Nie Mówię po Polsku

Cześć!  Nie mówię po polsku.

That's Polish for, "Hey!  I don't speak Polish."  If you hadn't guessed, the theme of this will be Poland.

Yesterday was an adventurous day.  I only had one class, Tvůrčí psaní (Creative Writing), which is actually a lot of fun.  Our teacher is really relaxed, and we're basically learning different methods of writing.  It's a lot of stuff that we learnt in elementary school, but it's a good course because we're learning how to do it all again, but in Czech (which is harder than it might sound).  Our teacher's father was also a very well-known underground author during communism, and his work was distributed around Brno and Czechoslovakia as an anti-communist writer.  You could say our teacher takes writing fairly seriously.

After class, though, I was invited by some Polish friends to visit Brno's "Automotodrom."  This bastardization of words basically means racetrack.  To get to the drom, though, was quite the production.  First, we had to take the tram from school to Hlavní nádraží, Brno's main train station.  We then had to switch to another tram and ride to the end station, about twenty minutes.

Michał and Kasia during our long tram ride.

We finally reached the end station of the tram, and from there we had to connect to a bus.  We actually had to take a regional bus, because the racetrack is outside of Brno proper.  After much to do with figuring out where the bus stop was, where we buy tickets, where we were going, etc., we were aboard the bus and underway.  Of course, the stops were not announced, so we had no idea where we were going, but kept a look-out whenever we stopped so as to see where exactly we were.  Well, lo and behold, after about thirty minutes of traveling, we stopped and everybody got out.  The driver, who was less than friendly, told us we were in Říčany, the last stop.  What?  He then gruffly told us that we had not pressed the button to let him know to stop the bus, because the stop we needed was only by request.  He was also the guy who sold us the ticket and told us exactly which stop we needed.  I pointed out to the others that in this type of bus, there aren't any buttons that you can press to request a stop.  Well, we had to get out in Říčany, wait three minutes for him to turn the bus around, and then get back on the bus and head back in the direction we came from.

Joanna, Michał and Kasia in Říčany.

When we got back on the bus, we politely told him we wanted to go to the racetrack, and asked if he'd be so kind as to tell us when we were there.  He told us he had stopped there on the trip out, but he would let us know.  Less than ten minutes later, he pulled up right in front of the main gate of the racetrack, where we had never stopped the first go around.  He told us to get out there (as if we couldn't figure that out), but at least we made it.

The main entrance to the racetracks, if there were any doubt.

We headed into the tracks, which were open to the public yesterday.  There are some races out there today, one lasting for six hours (crazy), so teams from across Europe have come to compete.  We were able to climb up into the stands and watch some of the test drives, which was pretty cool since I'd never seen one live before.

The starting/finish line.

We wandered around for bit, saw a lot of the cars, even got down onto the level of the track with the cars careening past us.  After about fifty minutes, though, we decided it was time to head back into Brno.  The weather has changed dramatically in the past week, going from the 80s down to the 30s/40s, so it was chilly out, and we had plans to go to a theater to see a performance of "The Idiots" at 7.  Remember, our trip out to the tracks had lasted roughly an hour and a half, and we stayed for about fifty minutes.  We wanted to make sure we had enough time to get back to Brno before the performance, in case something went wrong.  We headed back to the bus stop, and lo and behold, the second bus of the day, which just also happened to be the last, leaving form the tracks didn't come for another two hours.  It was ridiculous, and we couldn't believe it.  As we contemplated what to do, Michał took matters into his own hands, and started stopping cars as they were leaving the arena, begging them to give us a lift back to Brno.  Naturally, nobody wanted to help us.

The sign at the bus stop.  "Warning: Shooting Range.  Do Not Enter."

After trying to hitch a ride with several cars, we finally gave up and headed to the restaurant to sit inside where it was warm and wait for the bus.  Once 6:30 came around, we were there waiting for the bus, successfully climbed aboard, and made it back to Brno.  We were too late to go to the theater to see the performance, but were laughing that we didn't need to go, we'd performed our own version of "The Idiots" by our afternoon mishaps.

All in all, it was a fun afternoon with the Poles, I got to see racetracks for the first time ever (aside from the kind down in Misquamicut), and then had a relaxing evening at my place.  Tonight I'm headed to the movies with my friend from Sweden, and then out to a pub to celebrate a Polish friend's birthday.  Ah, the charmed life I lead.