Flying High

Day 227
This hostel is just fabulous. Over breakfast I spent some time checking out the map and a book on what there is to do that they put together themselves. There was also a treasure hunt, find 9 things scattered around town and get a free night. This sounds like fun.

I set off thinking that I would just pay really close attention to everything as I walked around. At the St. Moritz Cathedral I climbed a 225 step tower for a fabulous view over Olomouc. This city is kinda like Prague before the tourists invaded. I am, of course, a traveler and not a tourist. Tourist is a dirty word. I also found a Donald Duck statue sitting over a doorway.

The next stop was the main square and the astronomical clock that was really only worth watching because it is so bad. The inside bits are about 600 years old, but the outside was damaged during WWII and had been replaced in a communist style. The little guys that walk around carry the hammer and sickle. The musical part goes on for about 3 minutes while the figures move in a circle. The best part is at the end when the rooster crows a few times. The figures themselves look really worse for wear, they all need a paint job and for someone to wash away the pigeon.

After some wandering I had located two of the objects as well as a dog and sun on the sides of different buildings. I then headed to the Archdiocese Museum and the St. Wenceslas Cathedral. The cathedral was ok, the museum was rather nice, mostly. I had been warned already that the women who work there are rather rude. Any time you got within two feet of the paintings an alarm would go off and they would yell at me. The thing is that the stupid information cards were so small that I couldn’t see them without getting close. I got kinda frustrated with the whole thing. I also had to put some strange slippers over my shoes for part of the museum. Luckily I was able to take pictures of everything.

When I left I found my third and last object for the day before having a nice Czech lunch. I took a walk through one of the gardens, I had thought one of the objects had to be there but it wasn’t. I ended up just going back to the hostel and after some reading I made myself dinner.

Around 9 a big group of us tried to go bowling. The 24 hour place seemed to have shut down and we put our name in for a lane later in the night. We all then went to a bar to pass the time. About 5 of us got stuck there, none of us really wanted to go bowling anyway so it was easy to stay behind. Eventually we headed to the climbing bar and all learned first hand why climbing and beer don’t go together. I also learned that I have no upper body strength.

The last bar of the night was in an actual Russian airplane. It’s so weird. One person in the group has to go up the steps and ring the bell. The bartender then unlocks the door and lets you in. I swear this place is run by the mafia. The beers here were 30 crowns, all the others have been about 20, or about a dollar. It was also canned beer. There was a small dance floor with some very large scary looking men on it. One of the guys randomly hit another that was just sitting. We decided to leave after that. To leave we had to ask the bartender to unlock the door, this happened, eventually.

I headed back with one other person and the other three people in the group decided to party on.