A Village in Moravia or southern Czech Republic

Where in the world is Bernie’s birthday party? (Insert Carmen San Diego theme song)

Continuing with the clues to were we are going for Bernie’s birthday, here is the next clue;

1.) This place has been inhabited since prehistoric time. Over 6,500 dwellings have been identified.
2.) This place is home to a colony of miniature albino donkeys.


Today we traveled to my mother’s birth place- Urspitz, Czechoslovakia. During World War II my family was forced out and they moved to Vienna. Czechoslovakians call it Cvrcovice.

This morning we said goodbye to our wonderful hostess and friend, Katie. She bought us a Czech Kombucha for the trip.

We caught the train from Praha to Brno just in time. At some point I (Regina), decided to use the toilet. Upon flushing it, I looked down into the toilet and saw the tracks racing beneath it. My guess is that is not standard hygienic practice on American rail lines. Bernie found that even the toilet at the tail end of the last rail car had a similarly designed septic system. So, the train could be going by and people could witness feces flying out of the back of it. We will think twice about crossing the tracks in the Czech Republic and we feel sorry for the people that have to work on the underside of the train.

In Brno, we had to do a little hike to the bus station. We saw the beautiful cathedral on top of a hill. In fact, the 10 Czech Crown coin has a picture of the cathedral imprinted on it. At the bus station, we found our platform and was shocked to see a huge line of young people (20 somethings) to go to the little town of Pohorelice. We didn’t think the small town would even hold this many people. We wondered what the big event would be. Playfully, we decided it was going to be a huge reggae concert in the country. In the back of my head, I thought about how Katie said most people either visit their “chatas” in the woods (small vacation houses) or the college students visit their families on the weekends. Luckily, we made it on the bus but we were packed in like sardines. Needless to say, most people did not get off in Pohorelice but continued south on the bus.

We found the Ve Café/Hotel and were checked in by a man who spoke to us with an English and German mix. I was very happy he knew the English he did. Of the places we visited, the Czech Republic seems to have the least amount of English speakers. Plus, the language is so much different from English or Spanish that it is hard to figure out. Unfortunately, I did not even bring a Czech dictionary. I hope the people we meet tomorrow speak to us in German. We can pick out words and sentences that way.

Our nice room has two single beds on either sides of the room which we found to be humorous.
We were hungry and decided to play Shopping Roulette. At least in France we could read labels and kind of figure out what we were buying. Here, we just guess by looking at pictures on the labels and the occasional word that is in English or a cognate of it. We faired pretty well. Bernie accidentally picked out a juice concentrate/syrup instead of juice. It was an intense drinking experience.