No metaphorical bananas

Just to clear up the unintended double entendre from the last post – the Czech guy quite literally offered me a banana and nothing more, but it’s good to know there are so many analytical readers out there.

I left the Czech Republic yesterday and am now in Krakow, which is a city I think I could really grow to like. I spent all day today at Auschwitz-Berkenau and all I really want is a hug and a big glass of wine. I hadn’t even really intended on going to another concentration camp after Dachau but the girl I’ve been travelling with really wanted to go so I tagged along. Again, I’m glad I went, but it was so emotionally draining that it’s just hard. It was disconcerting to be walking around in perfect September weather with the sun shining, the sky a pure blue with that delicious fall smell in the air, but to know you’re basically standing in a mass cemetery where 1.5 million people were murdered not so very long ago. So that was today.

I loved my remaining time in the Czech Republic. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Olomouc, but it’s a very easy city to be in. I honestly can’t tell you how I spent my 5 days there (and not because I was wasted) but I know I liked it. I went to a hockey game one of the first nights, and though the Olomouc team got spanked it was fun to be at a local event, surrounded by (hard core) hockey fans who are (desperately) loyal to their team, cheering them on to the very bitter end.

There are a couple of local breweries there, so of course we had to sample the local fare to get the genuine feel for semi-rural Czech life. I FINALLY found decent coffee at a little cafe,

that also served amazing chocolate pie, and though the people behind the counter were undoubtedly annoyed with me because I didn’t know how to order (do you sit and wait for them to come to your table or do you order at the counter? Do you pay initially or do you wait for them to bring you a bill? Do you tip? Are you allowed to read and linger after you’ve finished your coffee or is it the kind of place where you have to vacate the table as soon as you’re done? I never thought visiting a coffee shop would be stressful, especially considering I’ve spent the better part of 5 years getting intimately acquainted with a couple of them.) it was definitely a highlight of my time there. That and finding a running trail. There was a path that started, oddly enough, in the supermarket parking lot and then wound its way next to the river that borders the town and dumps you out into what looks like private property (and probably is) but the path kept going through orchards and fields to finally end up at a lake where there is, of course, nude sunbathing. I was not expecting that and so was a bit surprised to (almost literally) bump into a heavyset, very tan, very naked older gentleman who was also using the same trail, though thank God he wasn’t running.

Olomouc has the usual set of medieval churches with the picturesque cobble-stoned town square with a monument celebrating the end of the plague, or the miraculous occurence of such-and-such, or honoring the patron saint of blah-de-blah. Obviously, I did not do much research on the history of the city. I spent a lot of time just wandering and reading in the city parks (which were gorgeous and so unbelievably green – that’s one thing this region definitely has going for it: the scenery is breathtaking with loads of trees, rolling green hills, distant mountains, quaint little towns popping up here and there…it’s beautiful, even if the people who inhabit the country are more than a little cranky and really don’t like foreigners – though they all seem to wear t-shirts with goofily phrased incomplete English sentences on them – and give you horrified looks if you ask whether they speak English, even if you try to do it in Czech. Though I suppose you can probably blame some of their crankiness/suspicion of foriegners on the whole Communism thing. And the fact that their country is now overrun and occupied by tourists instead of Nazis or Communists.) and hanging out at the hostel, which was perfect. I met great people there, one of which is a Canadian girl – she and I navigated the (semi-harrowing) train ride to Krakow together, and we’ll probably see the city together before she heads to Berlin and I go to Zakopane. Though it’s getting a bit old being the American – she doesn’t get any flack for being Canadian, if anything people sympathize and pity her for being automatically associated with the evil chunk of North America that is the U.S. But then…she has to deal with the fact that she is, afterall, still Canadian.