Brewery, Yugoslavians, and Races

Have a paid lesson at a place called MKM today, and a demo lesson with them tomorrow. Also had a call back from Slůně, looks like that interview will be Wednesday. Sam's told me that he's not going to be working past the end of the month and that he'd be happy to hook me up with English Studio, who he's been going through, and that he'd probably be able to tell them “this guy could take over my classes.” Opportunities, eh?

Went out with Ahmed the other day and met a bunch of, how shall we say...., former Yugoslavians. Zlatan and two others are from Sarajevo and a few from other points, but I didn't get exactly where, French and Serbian (or whatever it was) seemed to be a little more popular, being as how I was the only native English speaker in the group. However, they were a good bunch a guys. Czechs are a very rule abiding people, they generally don't jaywalk, things are done by the book for the most part, people stand in lines, and they wait their turn. Much like Germans, I'm told. Which is why it was greatly amusing to watch Zlatan and friends pull out a small baggie and Zig Zags and roll a joint in the middle of nám. Svobody, which translates to Freedom Square. Met them again early on Saturday morning when they had a couple Frenchmen in tow. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

After running around in all sorts of heat last (in long clothes) week I was happy to throw on a pair of shorts and go hang out. However, in the space of five hours on Friday it went from 34 degrees to about 17 with cold wind and serious looking clouds that just started to drop their water as I met Alissa at the train station at 6. We went to the Starobrno brewery which is almost directly south of the castle Špilburk and hung out with Sam and Marketa. I had the first dark draft beer since I've been in county and it was gooooood. Don't get me wrong, even the blond stuff is great around here, but I do like my beer at least on the redder side of things. It was crowded inside and a little crazy outside. There's been some sort of motorcycle Grande Prix going on, I think somebody told me it was the “500cc world championships.” So there have been loads of drunken fans wandering the streets. Many of them have a predilection for lighting off blasting caps or quarter sticks of dynamite in the street. Many of them, in the brewery at least, are British and also loud yobs to boot. Turns out that in nicer restaurants in the Czech Republic, which the indoor part of Starobrno is, won't let you order side dishes without ordering a main dish and that you only get one side per entree, plus some entrees are ineligible for certain sorts of sides. I just wanted some french fries, and got told no (Marketa had to translate), so Alissa tried to order my fries, her side, and a soup. We got told no again (that one per rule). Finally Allissa decided that she'd get pasta and order my fries. The waiter just decided to take that order. Marketa said that normally wouldn't fly, however Sam chimed in here that if Marketa hadn't been with us we probably all could have ordered whatever we wanted because the rest of us spoke no Czech. Anyway we had a good time hanging out. Talked about the glories of Skype and using it to call American tech support for things instead of trying to deal with Czech call centers. It seems they get very confused when you give them a phone number with more than ten digits.

It was Chris's birthday (the Polish guy from IBM), so I went to meet that crowd next. Caught up with them at restaurant. Turns out that there's some Polish honor thing that you're supposed to pay on your birthday, so Chris immediately took half the bill for himself. I just don't get it. We wound up at some tropical themed club where I got to pay the American fee at the door (2.5 times the normal cover). Have to say that clubs aren't too much better here in Brno than they are at home. Too loud, too crowded, too much attitude. I'll take the bar scene any day. People drifted off as the night wore on. Ahmed and I were the only ones left and we went in search of another place to be, wound up meeting Zlatan and the French guys as we were getting gyros across from Charlie's Hat. (A note here: if you have even a little cabbage every day or every other day it begins to make you smell. It's really lousy to wake up with the smell of smoke in your hair and the sour tang of cabbage leaking from your every pore.) At this point all the clubs we went to weren't letting people in or were asking for lots of money. I suppose it didn't help that we didn't have any native Czech speakers in the group.

We wound up at another gyro joint, Ahmed and I being the only ones who had eaten. Longs talks about politics, in French, ensued. I couldn't follow most of it. One of the guys, Michael, was flabbergasted that I could even try and teach people my language without knowing theirs. I tried to explain the building block theory, that you start with really basic things like concrete nouns and easily modeled verbs, but he was pretty dubious. On a completely different note: if you see a black person here, odds are good that they speak English. There are very few non-white people here, hell hardly any non-Slavs. Like Coupeville I can count the number of black people on my fingers and toes. I've seen people from French-speaking Africa and from the Caribbean. English seems to be the common tongue.

Next time I'll tell you guys what theories you get to hear when drunken people learn that you're an American.