{"id":10044,"date":"2025-03-07T12:29:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T12:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/?p=10044"},"modified":"2025-03-07T12:29:28","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T12:29:28","slug":"brno-czechia-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/?p=10044","title":{"rendered":"Brno, Czechia 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I was in this area was a little under 10 years ago during our world trip but I don&#8217;t recall learning about Brno and I don&#8217;t recall meeting anyone who has traveled to Brno. I think it&#8217;s because Brno is centrally located between Prague, Budapest, Vienna, and, Bratislava. It&#8217;s unsurprising Brno is overlooked given that line up. I had a wonderful time playing tourist and I want to bring Jac and Miriam to the area sometime soon.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brno has all the quintessential &#8216;Old European City&#8217; features like: a castle, a river, at least one cathedral with many churches, and, at least one public square. I&#8217;m glad I was mailed here because the city was neat, the countryside was beautiful, and, the tourist activities were quite a bit of fun. I often found myself alone or one of a few people at the different tourist activities. Despite the solitude, I was told repeatedly &#8216;a lot of tourists come to Brno&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just like my trip to China a bit over a year ago, I was&nbsp;surprised&nbsp;with how much things have changed in the decade since I&#8217;ve visited the area:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Traveling was easier. I did zero planning due to my season of life and the short notice for this trip. The ratings feature Google maps, &#8216;open hours&#8217; feature, and, step by step walking \/ driving directions in parts of&nbsp;rural areas simply didn&#8217;t exist last time. The younger American coworker I was traveling with was dumbfounded Jac and I somehow managed to travel AND have a good time without knowing exactly where things were located, what their hours were, or how much fun the activity \/ site may be.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are wayyyyy more American brands around beyond McDonalds and Starbucks. I was surprised to see Popeyes in the Brno old city center and even stopped at a food truck selling &#8220;South Carolina Beef&#8221; which was neither beef nor tasted like anything I have had in South Carolina. &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I was able to buy&nbsp;tickets online for the various tourist activities so I don&#8217;t have to wait or be surprised with which tour I purchased due a lack of translated tour information.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Cellular data and my mobile phones worked seamlessly. Setting up an esim took two seconds and was super easy.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I was mistaken for German more often than not and quite a few people seemed surprised I was an American. I wondered if it&#8217;s because Brno isn&#8217;t a common destination for Americans or if it&#8217;s because&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;quite a few pounds lighter than&nbsp;the last time&nbsp;I was in this part of the world and look more European-ish.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>A handful of items remained the same:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>People are still people despite the cultural differences. Americans can be a lot warmer \/ kinder to random people on the street than most places in the world but everyone everywhere is helpful to those in need (for directions, suggestions, chit-chat, whatever) and are warm \/ kind to strangers once an actual conversation starts.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Germanic orderliness is still present &#8211; I was in a hurry and tried to order my dessert with my meal in Vienna only to be told &#8220;no, you will order dessert after you eat your meal&#8221; by the waiter. I thought nothing of the comment but my younger American coworker was surprised since we&#8217;d never hear something like that in the US. Even crossing crosswalks out of turn is still quite the faux pas.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I, just like last time when I was a&nbsp;tourist, still did things that do not happen in other parts of the developed world, like, manually ring a 15,000lb bell in a cathedral tower for all the citizens of Brno to hear during a tour&nbsp;at 1:27pm, or, touch bats in a cave while on a tour in the Moravian Karsts. I&#8217;m not sure if ringing cathedral bells or touching bats are common tour activities, I just asked the guides and they said &#8220;sure&#8221;. These &#8216;extras&#8217; make being a tourist in places like the Czech Republic even more fun.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The food was great and the costs were lower than the US. I was introduced to an amazing dessert called venecek which is sorta like a donut sliced like a bagel with a light whipped frosting between the top and bottom. I was very happy to&nbsp;see the Czech&nbsp;Republic is still a good deal.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Most processes are still hot garbage &#8211; getting rental cars, checking into \/&nbsp;out of hotels, going through&nbsp;airports are still needlessly complex and time consuming. The various big companies in USA have streamlined sooooo much of those processes which makes traveling \/ checkin \/ check out \/ checking of luggage \/ rental cars 1,000% easier. We are spoiled in the US.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, it was a great trip and I was happy I was mailed to Brno even though it was on fairly short notice. It was amazing to experience the differences\u00a0and see what&#8217;s the same. I am excited to go back but this time with my family \ud83d\ude42.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Enjoy the photos!<\/p>\n\n\n\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was in this area was a little under 10 years ago during our world trip but I don&#8217;t recall learning about Brno and I don&#8217;t recall meeting anyone who has traveled to Brno. I think it&#8217;s because Brno is centrally located between Prague, Budapest, Vienna, and, Bratislava. It&#8217;s unsurprising Brno is overlooked given that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":6479},"categories":[7,2,109,110],"tags":[353,200,351,352,350,349,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10044"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10076,"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10044\/revisions\/10076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/word.christopherwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}