To Mikulov with Milo

After our epic day in Vienna, we allowed ourselves a quiet morning in the hotel, sleeping "in" (past 7:00!), gazing at the Danub over breakfast, carefully packing up our items in order to leave nothing behind, and then meeting Milo in the lobby for our next trip to Prague, with a stop in Mikulov for lunch.

Milo was immediately gregarious, asking us the most important question for the trip - our musical tastes - before we'd even put on our seat belts.   Turns out Milo once was a radio dj, back when he had the freedom to choose the music he played, rather than have it dictated by all these newfangled demographic reports.  Milo is from Slovakia, the former Czechoslavakia.  He described a few of the differences between the Czech and Slovak languages (they have utterly different words for "iceberg," for instance) and spoke of the velvet revolution that led to an ultimate velvet divorce among the geographical areas of the former Czechoslavakia.  Fascinating stuff to be sure.

We were most amused when he started sharing (and quoting liberally from) his favorite television shows, many of which he watched first in the original English, then the dubbed Czech (which always comes first) and then, often, in Slovak.  He assumes the reason so many Slovakians know more Czech than Czechs no Slovak is because of this dubbing order.   He loves Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Fraser (which has especially good dubbing, apparently, especially of Peri Gilpin's role; had I been drinking, I would have done a spit take, to be sure :), and The Big Bang Theory.  Seinfeld, however, he had never even heard of; we found it baffling how some of these shows would be picked up and translated, while Seinfeld would not.  Perhaps the most expected of all the shows to be broadcast in multiple languages was his favorite - Star Trek, especially The Next Generation.   He shared these insights while munching on gummi bears, which he picked up within the first 20 minutes of our drive, when he stopped for "petrol."  Gummi bears, I have come to realize, are very big in these parts. :)

Our drive was lovely, but not as stunningly beautiful as the drive from Venice to Vienna.  Instead, we were on the Route 66 of Austria/Czech Republic, so we got to drive through a whole slew of very little towns and see lots of intersections with signs like the ones below.

The gummi display from stop #1

more signs :)

The type of landscape throughout our drive

 We arrived in Mikulov just around lunch time, so we took a quick stroll through the square, Daniel took the invitation to play the piano sitting there, and we saw a very old church (though opted not to pay the fee to tour it) before settling in for lunch and what may have been my favorite wine from the trip, produced by a winery owned by the owner of the restaurant, right there in Mikulov.

We arrived to Prague by 5:30 and had plenty of time to settle into our outrageous two story penthouse (we opted to go for it, since it was the only available room where we could all be together, and it has a fantastic table for playing shanghai, which, of course, we did!).  Since we'll be here for a luxurious three nights, we fully unpacked, took to different rooms in our spacious headquarters to research Prague (or, in Maddie's case, catch Pokemon, or Daniel's, watch interviews with the cast of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates) before heading out to explore the old town at night and have a delicious dinner on the terrace of a nearby pub/restaurant, where most things (including the butter!) they believed were better with beer added.

A quick trip to the mini-market to pick up saline solution revealed that the Czech love for all things gummi runs deep

 We are now off to take a walking tour of the old town.  A rain last night has cooled the temperatures slightly, so we're hoping for a beautiful day in Prague, followed, to be sure, by a continuation of last night's Shanghai match, which had to be cut short as I was falling asleep over the card table (though I was winning each round in the process! ;)