Malenovice, Czech Republic

This past weekend I met Rob’s family. His parents live near Zlín in a small village called Malenovice. The village has 540 inhabitants and is about 130 km east of Brno. We took the train there Friday afternoon. His sister Andrea, her husband Martin and their daughter drove over from Stříbrnice on Saturday.


On Saturday morning we walked to see the town’s 14th-century Gothic castle. We didn’t get to see much because there was a wedding taking place. Oh well, next time.




There is also a monument to the 18 scouts who were tortured during WWII. It also commemorates Romanian troops which I still don’t quite understand because Romania fought against the Allies. Guess I need to hit the Google to figure this one out.

The rest of the day we spent by the pool and being over fed by his mom. His dad kept the slivovice (plum brandy) and hruškovice (pear brandy) flowing. I’ll write about the moonshine later.

On Sunday, I went to church with Andrea. This was my first Czech language mass. The church was pretty but unfortunately I only got every 5th or 6th word. But at least I made it to mass.

It was nice meeting everyone this weekend. The parents speak Czech and some Russian. His sister takes weekly English lessons and his brother-in-law speaks English and German. Poor Rob had to do quite a bit of interpreting even though I did OK with my Czech. The big problem was that I kept mixing up my Czech and Russian. By the end of the weekend my brain just hurt. I think it was the language barrier but the hruškovice might have had something to do with it.