Goodbye Prague Hello Brno

Today was our last day at the Chill apartments in Brno. We had a very busy week but felt like we could have done and seen more sites here in Prague. We caught the train to Brno after a short 10 minute walk with our luggage to the train station. It really helped navigating the train station having taken the train to Pilsen earlier in the week. We had a little problem figuring out which car we were on but asked the conductor and he got us shorted out. It was a new modern train but I didn't think it was going very quickly until I noticed that the speed of the train was being displayed intermittently on a monitor which had been displaying the next station. We were flying along at 160 kph. Very impressive. We arrived in Brno at 1 and walked another ten minutes to our Air BNB. I had intended on taking things easy after we arrived but realized that two of the big attractions would be closed on Monday when I thought we could do them.

Gregor Mendel of Mendelian genetics fame lived and performed his studies at an Augustine monastery in Brno. He was a monk and went on to become the abbot of the monastery. For someone who had failed his education degree, he was a pretty heavy He published his sentinel paper describing inherited genotypes and phenotypes in 1865 but it was largely ignored. There is a small Mendel museum at the abbey with a collection of some of his research notes and books. Mendel also did metrology research and study other sciences. There was his microscope and telescope and various metrology equipment. There was also a pretty good display explaining the concepts of genetics. One could also wander around in the small courtyard of the building where he had grown his pea plants he was studying. It was all quite unique. The girls enjoyed seeing the site and the museum.

The other site that I wanted to visit was a cold war bunker called Bunker Z. It had been built under the Brno castle in WW2 and expanded during the cold war. The bunker was a little run down and junky. It didn't look like they had put much effort into it for a number of years. A lot of the material hadn't been translated into English. As my son Chris would have said, it was mid despite a hefty admission fee.Read more