Travel Day

Today was a travel day. After a deliciously cool evening in Prague we awoke to the sound of rain gently falling in the courtyard of our hotel. We had breakfast, got instructions on how use the Prague tram system from Jana, and made our way to the main train station in town. From there we boarded a train to Ostrokovice to transfer to our train to Zlin. The ride was about four hours total with a 45 minute layover in the middle.

The further we get away from Prague the less English is spoken. By the time we arrived in Ostrokovice all we could do was point at the food and say the equivalent of "that please" in Czech. Forget about it if anyone asks us a question or tries to get us to elaborate on anything. At one point on the train (we rode in a compartment with a Czech mother and her daughter) the conductor came by and asked us something and we stared blankly at her not knowing what to say. The woman in our compartment said something to affect of "they only speak English, I think they know where they are going" and that was that. Luckily people are nice and they helped us out to the best of their abilities.


We arrived in Zlin at 4:45 PM, the sky was grey, we just had our English speaking asses kicked for the previous five hours and our spirits were low. After a harrowing cab ride to the hotel (the driver did not speak any English and drove like a madman) we checked in with some difficulty and took a walk around the town. It's a nice little place to be with some interesting things to see but it is definitely a small town. There are a couple of shopping areas and a few places to eat and apparently there is an excellent shoe museum. Luckily I have 6-8 hours of my day scheduled for the next week and a half. I am sure that Kaia will become an expert at the town and the Czech language by the time this is all said and done!

Tomorrow we start with the workshop. We begin with excerpts from Tchaikovsky and Brahms. I will conduct the full orchestra on Wednesday for the first time. I'm pretty anxious and very excited. I met Larry Rachleff, one of the teachers, and his wife tonight, talked to Donald Schleicher a bit (he's my teacher starting in the fall), and met a bunch of conductors from Montreal, Texas, and Brazil. This is going to be a great learning experience!

Now it's off to study a bit before bed.