Matilda made a point that I write about buildings a lot on this blog. There's a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, I am really interested in buildings – old and modern, grand and minor – especially as it crosses my interest in history and so that's what I go to see. But also because it's not as easy to write about the countries we are in, especially as we move north.
There's a line in Anna Karenina that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Well, recently I saw someone extend that to "Rich countries are all alike; every poor country is poor in its own way". There's a lot to be said for that.
For the most part the Czech and Slovak lands are just like travelling anywhere in Western Europe. If you are playing GeoGuessr (where you are given a view of some random GoogleMaps street view and you have to guess where you are) then you'll know that inner European cities are strikingly the same. They have many of the same shops, the same clothes, the same cars, etc. The new buildings, whether commercial, residential or industrial are identical.
It's only when we visit poorer countries, like Jordan and Mexico, that we note substantive differences. And even then, the richer downtown areas aren't that different from each other.
We went to a really nice collection of works by Alfons Mucha yesterday. He was a Czech artist from Brno, which is where we are at the moment, so they're very fond of him here. You'll recognise his work even if you don't recognise his name.
But there doesn't seem much point talking about an artist whose work is already recognised across the globe, working in a style that was internationally copied. He did most of his well known work in Paris and the US anyway.
So I tend to be most interested in what I can see around me that I could not experience at home. That does include castles and grandiose Communist palaces. Alison and I have been enjoying the large number of Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings that remain here, but again it's an international style and you can't tell a Hungarian one from a Czech one.
I also like to see the changing geography, both natural and human, but discussions on the different ways countries behave at the beach probably makes architecture look interesting.
Some of the sameness of places is reaching epic proportions. I often like to buy T-shirts from the places I am in, but like to have ones that evoke the place rather than just say "I went to Dubrovnik". I've basically given up now, because T-shirts everywhere are in English. On the streets, regardless of where we have been, it is exceedingly rare to see a shirt with any writing not in English.
Even national symbols are affected by the move. You could buy football shirts in the red and white checks of Croatia all over the place while the world cup was on, but not a single one had the name of the country as Hrvatska – it was all "Croatia".
There are differences remaining, of course, but they are increasingly trivial. The local road "people crossing" signs here tend to look more jaunty, perhaps because both legs are always bent. But regardless of that, they always have hats on! (Since the locals basically dress like anywhere else, hats are no more common here than anywhere else.)
Food is one area where local tastes still resist globalisation, at least a bit. Unfortunately the Czech and Slovak lands really haven't caught up to modern standards for cafe food, and the local dishes we have had have tended to be very disappointing. Badly cooked meat in gravy with dumplings is filling, but not hugely appetising.
The nicer places tend to serve international food, Italian dishes being especially common. The cafe we went to today had a nice roast river trout, which is very local, but the soup was gazpacho and the alternatives on the menu were spaghetti and a sweet potato dish.
It's a nice country Czechia, but it is awfully like Austria (of which it was a part for many centuries, of course, so hardly surprising).
There's a line in Anna Karenina that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Well, recently I saw someone extend that to "Rich countries are all alike; every poor country is poor in its own way". There's a lot to be said for that.
For the most part the Czech and Slovak lands are just like travelling anywhere in Western Europe. If you are playing GeoGuessr (where you are given a view of some random GoogleMaps street view and you have to guess where you are) then you'll know that inner European cities are strikingly the same. They have many of the same shops, the same clothes, the same cars, etc. The new buildings, whether commercial, residential or industrial are identical.
Somewhere pretty. I'll be impressed if you can tell which country.
It's only when we visit poorer countries, like Jordan and Mexico, that we note substantive differences. And even then, the richer downtown areas aren't that different from each other.
We went to a really nice collection of works by Alfons Mucha yesterday. He was a Czech artist from Brno, which is where we are at the moment, so they're very fond of him here. You'll recognise his work even if you don't recognise his name.
Typical Mucha posters
But there doesn't seem much point talking about an artist whose work is already recognised across the globe, working in a style that was internationally copied. He did most of his well known work in Paris and the US anyway.
So I tend to be most interested in what I can see around me that I could not experience at home. That does include castles and grandiose Communist palaces. Alison and I have been enjoying the large number of Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings that remain here, but again it's an international style and you can't tell a Hungarian one from a Czech one.
I also like to see the changing geography, both natural and human, but discussions on the different ways countries behave at the beach probably makes architecture look interesting.
Some of the sameness of places is reaching epic proportions. I often like to buy T-shirts from the places I am in, but like to have ones that evoke the place rather than just say "I went to Dubrovnik". I've basically given up now, because T-shirts everywhere are in English. On the streets, regardless of where we have been, it is exceedingly rare to see a shirt with any writing not in English.
Even national symbols are affected by the move. You could buy football shirts in the red and white checks of Croatia all over the place while the world cup was on, but not a single one had the name of the country as Hrvatska – it was all "Croatia".
There are differences remaining, of course, but they are increasingly trivial. The local road "people crossing" signs here tend to look more jaunty, perhaps because both legs are always bent. But regardless of that, they always have hats on! (Since the locals basically dress like anywhere else, hats are no more common here than anywhere else.)
Food is one area where local tastes still resist globalisation, at least a bit. Unfortunately the Czech and Slovak lands really haven't caught up to modern standards for cafe food, and the local dishes we have had have tended to be very disappointing. Badly cooked meat in gravy with dumplings is filling, but not hugely appetising.
The nicer places tend to serve international food, Italian dishes being especially common. The cafe we went to today had a nice roast river trout, which is very local, but the soup was gazpacho and the alternatives on the menu were spaghetti and a sweet potato dish.
It's a nice country Czechia, but it is awfully like Austria (of which it was a part for many centuries, of course, so hardly surprising).
Excellent updates, entertaining and educational. Buildings are what you see, they reflect some of the local identity so when they tend to the same then the community is similar perhaps reflected in the language used for t shirts.....
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