Visit to Brno and Intersob

On Thursday evening, Lan, Kriza and me left our seminar, went home for the backpacks and then met again at Florenc. Originally we wanted to go there only for the competition taking place on Saturday, but then getting to Brno was pretty expensive to stay there just for one day. Moreover, Meldath was in Zlin at the beginning of the week - he was solving the national round of Mathematics olympiad - so we may have met and also I had never before stayed in Brno for more than few hours, so I took this as a possibility to get to know it.
We went there and back by Student agency. They have discounts for students (actually, for individuals and small groups it's by far the cheapest possibility how to get to Brno and some other places) - the discount should apply just for ISIC card holders, but Lan and Meldath managed to convince the stewards they were students as well so no need not to let them enter without the card - though they were urged to get one. I chose the company because of the price, but then the service available was remarkable - you get hot drinks for free, you get headphones to listen to radio or to watch the TV program, the bus itself is very comfortable...
After the winter (not very harsh, but still it was too cold), I was lacking some backpacking very much. Even when setting off from Prague, I had a pleasant feeling of going somewhere...First day we arrived quite late at night, met Meldath and made a camp site near Nivetka's home - somewhere in a forest. Nivetka is a friend of Meldath and Lan from the School of Mathematics and Physics. Meldath told us about his experiences from the olympiad and after. It was quite cold - around 3 degrees and it even went lower later during the night.
Weather was bad. Bad for backpacking. And it was just too cold. When I had decided to go, it was some two weeks before, the weather was wonderful and spring was in full bloom. Yet suddenly it changed, we were even considering canceling the journey. We didn't but we put on as many clothes as possible. Still, in the end of the second day, Kriza and me were unpleasantly frostbitten. The second day was raining and cold, the third day it was slightly warmer (up to 8 degrees), though still raining.
The second day, we woke up and had kind of a quarrel with Meldath. It ended up that way that the three of us went exploring Brno (as it was already 1 a.m.) and Meldath was left there alone. It sounds quite harsh and it seemed me that way at that time as well, but as we later agreed with both Lan and Kriza, his behavior was simply unacceptable. Overall, I haven't been sure about him lately. On one hand he has adventurous spirit, the one I find in very little people (and I'm not really a solitary person, at least I don't want to be); also I feel his criticisms help me becoming a better person. On the other hand, he is very moody, and when he is in a bad mood (very often), it's perhaps best to leave him alone - most of people actually do that, sometimes forever...; it's difficult to imagine spending some more time with him - I wonder how Romania will turn out. Also, while his criticisms are often very precise, himself he usually ignores any criticism to his person (claiming "others don't understand him").
Brno...there are a lot of aspects. While Prague is full of older buildings, the eye-catching ones in Brno are those from the end of 19th century and the first half of 20th - a lot of functionalism, historism, art nouveau.... The atmosphere of that was very charming, Overall I was feeling as if in some foreign country, like a surprised traveler, than just somewhere almost near home. Brno is a students' city (even more than Prague) - reportedly 1/6 of population (nearing 0.4 million) are students. It maybe is influencing some city characteristics - there's a lot of non-stop shops, there's a lot of organic food shops and a lot of environmental and youth organizations (but this may be also connected to the fact Brno is hosting some of the Czech most important environmental gurus). The city center is rather small, but then, the city itself seemed to me rather small - the advantage being that everything is close, on the other hand it simply didn't have the "big city feeling".
Meldath joined us in the evening of the second day (rather complicated, as he'd forgotten his cellphone at Prague - all the week being without it! - but we managed to do it. I think we managed to see most important stuff in Brno - though Spilberk just from outside - a guard kicked us out that it was too late (8 p.m.?) - and Tugendhat villa just from outside as well (is in a pretty bad shape). There is a lot of parks and green spaces in Brno :-)
In the end of the second day, it was raining heavily and we just reluctantly moved towards the campsite of the last night. Meldath made a visit to Nivetka, to retrieve his stored stuff. But then, Nivetka's mother did a compassionate ;-) act - letting us sleep in their apartment. How wonderful!!! It was pretty spacious so we were left in one room (some mix of laundry, living room and storage room (for books). Meldath and Lan went to climb to a chimney (they chose a high one, but it was somehow locked, so then they went somewhere else, if I got the subsequent narrative right) - me and Kriza were tired and didn't have shoes for that, so we stayed. There was at least something I could do for the hosts - their dog (she was quite bad-smelling, but also quite a nice little doggie) had two ticks and they didn't have neither tweezers nor the skill to remove them. Myself, I hadn't removed a tick from a dog (father was always doing that, I was just assisting), but I just couldn't have let the dog so - so I tried and I was even successful :-) Then we talked with Nivetka and her boyfriend for a while and then I went to sleep. Then Lan and Meldath returned at about 2 a.m. so we teased each other for a while (i.e. they woke me up, so I joined it).
The third day, there was the competition. I played with Lan and Kriza; Meldath was in the team with some people from the School of Math and Physics. The game was coordinated by some Natural sciences and Informatics students (btw, there are really remarkable school buildings - not just the boring ones as most in Prague - in Brno - the Faculty of Informatics is especially outlandish). The game was playful :-) There were various places in the center of Brno, there you did different stuff - a "knowledge" contest, constructing a car fueled by potential energy of a rubber string, searching for animals sculptured on buildings, playing drama... We had some troubles with orientation in Brno and also were a bit weary after the previous day - so we tried to correct it with a lot of chocolate :-) There were 26 teams, we ended up 13th and Meldath's team ended up first - with a huge surplus of points before the second team...they tried to pretend they didn't know how that was possible ;-)
We made one more visit to Nivetka - she told us her mother considered us very pleasant people (and that Nivetka's other friends should be as pleasant as we were :-) and that we may stay there anytime we would go to Brno :-)
update: Kriza's POV :-)