Aalsmeer Sunrise

Pictures are here.

Aalsmeer, a community that surrounds a large inland waterway, is about 10 minutes from my home and looked like a good place to take some pictures. I was up at 5am for these and I am pleased with the results. It is a shame that the wind was up as calm waters would have made these shots iconic.

Brno, Czech Republic

I arrived in Brno for a week of work. I will be visiting often in the next sixth months. Pictures are here.

The Czech republic is a the first Slavic country I have had a chance to visit. European city's are starting to look the same to me, but the people, food, and general culture does have its own flare. After shuttling back and forth from the UK and Netherlands on work for most of last year, this was a great change.

Brno (pronounced Bruno) is an 800 year old city in the province of Moravia. It still has some of that cold war charm in stark public buildings. The airport has a load out of hardened hangers buried in earth that now house Cessna's and other small aircraft. The people don't say "when communism went away", they say "after the revolution". The Soviets wore out their welcome in Czech R. and Slovakia big time and its not hard to see why they where quick to embrace NATO.

I found the food to be very good in the fashion of comfort food. Not very classy maybe, and surely not healthy, but very filling and tasty. I had a lunch of chicken, dumplings and a sort of creamed sour kraut that was really good. I am told this was a typical Czech dish. Its tradition to began every meal with a soup and even got questioned several times for not having soup.

There is a very cool restaurant downtown that is in the bottom of a very large cellar and has a medieval theme. Sure it borders on renfair, but its still charming in its own way.
Brno is a college town with over a dozen small specialty schools; medical, technical, arts, ect... So it is pacted with students, bars, and nightclubs.