Last weekend in Olomouc in the Czech Republic there was a beer festival. Despite the fact that I’d almost rather drink battery acid than most beers, I went along, because I wanted to see Olomouc. We traveled to Cieszyn on Friday night, and then from there to Olomouc on Saturday morning, then back to Cieszyn for Saturday night and Sunday morning. (With all the border crossings and the three currencies we used, I got a bit confused. When we went to the grocery store on Sunday after church, I wasn’t sure what country we were in.)
Fortuitously, it did not rain on Saturday. It had, however, been raining pretty much all week before that, and so the place where the festival was held was a morass of unfortunate-smelling mud. Once we got to the site and I knew how to get there, I returned to the center of town on my own. After I’d explored the city to my satisfaction, I came back to the festival and spent about an hour with garbage bags on my legs, squelching through the mud, listening to a band cover “Sweet Home Alabama” and other classic rock, and drinking a Paulaner hefeweizen. It didn’t suck. About an hour was the proper amount of time for me to be there.
Olomouc’s old town area has a lot of fountains for some
reason. Many of them depict Roman deities, like Neptune and Mercury, and there’s a Caesar fountain as well. In the biggest square,
Horní náměstí, is the town hall, with the astronomical clock in one wall. By the time I reached the square I’d totally forgotten about the renowned clock, and walked around the corner and went, “Oh, right! Famous astronomical clock.” The various dials and faces of the clock are surrounded by mosaic work from the Communist era. The figures include symbols of the months, with peasant workers getting on with whatever agricultural task needs doing in each month.
¹ I liked that the clock also included the name-day calendar.
Also in the square is the Holy Trinity Column, a huge Baroque sculpture. The column is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, because, as the plaque below it reads, “In terms of its size and richness of sculptural decoration, it has no adequate counterpart in the whole of Europe.” I must admit I find that a bit hard to believe, since there are a lot of sculptures lying about the continent, and while this one is definitely Baroque, it didn’t look super especially hardcore Baroque to me; but UNESCO must know what they’re talking about.
² Near the column is the newest fountain, one representing the seas. It has a dolphin and a big turtle and some sea people holding fish. The turtle supports a rectangular bit with more jets and fish on it, and on the back of this part there are copies of maps and nautical charts. While a bit strange, as the Czech Republic has no coastline, this fountain was my favorite.
In the square there was a display of photographs taken by two Czech photographers in Afghanistan of joint Czech-US military operations. I didn’t know that the two countries worked together in that part of the world, so it was informative to see the photos. There was also a McDonald’s in the square, and I had a strawberry milkshake and the world’s hottest fries and am unashamed.
Somehow I wandered to
Bezručovy sady, one of the big parks in the city. There was a real track and field facility on one edge of the park, with a discus/hammer cage, thus far the only evidence of throwing that I’ve seen in central Europe. In the park I was looking for something that signs said was the “Crown Fortress,” and I think I found the entrance thereto, but it looked closed for renovations. From what I saw, there were barrack-type buildings surrounded by a brick-and-earthworks wall. On one side of the fortress was the
Mlýnský potok or mill stream. Not far from the stream was a stretch of wall that looked as if it might have been part of a city wall. There were groups of schoolchildren going to different stations in the park, and one station had a guy dressed as a shepherd with a mop-head wig. I wish I knew what that was about.
As I was walking, and I have no idea where this was, a plaque caught my eye because it said “Lafayette” on it. Upon closer inspection the plaque was in French and Czech, and yes, it was that Lafayette. Apparently the Marquis was imprisoned in Olomouc from 1794-1797.
Like most decent-sized European cities, Olomouc
has a lot of churches. The first one I went in was
kostel Panny Marie Sněžné, the Church of St Mary of the Snows. The interior is being restored, and is very Baroque. I really liked the organ (right), which was intricately carved with angels playing instruments. I also saw the exteriors of the Evangelic church, a gray, square building, and its polar opposite, the Orthodox church of St Gorazd, in Palm Beach pink and teal. I went in
dóm sv Václava (St Wenceslas Cathedral),
kostel sv Michala (St Michael church), and
chrám sv Mořice³ (St Moritz/Maurice Cathedral)
. St Wenceslas is all painted on the inside, with patterns of flowers and stars on the white walls.
My favorite was St Moritz. The interior wasn’t impressive in any way, but I wandered through into a side corridor with some statuary on display and the entrance to the Gothic bell tower. I said to myself, “Self, do you
really want to go up into a bell tower? You know what those are like and how you feel about coming down those kinds of stairs,” and then I decided to do it anyway.
Because come on, they weren’t even charging anything to go up! So I went up the stone spiral staircase, which, to be honest, was a little terrifying, since there were chinks big enough between some of the steps to see through to things below. Those stairs went up to the first landing, which wasn’t very far up at all. There were some artifacts on display, a few old metal crosses from the steeples, that sort of thing, and a metal spiral staircase to see the bells. There are four bells of different sizes, and a view of part of the city. The best part was that I was the only one there the whole time, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone trying to pass me on the stairs. Now that I’m consulting the Lonely Planet to get some facts straight, it says that “The western tower is a remnant of its 13th-century predecessor.” I suppose that explains the scary stairs.
On Sunday we went to the Lutheran church in
Cieszyn, one of the largest and, at 300 years, oldest Protestant churches in all of Poland. We sat in the balcony, but there were two more galleries above us. As we’ve previously discussed, Slovak and Polish are not terribly similar, for all they’re Slavic languages, and every time I thought I’d be able to join in the hymns in Polish, they got harder and harder. The two examples I wrote down from the hymnal were
przyjdż (no clue what that means) and
wszystko (all, which I deduced because it sounds close to the Slovak
všetko). After church we went to the supermarket and then had a three-course pierogi lunch, with potato to start, followed by meat with sautéed onions and peppers, and sweet cheese for dessert. And we watched “Shrek” in Polish as we ate, and then took a train and two buses back to Tisovec. And we all lived happily ever after, the end.
¹In Slovak the names of the months are január, február, marec, etc., but the computer calendar uses completely different names. I think this must be a Czech/Slovak difference, because the clock had months like červenec and listopad on it. Listopad is a pretty rad name for a month, though. ↩
²Especially since I think I should get a job there. ↩
³How happy am I that I don’t need to make the ř sound in Slovak? So very, very happy. ↩
We spent the night at a friend's flat in Košice and learned that you can't take your pistol into Tesco.
On Saturday morning we stopped in Prešov and I bought a sweet Slovak baseball cap at Tesco to be my new driving cap, and we walked around the old town and I ate ice cream.
I saw two vehicles that were imported from North America: a GMC truck with a Canadian (Ontario) license plate and a Dodge SUV with a New Jersey plate.
Andy Warhol's mother was born in Slovakia, and there is a museum dedicated to Warhol and modern art in Medzilaborce.
Our reason for going to the northeast was to visit tripartite Greek Catholic wooden churches, of which we saw the exteriors of five (Potoky, Hunkovce, Korejovce, Príkra, and Bodružal) and went into four more (Ladomírová, Krajné Čierno, Nižný Komarník, and Miroľa).
The Dukla Pass, on the border between Slovakia and Poland, was the site of a month of hard fighting between the Soviets and their allies and the Nazis in 1944, and there is now a memorial to the battle there.
And since the Dukla Pass is on the border, we went into Poland for the heck of it.
On the way home we passed through Bardejov and stopped to have a look at the charming old town square, with its cathedral dedicated to St Egidius and its Renaissance town hall.
When I was getting in the car, I was mindful not to spill any ice cream on the seat; and while I didn't spill, I managed to stick my delicious chocolate-orange scoop into the upholstery on the top of the door frame (I also managed to get it clean again).
