Zlin in My Camera

Finally i have bought the camera i was looking for a long time. Actually it is a digital photo camera with a HD video support embed in it. Since i have never used such a camera before, i am practicing nowadays by shooting some videos.

Below you can find the two videos i made this week. First one is focused on the arrival of spring to Zlin. In the second video, I wanted to shoot different scenes all around Zlin and collect them in one clip but i was so lazy to go main square and the other parts of the city. So i used building 21’s terrace for easy access.

In the second video you can see some buildings of Tomas Bata University, the biggest cinema of Zlin, Velke Kino, the red brick houses built by Bata for his workers and one of the biggest shopping centers of Zlin, Cepkov.

Travel between Turkey and The Czech Republic

Alternatives for traveling between Turkey and The Czech Republic started to be limited with the bankruptcy of Sky Europe –Slovakia based low-cost airline operator- at the beginning of September 2009. Although Sky Europe was flying between Bratislava and Istanbul, it was a good choice especially when you wanted to reach Moravia rather than Prague.

Bankruptcy of Sky Europe followed by the cancellation of Istanbul - Prague destination by Czech Airlines in December 2009 due to the low interest of customers. Therefore, services of Click4Sky (sub-corporate of Czech Airlines which provides limited discount tickets to the same flights of Czech Airlines) were cancelled too.

In 2009, round trip Istanbul Prague flight cost only 2600 CZK (100 EUR) with Click4Sky.

Now the only company which works between Prague and Istanbul (or vice versa) is Turkish Airlines. Due to the elimination of it’s competitors from this destination, Turkish Airlines increased it’s flights 2 times per day. For now, the cheapest round-trip student ticket costs 7000 CZK (275 EUR) between Istanbul and Prague. Of course this is the most optimistic price.

If you don’t need a direct flight and if transferable flights or flying to neighborhood countries and then reaching Prague is okay for you,  there are a lot of alternatives you can find. For instance first you can fly Berlin from Istanbul (or vice versa) and then you can reach Prague by bus or train  with Sun Express or Germanwings etc. Same way of traveling can be done with Pegasus Airlines over Vienna. On the other hand you shouldn’t forget that these flights cost not much until you add transportation from these airports to city centers and then to Prague. When you add these exhausting bus/train trips, paying aprox. 50 EUR more to Turkish Airlines seems more sensible.

Easter (Velikonoce) in The Czech Republic 2010

Last year it was my first Easter experience in the Czech Republic. This year I am much more experienced then last year of course. Thanks to the husband of our Czech language teacher in Foreign Nationals Integration Center in Zlin, this year we -all men in the class- have our own tatars. Tatar is the name of the sticks which are used by men to spank the bottoms of women in neighborhood. For new visitors of my blog here is the last year’s story.

So what happens in Czech Easter?
Everything starts on Thursday preceding Easter. Czechs call this day Green Thursday (Zelený čtvrtek) and they cook mostly vegetables such as spinach. Numerous pubs serve green beer (of course artificially colored). For Czechs green symbolizes the birth of nature and coming spring.

Friday is called Great Friday (Velký pátek). As you know this is the day which Catholics believe that Jesus was crucified and lost his life. During this day faithful Czechs do not eat meat.

For religious Czechs most important day is Sunday. Christians believe that Jesus revived this day. For this reason visitors of churches across the Czech Republic are full of believers.

For whole public (especially for non-believers) the peak day is Easter Monday. Especially in Moravia region colorfully decorated eggs and handmade tatars can be seen and whipping session of women can be experienced. Moreover, in some regions, Czech men throw women into stream as a part of the tradition.

To whip women you have to sing one of the traditional songs created specially for this day. My favorite one is,

Hody hody doprovody, dejte vejce malovaný.
(!Meaningless rhyme!, give painted eggs to me)
Nedáte-li malovaný, dejte radši bílý.
(If you won’t give painted –eggs-, give at least white –one-)
Slepička vám snese jiný.
(Hen will give you another one)

Story of Whipping Women
Since last year i am getting a lot of questions about this whipping/spanking stuff. Actually Wikipedia summarizes everything about it:

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, a tradition of spanking or whipping is carried out on Easter Monday. In the morning, men spank women with a special handmade whip called a pomlázka (in Czech) or korbáč (in Slovak), or, in eastern Moravia and Slovakia, throw cold water on them. The pomlázka/korbáč consists of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods), is usually from half a meter to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. The spanking is not painful or intended to cause suffering. A legend says that women should be spanked in order to keep their health and beauty during whole next year.
An additional purpose can be for men to exhibit their attraction to women; unvisited women can even feel offended. Traditionally, the spanked woman gives a coloured egg and sometimes a small amount of money to the man as a sign of her thanks. In some regions the women can get revenge in the afternoon or the following day when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any man. The habit slightly varies across Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Beware!
By the way, don’t forget that it’s not well welcomed to hang your laundry outside (to your garden or balcony) on Easter Sunday. If you do so, Czechs believe that someone from your family will die that year or something bad will happen to you. They have the same tradition also in the first day of the new year and Christmas.

Slepý turek překonal světový rychlostní rekord (Blind Turk Beats World Speed Record)

It was surprising for me to see something nice about Turkey on Czech television channels on Saturday. Most of the time you can see either news connected with terrorism or endless discussions about Turkey’s candidacy to European Union. This time when newsmen of Czech television Nova started to report news from Turkey, i was again expecting something bad however this time they surprised me a lot and they reported a success story.

Metin Senturk (44 years old, blind Turkish pop singer) became the world's fastest unaccompanied blind driver on 02.04.2010.
Record try took place in Sanliurfa airport (in eastern Turkey) with Ferrari F430. He reached 292.89 kph and with this he broke the previous record 284 kph.

Below is the video i recorded from Nova’s evening news on 03.04.2010. I hope we will see more and more such jolly news from Turkey on Czech televisions.

Chateau Buchlovice’s Garden

Buchlovice is a small town in eastern Moravia, near Uherske Hradiste. It takes only 45 min. by car to reach there from Zlin. This small town is famous with its Buchlov Castle and Chateau Buchlovice. Unfortunately in our trip to this lovely town we didn’t have enough time to see the castle but we visited the beautiful garden of the chateau.

Chateau Buchlovice and its garden was built at the beginning of 18th century in villa rustica style. The owner of the castle Jan Dětřich Petřvaldský gave this chateau as a gift to his wife Anežka Eleonora and they used it as a summer house. At the beginning of 20th century castle served as a meeting place to European leaders at that time. Nowadays it’s used as a museum.

In the garden, you can find numerous beautiful flowers and trees from all kinds and of course the walking symbol of aristocracy, peacocks.
Entrance to garden costs 5.00 CZK for students (ISIC) and 10 CZK for adults. Chateau and garden is open whole year except Mondays. (July and August also works on Mondays).

Here you can find details about the chateau/garden and working hours.