Continuing with the Czech Republic...

Sunday morning (May 3rd) we woke up in Slavicin, which is in the southeastern part of the country. We spent the morning at Hostetin, a teeny tiny village of 280-ish people that's been basically taken over by a Brno-based environmental NGO called Veronika. The NGO helped the village fund the installation of a reed-bed wastewater treatment system - so amazing to see after learning about similar treatment methods in our ecological engineering course! The basic idea is to use natural processes in the secondary stage of wastewater treatment although the wastewater undergoes a typical primary stage. The advantage is that virtually no energy is used in the wastewater treatment process since the primary stage is usually mechanical - sieves, screening, etc. Our guide from the NGO said that the electrical costs of the mechanical treatment are about USD 10 per year, and they have to pay someone to come 4 times per year for an hour or two each time to make sure that the reed-bed is healthy. The reed-bed is basically a wetland, so the community also gets the aesthetic benefit of a 25 foot by 25 foot wetland. Oh, and I should add that all of the wastewater is underground and accessible by the roots of the plants. Our guide invited us to walk through the wetland. :) Totally cool!

The NGO also runs a small organic juice production facility in the village which produces the most delicious apple juice I've ever tasted. We got to try their plain apple juice, apple-beetroot, apple-mate, and apple-mint. All good, although the plain apple was my favorite followed by the surprisingly good apple-beetroot. The buildings constructed by the NGO (juice buildings, educational and hotel complex) are passive buildings. I'm not sure entirely what that means but they're really environmentally-friendly and efficient. The village also has a biomass incinerator that burns waste wood chips from the logging industry situated in the nearby moutains and and seed and pit husks from the slivovice (Czech brandy made from fruit seeds, etc.) production industry. Most of the heat energy consumed by the village during the winter is produced from this incinerator (so no fossil fuels used) and they turn it off in the summer when no one needs heat. Residents use electricity for hot water in the summer. I'm a little skeptical of how "green" biomass incineration is, though, since yes, you're recycling waste but you're still also releasing carbon dioxide and other polluting compounds to the atmosphere. I will agree that it's better than using nonrenewable fossil fuels, though.

After grabbing lunch, our luggage from the hotel in Slavicin, and a huge box of traditional Czech baked goods, we hopped on a train to Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. The train station in Slavicin was awesome - one tiny building next to the tracks in the middle of some crop fields. Nothing beats an afternoon in a warm, sun-filled train car with a box of chocolatey, sugary goodies - it reminded me of Harry Potter. We arrived in Brno by 7 pm and Zbynek took us to our hotel and oriented us on the city map before giong home to his family. We wandered around the city a little bit (the downtown is tiny!) and found a delicious dinner. Pork loin and veggies for me.

Monday morning (May 8th) we met Zbynek at his office in the Department of Environmental Studies at Masaryj University. We spent the morning basically learning about the program there and some of the projects the PhD students are working on, and then went for lunch at a delicious vegetarian restaurant. Rachel's a vegetarian and had been craving something a bit lighter than all the heavy Czech potatoes available in the countryside. After lunch, we spent the afternoon at an NGO (the Czech name is long and confusing) learning about their projects throughout the country. We had a little bit of time in the afternoon to wander around the city and do some sightseeing. Our first stop was a crypt in the old Capuchin monastery where the air conditions in the crypt over the centuries had mummified the bodies of the monks buried there. The museum display just had all the dead bodies out and visible, since the monks had been "buried" simply by laying them on the ground in the tombs and leaving them there. It was really creepy, but kind of cool. Our next stop was the main cathedral - beautiful! We climbed to the top of one of the belltowers to get a view of the city. Our final stop was a quick walk around the castle, although unfortunately we missed the closing time for the museums. We ate dinner at a great restaurant. The Czech name translated to "Green Cat!"

That's it for now. We're leaving soon for a weekend in the Pieniny mountains south of Krakow but not as south as the Tatra/Carpathian mountains. We're supposed to do some river-rafting tomorrow and some mountain biking on Sunday, weather permitting...the forecast calls for some drizzles on both days.