Articles by vernondalhart

We’re sitting in Frankfurt, having just arrived via plane, train and automobile. A late night and an early start later, we’re almost prepared to head back home. Or to sleep. One or the other.

Two more nights of opera later (with a semi-professional guide for good measure) culminating in a fantastic performance of Carmen, the above quoted late night and early morning…

It has been a blast though. The latter part of the trip (beginning around Brno or Krakow) has been by far the most memorable, and I could easily see myself wanting to skip my merry way back here. You know, rent a flat in Žilina (or surrounding area) to stow gear at, and then just spend week or half-week long trips hiking through the mountains of Moravia. I could stand that. Anyone else up for it in a few years?

So last night Šár and I decided to catch some local theatre… the lady at the hotel told us that there would be a play about some local hero that we would likely never have heard of… Janišek. The guy from Terchová. So of couse we went! Who cares if we wouldn’t understand, it’s not like we knew what the hell was going on in any of the Operas, let alone the English one.

 Lucky us, it turned out to be a Rock musical, so even though the dialog was incomprehensible, the music was really good. But it gets even better. Šár noticed sooner than I did, but the actor who played Janišek was… the singer from the band Arzén. Seriously. So we got to see him two days in a row! The musical was great (and I sort of understood the second half), and so today I ended up buying a best-of CD from Arzén. Tragically, they were out of CDs from the actual play. However, when I get back to Canada, I’m totally going to track down a copy to order online.

We’re in Terchová, a small and lovely town in the Slovak mountains. Getting here was quite an adventure.

 We left Krakow at 0710 on a direct train to Žilina, which promply populated itself with pre-(and a few post-)pubescent Polish children. I’m pretty sure that there’s a picture of me trying to sleep on some kid’s camera phone. There was one pointed at me when I opened my eyes, and there was quite a bit of giggling.

 We arrived in a village on the polish side when all of a sudden the train is emptied of these kids. Breathing a sigh of relief, we assume that the rest of the trip will be quieter–however, we are quickly told by the ticket man something along the lines of us having to switch to one of four buses that are sitting outside. Apparently the trains were broken, or so we were able to gather in our fractured polish. A short twisty bus ride later, we’re shunted off the bus in Zwardoń, a Polish border town where we were both told to wait for a bus that would take us to our destination, and that we should get on the train that was waiting there for us.

 After that, the trip was relatively straightforward, and all affairs aside, we weren’t even very late into Žilina–which I might add is a surprisingly lovely city–before we hopped a short local bus out to where we’re sitting now.

 Dad, you’d love it here.

Anyhow, as for Krakow, it was by far the most social part of the trip as of yet. Between meeting a Greek couple on the train, running into Tullia at the train station and spending a couple evenings visiting (and drinking!) with the (neé) Dymarz sisters and Curtis, and sharing dinner with an elderly couple from Ontario, we spent far more time in Poland with other folks. It was, all in all, quite a nice side-tour.

The ballet last night was fantastic. There was whirling and twirling, hopping and skipping, loving and fighting. Honestly, it was way more exciting and… easy to follow than I would have expected. Granted, I had read the synopsis beforehand, but still.

We’re east of Praha, and despite being in the old Moravian capital of Brno, the amount of english around us has dropped quite significantly. We’re in the touristy downtown (significantly less so than Praha’s), but even so it’s a bit of a crapshoot to find someone who speaks english. This is why it’s somewhat impressive that I happened to turn the charm onto who I imagine is one of the few fluent english speakers. The upshot is that I spent a very pleasant evening visiting and wandering with her last night, and I’m supposed to give her a call when we come back through this way.

And now, on to Poland.

So my bag, trailing behind us, has got an almost biblical knowledge of the streets of Brno before we finally arrive at our suite for the duration of our stay here. As for myself, I’ve been surviving on a pretty steady regimen of beer, espresso and fried cheese. My life will be shorter by the time this trip is over, but richer all the same.

Also, the two Canadian ladies we sort of toured around last night were quite pleasant. I think we ended up showing them a side of Praha that they wouldn’t have seen othewise–beer, opera, large portions of meat and all.

Char and I are sitting at the opera, enjoying the performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. The set design is fantastic, all sorts of moving towers and walkways, the singing is wonderful, and I’m finding that I’m enjoying the music more than I expected to. Of course, the plot is making little to no sense, but as we’ll discover later, that’s not our fault, really. The plot does in fact make no sense.

There’s a relatively tender reunitement of Candide and Cunegonde, and on the screen behind them all of a sudden… something that looks tantalizingly like a bosom. Of course, it can’t be that. This is, after all, the opera. However, the bosom is followed by nude torsos… and then more than that. Of course later on there will be topless dancers, but at the moment this is all somewhat surprising. Opera in Canada has never been this… Risque.

 ***

We go for a walk away from the tourist area. Don’t get me wrong; the old city is quite lovely, but the crowds can be somewhat taxing over time. The goal is instead to see if I can find a pizza joint that dad and I had eaten at five years prior. After a lengthy walk along the river, we turn inland and amazingly enough, through a tangled warren of streets finaly set foot in front of Aldo’s Pizzaria.

 And yes, it is as good as last time.

Or here, or whatever. We landed this morning, did a bit of a walkabout around the river in Frankfurt (which is surprisingly pretty. Lots of trees… um… trees…). Stopped for an espresso in one spot, a pint and a snack in another, and then back for a nap to make at least a passing attempt at catching up on the sleep I didn’t get on the plane.

Now out again, possibly to grab a bottle of wine and wander around the river area. We’ll see.

I’ll begin packing tonight; mostly the simple stuff. The cds, some of the clothes, maybe start picking out a few books and other odds and ends. As is usual for a trip like this, I’m excited and a little nervous. What am I going to forget? Honestly, as long as I don’t forget something stupid like my passport, I’ll be fine. Most of all, I’m really looking forward to just relaxing. Bumming around Prague for a few weeks seems like a great idea, I have to say.