Today we explored Olomouc. This town is so nice but strangely almost abandoned. We have theorized that everyone is on vacation during July, because the town square was almost empty on a Saturday afternoon.
Nonetheless we have been able to occupy ourselves by trying to figure out the significance of all the interesting churches, fountains and “plague columns.” One irony of this part of the excursion is that barely anything is in English. I’m not complaining, but I do find it funny that just the other day I was overwhelmed by everything being overtouristed, and that included everyone trying to talk to us in English even when we were trying out our Czech. Now we’ve got the complete reverse of the situation – few people speak English and all of the descriptions in the information (Informace) centers are in Czech. We can’t really figure out anything more than the name of a particular fountain. (“Fountain of Jupiter” or “Fountain of Neptune“)
But really that makes this all the more fun. Today I managed to purchase a bicycling map of the region from a woman in a store using the 10 words of Czech I know along with the 100 or so words of English that she knew. She was very friendly and was able to give me some recommendations.
And that leads us to tomorrow’s adventure! We’re going to rent bikes from our hostel and go on a little bike ride. Assuming it lives up to the description, the Czech cycling network is a huge web of routes through the whole country and is well marked everywhere you go. The map I got today shows just our region, but there are over 100 other maps blanketing the whole country. I find it pretty amazing that the country is so well mapped for cycling.
Another skill that we have learned will help us tomorrow: grocery shopping. After some trial and error, we’ve learned what we can take with us on the road to make a cheap breakfast or snack. So instead of the usual Clif bars and Gatorade, we’ll probably take some Voda Neperliva (still water) and some bread and salami to fuel us on our little journey.
Wish us luck! :)