We don’t speak Czech

It wasn’t until after we left Prague for Brno that I really had the feeling of being in the Czech Republic. Prague was beautiful, Prague was romantic and interesting and living, Prague was touristy and mostly in English. Which is convenient, seeing as how we don’t speak Czech. Still, there were more tourists than locals and reminded me strongly of Venice, though I like Prague considerably better than I liked Venice.



Brno, however, is not Prague. Its buildings are a mixture between old historic apartment blocks, Soviet-style apartment blocks, baroque and modern all mixed into one, centered around a beautiful, triangle-shaped central square in the old town beneath the castle. Brno was tourist-friendly without being touristy; a walking tour accompanied by informative signposts explained just what some of these cool buildings were as well as some of the stories and legends associated with them. And it was all in Czech. In Prague we would ask “English or Deutsch?” and usually find someone more than capable in one of the above languages. In Brno we ask “English or Deutsch?” and we receive a slight shake of the head accompanied by two fingers held up about a centimeter apart to indicate that the individual didn’t particularly speak English OR German. Merde. And due to our apparent incapacity to remember much more than ‘hello’ (Ahoj) and ‘thank you’ (dekuje, after several days of practice and several reminders) much less numbers 1 – 3, “may I have the bill please?”, “how much?” or anything else that would have been remotely useful, there was much pointing and smiling involved in ordering anything. We stared helplessly at the (presumed) cleaning lady who came to our rooms, at the blind boys asking for directions (perhaps? We foisted them off on a nice passing Czech lady), at the gentleman at the train station, and at the restaurant servers on most occasions…

There were, of course, some misunderstandings. One evening we were sitting outside on a patio drinking half-litres of Czech pilsner, having waved off the waitress who (we presume) asked if we wanted another round, intending to go for ice cream and then move on. I went to the restroom (apparently the wrong one, as my compatriots found out when my directions to the rest room led them to a old man empathetically pointing to the restrooms a floor above where I had sent them. Oops). At my return I was greeted with the somewhat chagrined or perplexed expressions of my companions—and another round of beer. Which we hadn’t wanted, hadn’t ordered, but had come anyways. Other times we spent several minutes painfully trying to get the beer menu explained to us in capable but halting English by the poor waiter only to discover he had left us with an English-language menu as well. Our last night in Brno, the girls set off for the bar with the goal of coming back with three *different* beers to try, resulting in two bottles, two glasses, and one which appeared to be 90% head.



Getting to Brno involved taking the slow train through rolling fields and little hamlets, hanging our heads out the windows like oversized dogs, sleeping nestled into a corner of the compartment, stopping at this and that tiny village, rolling through fields and hills, reading, taking pictures. The landscape looked a bit like the Shire from Lord of the Rings, and everything seemed to have a slight sepia tone to it. Brno itself is a typical college town, insofar as I could make the generalizations across two continents and several countries, but the size and the feel of the place, the many cafes and lively bars, the friendly atmosphere are all similarities shared among towns (or small cities, to be charitable) of significant student populations. We enjoyed cruising the shoe stores and the supermarkets, made a point of visiting pretty much every church in town (having completely neglected to enter any church at all in Prague). Continuing our beer tour, we tried varieties of pilsner of the varying local brew with anywhere between 5 and 8% alcohol (indicated by the proof, for example “Strastobrno 11” or “Strastobrno 12”), rich lagers (going on 16%), cut beers (half and half), and most anything bottom-fermented and filtered.



Our inability to speak Czech certainly hindered our interaction with the locals, though we managed to have our table besieged and successfully invaded by a young guy with about 8 words of English. And his twenty friends: “you are three?” (questioning look, nod in assent). “can you….?” (motion of hands compressing together, nod of assent, we scoot together). About three minutes pass, as his friends and compatriots and distant relations and everyone’s grandmother and second cousin and best friend and some guy they met on the corner and about seven or eight Asians slowly file in and try to fit at our table, eventually pulling all available chairs from the vicinity. Our ‘new friend’ turns to us: “over there…. Place for three people…” (points to table, nod in assent, we move over to a table where a slightly shady-looking man and a youngerish lady are engaged in the kind of activity for which a hotel room is usually suggested, but as all hands are above table-level and visible, we decide it’s okay).

But now it doesn’t matter, as we are in Slovakia on the train on the way to some small town with a castle. But we don’t speak Slovakian either…