong (who described horrifying working hours at their jobs) and a group of people from England, who discouraged me from visiting Bradford or Gloucester, and I have enjoyed being in an area with an active night life (perhaps because I am five stories, rather than one or two, above it). The sounds that come through the window are interesting and form a pleasant background noise to almost any activity, including sleeping. The building itself in which the hostel is located is a Soviet disaster. Its front entrance reeks of cigarettes; it has an unlit spiral staircase; and it has the oddest elevator that I have ever used. The elevator has two doors, one of which one opens manually, and makes no noise when it reaches one's destination; it is barely big enough to fit two people. The only indication that it exists is its single light displaying which floor it is on. While it would work fine if more sunlight made it into the building's vestibule, it can be unnerving approaching its outer door in almost pitch darkness.
My other notes are scattered. I have continued to be rankled by people's not speaking anything but Czech here. While many young people speak English and many old people speak Russian, the middle-aged people who form the bulk of the Czech Republic's tourism personnel (i.e., who work in transport) speak only Czech, as I have mentioned. Any country in which one does not have recourse to English, French, German, or, to a lesser degree, Italian (which, obviously, held some sway in the 17th century; that is where we got such words as chiaroscuro, stanza, and tempo), is obviously quite separate from world culture - that is, any such European country is separate from European culture, as those were the principal languages, especially the first two, in which the sciences and arts were developed for at least two hundred years. I have similarly been incensed by the requirement that one pay to use restrooms here (I have not done so; I use the bushes.), as I consider such requirement of payment usury. It should be one's inalienable right to use public restrooms, just as it should be one's right to breathe the air or look at shop windows. If people here (or anywhere else; the cause of my anger just struck me today) want to charge money for restrooms, they may as well charge one for walking the streets.
A man the other day had a fantastic Google shirt on, which read "I'm feeling lucky" on the back, only I felt sorry for him, as he was sitting in the waiting room of a hospital and might not even have known what his shirt said. It surprises me that people obey the non-smoking rules on platforms in train stations here given how much they like cigarettes; while people smoke less here than in the last few countries (really, any of them) that I have visited, they still smoke enough to make it surprising that a ban on smoking in certain places should work. I had other minor notes of less importance. My final major thought, beyond my usual lament that I would like more time to write (perhaps watching Youtube videos should be a lower priority; I often delay writing these letters to relax first), is that I might be spoiled from having spent so much time in very advanced countries like Germany, France, and Austria before visiting Eastern Europe. That is, while I have complained bitterly about Eastern Europe and will continue to do so, it might not be Eastern Europe's fault that it sucks so much. It might be my fault, rather, for having had unrealistic expectations for it and for wishing that the tourist infrastructure of every country that I visit lead me around by the hand and treat me like a king. Perhaps I need to toughen up a bit - or perhaps I would do better to stick to more-developed countries. For all of their hidden gems, countries like this one are most likely to infuriate one most of the time that one spends in them. I would not be surprised if Prague had a better infrastructure than Brno, but if the only reasonably-developed city in a country is its capital, it has little to brag about.
The view down into Macocho Gorge.
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