It was time to move on from Hungary so today we shifted north to the Czech Republic, or as it is now officially called Czechia. It seems that many Czech’s are still calling it the Czech Republic, so it appears that both names are acceptable.
Our last chore in Hungary was to spend our last Hungarian Forints. We thought we had 21,000 forints which is about $70 so the plan was to put it in the gas tank. But when I pulled the money out of my wallet at the gas station there were two 20,000 notes instead of one so we had 41,000. François could only hold a little over 37,000 so we went inside, luckily they had a bottle of wine that took most of the remainder and the cashier got to keep the change.
Brno is the second largest city in Czechia and continuing our new quest to visit second largest cities in countries-we added it to our list of places to visit here. I was feeling bad about my lack of knowledge about second cities and was confessing this to a Dutch couple referencing Brno, Plovdiv, and Kosice (Czechia, Bulgaria, and Slovakia), when they both laughed and said they had never heard of any of them either, so Ton and I felt better.
The first thing we needed to figure out was how to say Brno as there appears to be at least one vowel missing for an English speaker. Ton went online and said it was Bur-NO with the emphasis on the No. That mystery solved we headed to the center to check it out.
Brno is a University town with 10 Universities and over 100,000 students. We were struck with how busy the center was, but it felt like a working city not a pretty city. An active city center with people who look like they are going to meetings or classes feels different than an active city center full of tourists looking at things. There is a different flow to the pace that we enjoy.
We decided that the difference reflected in the statues. The statues are not made to be photographed by tourists, but to reflect something about the character of Brno. It is winning the award for unusual works of art that you may have to be from Brno to appreciate or even understand.
I decided to embrace that practicality with our choice for lunch. After weeks of sampling various central European meals I told Ton I wanted something familiar, I was leaning towards a hamburger, but Ton wanted something warm so we went for Italian pasta.
Brno does have a good beer scene so we popped into a quirky pub that made us feel at home. The place had a nice after work vibe full of co-workers and friends having a beer before heading home. We were the only tourists in the place.
I thought the cold weather was over but the low tonight is supposed to be in the high 30’s again, worst after tomorrow we are supposed to get 4 or 5 days of rain in the region. Bummer for us, but they have had a dry spring and probably need the rain.
