First Guests

Last weekend I had my first American visitors in Brno. But they only had to travel 1.5 hours from Bratislava, Slovakia. Both are fellow expat IBMers.

So here's the background...
When I first arrived in Brno I received a message on Facebook from Marcus. He is also from Atlanta and we both had the same finance professor at Georgia State. But we never met before. Dr. Ruff gave him my name and we hit it off. Such is the power of Facebook and networking. But leave it to Craig Ruff to know two different people in Atlanta who moved to Eastern Europe for IBM.

Janelle had mentioned to him that she was thinking about coming to see Brno for the weekend. He mentioned that he knew someone who lived here and the next thing you know I have guests. Janelle lived in New York for the last 10 years so like any good Yankee, she likes Atlanta, so we all had that in common.

On Friday night we stumbled across a great Chinese restaurant by old town hall. Asian food isn't that great here. But this was awesome. We followed that up with beer, shots of slivovice (plum brandy) & hruškovica (pear brandy), and dancing. We had a blast!!

Saturday was a lot more mellow as we all recovered. We walked around the city center for a bit and had some lunch. Saturday night we went to the Greek restaurant on my street and came back for movies in the flat.

On Sunday, Janelle went to church with me. Everyone there wants to know when she is coming back and Father Josef was disappointed that she won't be able to see the Pope next weekend because she is visiting New York.

We all had so much fun this weekend. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much. My voice was scratchy until Tuesday. And now I've got a European Atlanta crew for some random adventures.

Czech Alphabet

Since I start taking Czech lessons this week I figure I’ll share a bit more about the language. When you first look at written Czech with all of those accent marks it looks absolutely impossible.

But they may be on to something over here because, unlike English, pretty much everything is pronounced just as it is written. After learning the letters you can, more or less, pronounce everything right away. Unfortunately, even though you can say it, you still don’t know what it means in English. The only kicker here is that the stress is always on the first syllable of a word. It sounds easier than it is.

With the 3 different kinds of accent marks, there are 42 letters in the Czech alphabet.

a, á, b, c, č, d, ď, e, é, ě, f, g, h, ch, i, í, j, k, l, m, n, ň, o, ó, p, q, r, ř, s, š, t, ť, u, ú, ů, v, w, x, y, ý, z, ž

Notice that „ch“ is its own letter and comes after „h“. Also, the letters G, Q, W and X are only used in foreign words. Here are the main differences from (American) English pronunciation..

c = ts, as in cats. My last name gets pronounced „tsamargo“ here.
č = ch, as in church
ch = is glutteral, as in the Scottish word, loch
j = y as in yellow
ň = nya, as in onion
š = sh, as in shoe
ť = tya, as in stew
w = v. When you give a website you say "ve ve ve" instead of "double u double u double u".
ž = „zh“ or how the „s“ is pronouned in pleasure
r = a rolled R sound
ř = a rolled R sound with a „zh“ sound. This sound only exists in Czech. Even Slovaks, Poles and Russians have a difficult time trying to pronouce this one. When I try to say it, most people look at me as if I'm retarded.

Gambrinus

Czechs love their pivo (beer). It is remarkable to me that really good beer is just over a dollar. Or that it is cheaper to order beer than either water or soda. For example, at lunch today I had a small bottle of multivitamin juice that cost 27 Kč (~$1.54 U.S.). I could have ordered a 1/2 liter of cold Gambrinus on draft for only 30 Kč. I should have ordered a beer but I had things to do today.

Gambrinus is one of the most popular brands and among my favorites. It is produced by the Plzeňský Prazdroj brewery...the same brewery that makes Pilsner Urquell.

I think that you can find out a lot about a culture by taking a look at its TV commercials. Here is one I found that I think aired around 2007. Plus this way, my family will be able to hear what the Czech language sounds like. Enjoy the commercial.

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI is making his first visit to the Czech Republic. He will be in Brno on Sunday, September 27th and will give mass out at the airport.

The city expects around 120,000 people to be out at the airport for mass. But I think that a lot of these folks are coming from Slovakia, Poland and Hungary which have large catholic populations.

The Czech Republic is just not a religous country. Almost 60% of the population is agnostic, atheist or non-denominational. Which is odd because they have a lot of beautiful churches here. The communists must have beat religion out of them.

Sister Georgina already has us practicing our hymns in Latin. Mass at the airport is at 10 AM. But Father Josef said we need to be out at the airport by 7 AM. I guess Saturday night will not be a late one.

Burčák

I made a new discovery this weekend...burčák (procnounced bur-chák).

In the city center, I noticed four or five different street vendors all selling wine in plastic to-go cups or in liter bottles. Since the locals were buying it up, I figured I had to give it a try. All of the booths had the white (or rather brownish looking) variety while only one vendor had the red. The white is good but the red is brilliant!

Burčák is partially fermented young wine. It is cloudy, fizzy and sweet. In order to be called burčák, it must be made with Czech grapes. Moravia is the wine producing region of ČR and, since Brno is the capital of Moravia, it makes sense that it is so popular here.

I found out that you have to drink this stuff quickly because it has a short shelf-life. It can only be sold legally from September through the end of November. I've also been warned that this stuff can pack a heck of a hangover.

Divadlo Kvelb - „Invaze“

On Saturday, I saw a performance art piece in the city center at Náměstí Svobody. The Divadlo Kvelb (Kvelb Theater) came to Brno from České Budějovice to perform „Invaze“ (Invasion).

This is a moving production so the crowd follows the performers though the streets with a few key stops. The entire performance was a little over an hour. It is a satirical view of communism and, even though the whole thing was in Czech, I was still able to get the gist of what was going on.

A general in his beat-down tank and four followers go up and down the steets accompanied by loud music. They use red & white tape to annex everything in sight. Along the way they start putting up signs banning jazz, flowers, freedom, etc. They eventually come to giant rag dolls that represent different characters. One puppet gives in, another resists the invaders, one is an informer and causes another puppet to be hanged, one flees to the west, etc. A couple of the puppets get dragged behind the tank and end up in prison. At the end, the invaders take on religion and a giant angel.

The production was quite good. And free!! The crowd really got in to in. I thought it was neat that the crowd and I both laughed at the same parts. Here are a couple of videos I took on my camera. Another video and other photos are already up on Flickr.

Harvest Festival Parade

On my way to the vegetable market this morning I noticed some people and horses at Česká. On my way back I went by to see what was going on. It was the start of a parade. I didn't know what it was for so I did the only logical thing on such a nice day...I followed the parade.

Even the old historic tram was part of the parade. It was cool seeing all of the traditional Czech costumes. The group went to Mendl Square where I think someone just gave a blessing and then they continued on.

Someone spoke enough English to tell me that this was folklore tradition to celebrate the harvest. Later on, I found out later that they continued from Mendl Square on to the exhibition grounds.

I was lucky to stumble across this. The rest of the pictures are already on Flickr.

Slovakia vs Czech Republic

The Czech national football (soccer) team is now in Bratislava, Slovakia for a big match this weekend.

Both teams are trying to qualify to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The Slovaks are in the lead while the qualifying matches have been tough for the Czech team. Both teams need a win on Saturday to keep hope alive of qualifying to the World Cup. If the Czechs lose then they will be out of automatic qualification for South Africa. It should be an interesting match.

This is kind of a match between two "brother" countries. I wonder just how big the rivalry is between the two? It wasn't that long ago that they made up a single country.

vs

EDIT: It was a draw. Slovakia and ČR tied 2:2. Hopefully, the Czechs will win their upcoming matches and qualify to the 2010 World Cup. They play San Marino on the 9th, Poland on 10.10 and Northern Ireland and the 14.10.

EDIT: On the 9th the ČR beat San Marino 7:0. They play Poland on 10.10 in Prague.

EDIT: On 10.10, the ČR beat Poland 2:0 but on 14.10 there was a draw 0:0 against Northern Ireland. Slovakia has qualified to the World Cup for the 1st time in its history. I can't tell if the ČR still has a chance for a playoff spot or not.

Air Raid Sirens

I went out to lunch today, with a coworker, in Královo Pole. All of a sudden the city's air raid sirens went off. I didn't know if the Russians were invading again or what. Apparently, the sirens are tested at noon, on the first Wednesday of every month. This came in to practice after the 2002 central European floods. The ČR had the worst floods in over a century and around 100 towns & villages were completely flooded. Another 350 were partly flooded and 220,000 people were evacuated from their homes while 15 people died. I'm told that the total losses were over 3 billion Euros (~$4.28 billion U.S.). I wonder if they also interrupt TV & radio to test the emergency broadcast network? Hmmm...

Update:  More about the siren tests.

Prosím

Prosím (pronounced pro-seem) is definitely one of the words any visitor here needs to learn because you use it all of the time. Literally it means "I beg". So just like "bitte" in German...it means both "please" and "you're welcome".

You can also use prosím for "I beg your pardon" when you can't hear someone properly. It can also mean "here you are" if you hand something over to someone. A lot of Czechs say prosím when they answer the telephone.

If you need to address a stranger, then the polite way to say "excuse me" is by using "prosím vás" (please you).

You also use it when you offer up your seat on the tram. If you open the door and want to let someone pass...you got it...you say prosím.