Beer & Breweries, Brno

Favorite thing: After the Cathedral and the bones in the crypt, and Spilberk Castle, you must visit the Cerna Hora pub a stone's throw from the railway station and try the beers! Cerna Hora itself is to the north of Brno and the brewery is excellent.

2004 - i think this pub had now closed!!!!!

Fondest memory: My first memory of Brno is arriving from the south along silnice 52 from Mikulov after a strung-out border crossing and seeing the cathedral and the castle lit by the afternoon's rays.

It was 1986 and the Velvet Revolution was still a mere miracle away. Even so, the signs of communism were rusting away in the fields as huge metal sculptures (!) were left rotting by the locals!

But seeing the sun lighting up the spires was quite moving.

Favorite thing: Drink. Ha ha. No, REALLY......The Moravians are very proud of the fact that they are not Bohemians. They have their own ways...chiefly that this is the wine region and they drink wine not beer like those Praguers), and Brno even has its own slang: Hantec (pron. Han-tets) - originally a shorthand mish mash tongue used by the merchants here.---------------------Having said that, the Moravian beer, Radegast, is superb (a schematic of their brewery is pictured here).

Fondest memory: The second best bar I have ever been to (the best being Spec's in San Francisco) a place with no name, called Traubova (some in the English department at the University called it 'the Poison Cottage' before my day). Sadly, the place is changed now and sucks a whole lot, but the guy who made it all it happen, my pal Libor (they guy with the BIG black dog), has another, almost a cool place called 'Skleneni Louka' (The Glass Meadow) on (looking it up) Street, right next to Moulin Rouge, which looks like a whorehouse and is, in fact, one. Go downsatirs - that's where the fun is. Students, dogs, heavy smokers, NO ventilation, great musical acts, terrible music acts, drunks and wanderers and anyone else you can think of.------------ Other fun places to chill in town: the place now run by my crazy German friend Alexander over in Petrov the name of which I cannot for the LIFE of me recall right now is one, more upscale than, say, Louka.