More menu fun

Joe is sad. The people who wrote the menu don't think very highly of him.


I think this was smažený sýr (fried cheese) of a particularly potent variety.

Skewered Chicken Breasts of a Chariman

It's often amusing to see what you get when you can only half divine what's on the menu. It's even more fun to see what the restaurant thinks you're ordering in English.



LilyAnned and said breasts. Maria wonders if there's something special in LA's beer that's not in hers.

Things I won't be seeing anymore

It's beginning to dawn on me that I don't really have anytime left here. That soon I won't be just wandering through this every day.

Bratislava Graf

I took a trip to Bratislava awhile back. Here's a quick digest of the graf that I saw while there.

This is one of the best stencils that I've seen. The pic may not do it justice, but I love the feeling, the emotion that you get from it.


Same person, note the lil' cube. Highly technical, and I do really appreciate that. It just looks cool, dudn't it?


Steampunk comic book superheroes? Saucy '60's revival band promotion? Who can tell?


Donny Darko as a cultural touchstone.

An itinerary

Note that I didn't say The Itinerary. It's subject to change, or at least the first part is. I run alone from Split to Athens, and from there I'm with people. This is the rough, absolutely gotta be there at this point, time line: I hit Split on the morning of Aug 2. I have to catch a bus in Tirana in the evening of Aug 9. The 13th was the only day to catch the ferry from Aghios Konstantinos. I arrive in Volos mid-morning on the 19th, and by that night I will be on a train from Thessaloniki to Istanbul. I fly in the wee hours of the morning on the 23rd back to Bratislava.


View Larger Map

oooOOooo....

I am somewhatverymuchhappily excited about this. It looks gorgeous.



And has anyone noticed that Master Reznor has enjoyed himself a bit of a resurgence of late? I hear him here, there, and everywhere.

There once was a house in Petrov.

Just down the way from my place, towards the Foreign Police, there's a place where a house once stood. It's nothing now, but there are a couple things there.

Pride of the 'hood, give it a name.


"Bicycle races are headed your way, so get ready for those beauties, oh yeah...."

Ye Olde Stadium

FC Brno was once the city's well-respected football team. Brno still has a football team, but it's not really that respected. Really, I went to a match and thought, "If I'd grown up in Europe I would've had a shot a being a pro football player." Yeah, they're not that great. What remains from the halcyon days of Brno football is the stadium. Disused and fallen into disrepair, here it is.


I'm told that once upon a time thousands of fans would pack the place screaming and chanting and stomping. It would've been glorious. The last match there was 7 years ago. When I first saw it last fall there were trees taller than me growing in the stands. When I got there early this year someone had been out with a chipper to get rid of the biggest shrubbery. Rumor has it that it's going to be torn down and replaced with a new one. There are stirrings of anger about that in some quarters of the city. It is still a beloved place. After all, it's still got a bit of magic left in it.

Rear elevation

This is one of those things that I really like about Europe.



The people on the top floor have their own veranda. There's little trees, nice tile, the washing is drying in the sun. They've got it made. Look underneath there. You see that pair of white plastic chairs just waiting there in the shade. You could see that and think, "Might be nice, but it's small and only gets a couple hours of sun in the morning." You'd be wrong. I think I'd rather have that flat. It's got more space to lie out. (Hint: it's red.) Now look at the left. See the giant glassed in space? I'd really like to live there. For one thing all the windows and light, but for another climb out the window and voila! there you are with a huge space for sun bathing, barbecuing, drying mud bricks, and what have you.

Not only that, but maybe you could introduce yourself to the other people who live in the place with the white plastic chairs. Maybe you'd be buddies. You could just nip across your back 40 there and borrow a cup of sugar or show up with two beers and BS about your favorite football team. Could be grand. You'd probably never meet these people as neighbors any other way. It's not like there's a tenant's association for the block or anything. You might never know them to have a connection, even though they're just a short distance from you. But here they are.

This kind of stuff crops up all the time over here. Things are old. Most buildings built in the way-back-when are used for something or in a way their builders never envisioned. Things are added and deleted over decades, it's haphazard. There's not an army of lawyers around to litigate you into a building code/safety inspection straitjacket. It just kinda happens. I like that.

It's cold and made of stone.

Guess what these two grey things are. Funny looking, huh?




Give ya a hint: the Church didn't like 'em on their statues. These ones are holy. They belonged to saints.

Give up, yet?

They're.....


....wait for it....


.....waaaaaaaiiiiiit for it....




PENISES!!

Yup. The Catholic Church does not look kindly on saintly anatomy.

Olomouc graf

I like this one. It calls you out.

Shiva & Friends

This is at the Pekarska tram stop where I live. The black and white shape is actually a map of central Brno. The main station is at the bottom. The two open spaces are Zelný trh and náměstí Svobody. Click for detail.

Getting down and dirty.

The Czechs, and possibly the Poles/Slovaks/Hungarians/other post-Commie peasant peoples, dig gardening. For real. There's this huge trend towards depressing flat blocks and run of the mill townhouses, but at the same time people make sure they've got a chance to play in the dirt. How do they do this you might ask? Roofs? Hydroponics? Window gardens? Nope.



They simply put the garden somewhere else. I'm not sure if this is a Communist holdover or something older still, but I do know that it's traditional and people seem to enjoy it. Land is chopped up into a number of individual plots. The size anything from 3 meters by 4 up to 10 meters by 20, and they're often irregularly shaped. They can be in marginal places, around tram tracks or on a slope. Conversely they can be just plunked down next to the river or between neighboring developments. They're bought/sold/inherited the same way any other property is, just treated as a little annex property.



Some of them are very ordinary vegetable gardens, with cabbage, squash, corn, radishes, carrots, or whatever else grows well in this climate. Some have ancient looking fruit trees, propped up with weather-beaten planks. Larger ones have sheds to keep tools in while nicer ones have curtains, patio umbrellas with beer advertisements on them, and lawns. On any weekend day you can see old men and grannies who've driven out to visit stripped down to their skivvies working in the dirt. (The old folks are distressingly comfortable with skimpy clothing.) One of my friends told me about her father, who can't be kept out of the garden. He must drive out to it and work on it at least once a week or he gets very cranky and anxious (in general and about the state of the garden). This applies even on his birthday and wedding anniversary.

Lineup for Fishes

This is a section from a legal wall that supports a tram overpass. I'm not too handy with the Photoshoppery, so there are a few goofs.



I particularly like the red-pink-red section on the left. Click this for a download of detailed/actual size. Warning: it's about 5 mb.

Said Friends

Hana and Cat get revenge on Tim for the photo of him and Brian in her bed at the last party. That's too complicated. It's a good photo.


Aussies, what can I say? Phil and Anthony. Note Cat trying not to be seen at the bottom, and Hana's splendid little addition.

Love your friends.

I laughed hard when I saw this, it made me think of the Swamp House. Wheat-pasted paper, under a bridge on the west side of town. It's about 2 meters x 4 meters. Links here, which is why I found Divide & Kreate, who is awesome. One of my fav's is TNT the Pain Away, an AC/DC + Peaches mashup.

Petrov at sunset.

This is the backside of the Petrov Cathedral, taken from just below Špilberk Castle at sunset. I live below that park.

This was my birthday.

My friends got Alphonse got totally hammered.