The visitors…

The weekend after the first tutorial was the beginning of my busy week. The first wave was a visit from my German friend Johannes who was visiting from Prague. He arrived on the Friday and left the Sunday night. On the Friday night we all went to an Erasmus party. It was Spanish themed, with sangria flowing and Spanish music playing. It was a great night, with lots of games to encourage mingling. My favourite was the couple’s game, in which everyone was given a sticker with a name, and you had to find your famous, or obvious partner. I, quite appropriately, was given the ‘queen’ sticker. My ‘king’ turned out to be Manos, a jolly Greek guy; we took full advantage of our positions of authority. The night was a blast, but sadly ended a little sourly when we missed our bus and sat outside for what felt like hours!

The next day, as you can imagine was a bit of a write off. However, my friend Johannes was very keen to visit a modernist building, designed by a German architect who is internationally acclaimed, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It took us an age to find the building, which is located in a very unimpressive residential area. Finally when we found it, we discovered that visits were by reservation only. Luckily there were free places the following day for the tour. The Villa Tugendhat (www.tugendhat-villa.cz), is a bit of a land mark for modernist architecture in the 1930’s. It is vast in its proportions and really a very impressive building. The exterior and some of the interior are in desperate need of some TLC, and it was sad to see it in such a sorry state. However, Brno is very proud of this building and I think it is only a matter of time before they start some serious restoration.

For the rest of Johannes’ visit we wondered around Brno and talked about how different it was to Prague. I think we both agreed that Brno is far more of a relaxed and calm place compared to Prague. It has an air of a holiday town, somewhere people go for a break.

This calm atmosphere was short lived with the arrival of my parents the following day. The madness was very welcome, as I was so thrilled to see them walk through the arrivals gate at Brno airport. It was to be a crazy week of sight seeing, eating and drinking in excess. In their short time in Brno it unfortunately rained almost the whole time, I think they saw what a friendly town it was through the grey clouds. We went first class to Prague on the Wednesday, never travelled so comfortably before, to have a few gloriously warm days. I was so pleased that the sun came out, I think they really saw Prague at its best. Not overly busy, the tourists don’t arrive until the weekend. Also, with my friends recommendations and my ‘ellen tours’ practice I planned an enjoyable but thorough schedule of events. I had such a fun few days. Seeing my friends and spending loads of time with mum and dad, it really couldn’t have been more perfect!

I think mum and dad enjoyed themselves. My mum got to enjoy the beauty, culture, jazz and classical music. And dad got to indulge himself on very reasonable beer and meat, served like you have never seen before. I got to see a more sophisticated side of Prague that only through mum and dads generosity I was able to experience.






By the way, I went to the opera whilst I was in Prague. It was really fun getting dressed up, and with tickets in the gods only two quid, I think I could get used to wearing my finery.