And on to Brno

Until October all I had seen of the Czech Republic was Prague and Prague airport. That changed in October, as I took a trip to Brno. Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic. It is placed in South Moravia, 250 kilometres away from Prague and has around 380,000 inhabitants.To get to Brno, I chose to take the train. I am very fond of train rides, and I have posted about my train ride through Norway earlier this year. There are several possibilities on how to get to Brno by train from Prague, but I decided to take the train from the main railway station, Hlavni nadrazi.

As I entered the railway station at half past eleven, I went to the ticket office and bought myself a return ticket to Brno. At below 600 CZK, I felt that was a good price. The next train was to leave within the next half hour, so I went to the platform and located my train.

The train started rolling, and I was alone in my cabin for most of the 3 and a half hour ride. The first major city the train stopped at, was Pardubice. I immediately started thinking of the local brewery's famous Pardubicky porter, which I unfortunately have not tasted so far. It is supposed to be a very good beer in the Baltic porter style.

As the train travelled through Bohemia and Moravia towards Brno, I spent a lot of time looking at the scenary. I felt it was interesting with woods, plains, hamlets, villages and new railway stations. Actually, it is one of the longer train rides I have had, where I did not get bored by the landscape.

It was a warm day, and the water bottle I had bought in Prague was empty very early. As the train rolled into Letovice, I was very thirsty. The local restaurant at the station gave me more thirst, as it had a Cerna Hora sign. At that moment I was tempted to leave the train for a pint of excellent Moravian lager beer.

Twenty minutes late, the train arrived in Brno. I left the car and went through the railway station.

Outside the station I found a map, and from there I went through Masarykova street towards Namesti Svobody, Brno's main square. It was not very far to walk, and suddenly the square appeared for me.

It was large and beautiful. The trams running through the square now and then only made the square more fascinating. The same did the statue.

I was both thirsty and hungry after the train ride, so I went down a side street to find a place to have some food and drink. A Starobrno sign showed where I could find the eatery Bufet Vesmir, and inside I went to try the city's own beer.

A bufet is like a canteen, but there are no chairs. You eat and drink standing, and the prices are normally very low. I did not see a menu, and the person serving the food only spoke Czech. My Czech is limited, but I managed to buy some sausage with horseradish and mustard. And to drink: A Starobrno lezak.

I have been drinking Starobrno before, but only from bottles. It is not my favorite, and I feel it is more or less a standard pale lager. The Starobrno did its job as a thirst quencher, but I felt that I would prefer other beers than this if there is a choice. After having days in Prague drinking lager beers like Kout na Sumave, Svijany, tankova Pilsner Urquell and Budvar, Starobrno was a letdown.

After the food it was time to find Namesti Svobody again. I had seen a Černa Hora place with outdoor tables, and decided to sit down there.

Černohorský sklep is first of all a cosy cellar restaurant, but in the nice weather it was much better to sit outside enjoying the sun.

The restaurant had six different Černa Hora beers from tap, and I decided to try an old favourite, Moravský Sklepní Nefiltrované.

Sklepni is an unfiltered and unpasteurized pale lager beer. It was served with a medium sized head and very little carbonation. The nose is flowery, and in the mouth there are citrus notes. There are also hops present, and in all it gives a nice, bitter finish. This is a really good lager beer, and it felt so much better than the Starobrno beer.

I had an appointment later that day, but as I had nearly an hour to spend before it, I went walking around Brno. I ended up outside the Zelená Kočka restaurant.

I saw that they offered beer from the Dalešice brewery, and that gave me a good reason to enter the restaurant.

Zelená Kočka was a really nice place to sit down. As I had only time for one beer, I asked for the Dalešice kvasnicove.

I do not know it was the best beer on offer, but what I was served was a beer I really liked. It was cloudy with a large head and some carbonation. In the nose there was malt and yeast, and the maltiness gave an extra punch in the mouth. Then there was a really nice aftertaste of strawberry. I would really like to have another half litre of the Dalešice beer, but there was no time. So instead I walked once again into the city of Brno.