Travelog for: Boo Boo

Dear Mummy,
this week my host´s husband went to a scientific conference held in
Plzen city. You may not know that famous „pilsner“ or „pils“ beer all
around the world has been named after Plzen (originally Pilsen in
German).

Most of the time we spent in a hotel, while our host daddy was listening to speeches and presenting his research.
(He is sort of crazy scientist working with something like acoustic emission, you know?!)

However, part of venue program was an excursion into the infamous Pilsner Urquell Brewery. And we have loads of images for you.
Check it out!

In the first hall we have seen the barley-malt preparation facility (there was a strange smell in the air that I have never experienced before).



In the next hall, shiny copper boil tanks demonstrated original way of brewing. They don´t use them anymore, most of the production comes from modern, PC-controlled stainless steel tanks. The old ones, however, are much nicer.















Here, you can see me on a drainage valve that I tried to turn. However, it was too heavy for me.  The guide suddenly saw me there so I jumped back into the host daddy pocket.



This is a dispatcher cabin with all the PCs and control systems. Booooring!



These are the new steel tanks I mentioned earlier.



Brewery underground consists of many kilometers of corridors and cellars. We have seen giant wooden barrels. There, some special beers are aging.









We have been even offered a small taste-beer. This beer was non-filtered and non-pasterized. You cannot imagine how tasty and aromatic it was! Yummy!





That’s it for now! Take care and stay tuned, because more is coming from
Boo Boo (-…/---/---//-…/---/---)

Hi Mum,

on our way back from the conference we stopped at the Veveri castle. It is veeery old one and you can find it near Brno. This castle is from 13th century and the whole complex is in reconstruction.

We checked it out from the outside.















I must not forget the name of this castle is Veveri - in english it means something like a "squirrel castle". Funny, isn´t it?

Bye for now, Boo Boo (-.../---/---//-.../---/---)

Hello Mum,
couple days ago we decided to go for a walk to the Moravia Karst area. And we visited the Macocha Abyss.

This abyss is quite deep. Machocha means step-mother and there is a whole story about this place having this name.

Many years ago there was a happy family - mother, father and their son Martin. But one day the mummy got sick and died. (Hope you are not sick mum!!)
After couple more years the father got married again and he had another son with his new wife - Martin´s step-mother. She became very jealous of him.
One day when she was at home alone with Martin she took him to the forest. They came near to the abyss and she pushed him down! (Uff, what a horrible idea!).  But as soon as she did it she realized the terrible guilt and jumped down too. 
After couple hours the father got back home and found the house empty. He went to the forest to look for the rest of his family and heard someone crying from the direction of the abyss. When he carefully looked down, he saw his own son hanging on a tree. With the help of neighbors he got him back up and found out the whole story. Since then people call the abyss "Macocha".

Today there are two bridges which allow you to look deep down into the abyss safely.

Here I am on the upper bridge checking it out.









This is lower bridge - we went there too.









We also saw many tourist signs and were carefully keeping on the right route – unfortunately we had to follow the yellow one, not the blue…











Here you can see a drawing of the abyss cross-section.



And this is a restaurant near the upper bridge.



Well, it was a nice walk.
Bye, Boo Boo (-…/---/---//-…/---/---)

Hi Mum,

sorry for the delay with updates. My host mum had sick eye, so she couldn´t use the computer much. But now it is time to catch up…
so get ready, there are three lovely updates coming up.

This one is from our trip to Rajec Castle. This castle is from 18th century and it is very popular place for weddings, concerts and such.

Looks nice, but it must be much more pleasant in summer =)

Here is the entrance…



And here is the castle itself.









Boo Boo (-…/---/---//-…/---/---)

Hello again!

Before the winter arrived, I had been to local open-air firing range!!

My host knew that I really wanted to do this activity, so we went as soon as the weather was good enough and the firing range opened for a few hours. (Now during winter it is mostly closed).

I told my host that thanks to you I knew all about guns. My host dad asked me couple of tricky questions about firing safety and stuff, but it was piece of cake for me and I was allowed to come immediately. So here are the images!

Loading…





Checking the targets…





Firing…





Here I am looking after the guns while my host dad went to examine the target.
See how good I am with safety rules? Magazines are out, cartridge chambers are open empty…











And here is our target – I did all the black hits, of course =)



When we got home, I also helped with cleaning the guns.







And now I have a riddle for you… Can you tell what types of guns are the ones we used?

Love, Boo Boo (-…/---/---//-…/---/---)

Hello hello!

Couple weeks ago my host dad had some business to do in the city called Olomouc.
So we decided to come along… the weather was really ugly with loads of rain and wind, so we couldn´t do much sightseeing. But still it was a good time.

After the meeting we went for a lunch. There is a nice restaurant at the top of highest Olomouc building.
This is it.



Here we are in the restaurant, waiting for the meal and enjoying beer 





And this is the view…









And the square in front of the restaurant.



We also did some shopping and stopped by in a nice café… I had mojito – yummy!



Bye, Boo Boo (-…/---/---//-…/---/---)

Hello again,

Here is my Christmas Holiday report 

On 23rd December we went to Brno. It is the second largest city in the Czech Republic.
We wanted to look at the traditional Christmas market there.

We saw big Christmas tree, wooden crib, a little bell – you are supposed to make a wish when ringing it.







We also came across this funny sculpture watch. Do not ask me, I have no idea how to read time on it…



Next day it was the 24th December (Christmas Eve for us, but they call it “the generous day“ here). It is the main holiday day here in the Czech Republic.
You are supposed to decorate the tree and prepare a magnificent dinner. After the dinner it is present-giving time.
So first we helped with the tree decorations… look.





And later we helped with cooking. The traditional dinner is a fish (mainly carp) and potato salad. We did the salad like this (watch and learn):

First you have to cook potatoes, carrot and celery.



While we were cooking it, our host mum made a homemade mayonnaise.



Now, when the vegetable is cooked, you need to peel it and cut it on small pieces and put it into some bowl.



Add carrot and celery…



Add potatoes…



Add pickled pea and also pickled cucumbers.





Add two boiled eggs cut into pieces.



Add the mayonnaise, salt, pepper…



After you mix it all together you are done. Now you leave it in a fridge (or just outside the house) for couple hours to cool down and you are ready to dig in.



Here I am getting ready for the dinner.



And finally present-giving time! We TV´s got this one all together.



It was full of yummy sweets, mainly local ones that we had never seen before.



And the most important thing is that there were also blue ones!! The eat-blue-candy-mission is completed!





And here we are all together under the Christmas tree. It is nice to spend this special time with good friends!



Love, Boo Boo

Dear Mum!

Sorry for the delay with updates, but we are veeery busy with school at the moment. Today I wanna show you just a few images we took on our walk to the Macocha Abyss.
My host mum and dad go there every 1st January and we decided to join them…
Because I already told you all about the abyss, just enjoy images this time =)









Love, Boo Boo

Hi again!

As I already wrote you, our host mum is quite busy with school at the moment. She is studying all the weekends, so we don´t go out much… but we don´t mind as the weather is not very nice. Also the caves in the karst are closed for January, so we are waiting for them to open again anyway.

Today we decided to help with the studying a bit.

See? Don´t I look like a real student?







Sharpening a pencil…



To be honest, I got a bit bored soon, so I decided to misbehave a bit 





Uf, this studying is quite exhausting…



Luckily our host dad brought us a little something from a sweet shop! Yummy!!



Bye for now, Boo Boo

Hello Mummy!

Today our host had some business to do in the nearest town called Blansko and we decided to go with her.
When we were done with all the boring stuff, we went to check the local castle... it is from the 16th century.



Blansko area was always very famous for art-designed cast iron. There is a small exhibition of the cast iron statues on the courtyard.







There is also this very old water turbine from the 19th century (experts call it Francis turbine as we learned from the information board).
It has been on display since 1970. I tried to spin it, but it didn´t work. No wonder it weights more than 10 tons…





On our way back home we stopped by this small windmill - pretty, isn´t it?



As the February already begun, we plan to finally go to the caves! So the next update is coming soon!

Bye for now,
Boo Boo

Dear Mum!

Today our host mum and dad finally took us to the caves of Moravian Karst. We decided to visit Punkva caves, which are the most popular ones in the area. The tour includes a special highlight: boat cruise on the underground Punkva river that gave the cave its name.

After parking our car we had to take this funny looking wheel train.









Here we are in front of the main entrance, studying information boards and observing the surroundings and souvenir shops.











In the cave we saw beautiful stalagmites, stalactites and columns. (Do you know how to recognize them?)











During the tour the guide played some classical music from CD to demonstrate fantastic acoustics of the underground world. It was awesome!





Then suddenly we came out of the dark and found ourselves right at the bottom of this huge abyss called Macocha. Do you remember my visit to the upper bridge of it?









Finally, we reached cave harbor with biiig electric-powered ship with captain. (First I thought he was a cave troll.) Unfortunately we haven´t got any images from the cruise, cause we were not allowed to take pictures for safety reasons.



After really adventurous cruise with many turns and lakes, we floated out of the underground cave labyrinth. My eyes became blinded by the daylight.



Last part of the trip was walking back to the parking lot. Close to it we found an old waterwheel for a mill that used to stand there. Check out the waterman, a typical Czech fairytale figure.











That´s all for today!
Bye, Boo Boo!!

I am now back at home in North Carolina.  I had the BEST TIME EVER in The Czech republic!!! I got to go to many neat places and my host took me to the firing range where I got to shoot Czech style hand guns!!! I am now looking for a new host.  I would love to visit anyone that would like to host me for a few months!!! Contact my owner if you would like me to pay you a visit.

Hi everyone,

I have made it safely to Canada! Woohoo! But someone should have warned me that it was this hot! The temp here is 32C with a humidex of 37C. But miss Caroline said that yesterday was even hotter, humidex was at 46C.

I met with miss Caroline's twin daughters. They are really nice, they already want to take me places. We took some pictures and already ate the taffy i brought. Yummy!!

It's almost time for dinner so I'll go wash my hands and i promise to be on my best behavior.

Luv ya,
Boo Boo

Hello family;

I'm back from my trip to Niagara Falls with my summer family. It's been GREAT. We left really early on Sunday, aug. 7th because we had a looooong car ride ahead of us. We stopped a few times along the way to eat and for bathroom breaks!

Our main goal was to spend lots of time at Marineland. You wouldn't believe what I saw. I saw dolphins, belugas and I even fed bears! I also rode the sky screamer, woohooo that was wicked!!!

I brought back some great pictures, see them below. Unfortunately, I didn't see any blue building! Maybe some other time!! But I got to see the lake Erie, one of the 5 big lakes of Canada.

I had the best time, the next few days will be spent getting the kids ready for school. We'll go shopping for school supplies and all!

Well, bye for now. I'm really exhausted!! Mouahhhh!!
Boo Boo

Update : oh oh, the pictures have to be modified. they are too big to attach. They will be uploaded very soon!!