VVery strange day but no pictures for it. I can't remember if I took any to begin with (I suspect not) and I'm not in a position to easily get them off my camera even if I did right now.
As a bit of background, a few days ago I decided I wanted to go see Mucha's Slav Epic, which is a set of 20 massive canvases he devoted the second half of his life to in order to encourage Slavic pride and unity. My research had shown it to be in a castle in a small town near Brno, so I'd booked a few days in Brno, which is the second largest Czech city, to take a bus or train to go visit it. What I learned yesterday was that my research was about 4 months too old, and that in May Slav Epic had been moved to Prague.
Luckily this new news came to me while I was still in Prague, and since there is regular train service between Prague and Brno I wasn't in a rush to leave in the morning. I walked to the gallery where it is being shown, the Veletrzni Palace, and got the combined ticket to see the Slav Epic and regular gallery (why not?)
The Epic lived up to its title. Mucha probably isn't all that great a painter compared to many I've seen, but I like his style, and any cycle of 20 paintings, most of which are 8m x 6m, shown together are going to be impressive.
The real surprise though, was the rest of the gallery. I've been to quite a few galleries so far, and I'd say Veletrzni Palace is unquestionably the best collection of art from probably 1800 to present day that I've been to. That's a pretty big caveat, but as a gallery focused on (relatively) modern art, it's amazing. The number of pieces there is huge, which allows for them to showcase some of the stranger, more subjective modern art that's a bit hit or miss with me and have enough content that everybody is sure to enjoy something. Failing that, they have a large collection of more mainstream art. Rodin, Monet, Picasso, more Klimt and Schiele, Cezanne, etc etc etc. I was caught completely off guard and didn't bring anything to take notes with like I usually do, and since photo-taking was banned I had to put my mnemoic skills to the testing in memorizing unusual Czech and other European names of all the artists I'd never heard of but really liked. (I managed to, I think, remember 8 of the most interesting, but have yet to try to look them up to confirm I got all the names right - or close enough to right to figure it out). What really astonished me was that the place was virtually empty. The building has 5 or 6 floors of art, and on some I'd be the only visitor. I can kind of understand why, considering I make an effort to hunt out good art and I came very close to not visiting. The fact that I almost didn't come gives an indication of how horrible the place is marketed though. I admit I didn't research Prague very thoroughly, but it wasn't on the list of my must-see galleries in Europe, or on the list of things I cobbled together to see in Prague. It was just the happy accident of my last minute discovery that led me there.
After a solid 4 hours at the gallery I took my train to Brno - which I now had 2 nights booked in with absolutely nothing I knew of worth visiting. To make things more interesting, after walking from the Brno train station to the hostel I had booked I learned that I booked the wrong 2 nights. This led to two issues. Most immediately, it was about 8pm and I had nowhere to sleep for the night, and secondarily it now meant I was going to be in a city with nothing to do for 3 nights instead of 2. I'm not overly worried about the second, since I'll find something interesting no matter where I'm stuck (or, worst case, find a place to sit and read or draw or something), but the first issue was a bit of a concern. While I waited for my tablet to charge some at the wrong hostel I sat around with the people who run it. The landlord came by with a huge jug of what I can only call moonshine that he makes in the apartment above the hostel. He poured us each some, and after finishing mine I also had to finish the two Spaniards' (one was staff, the other a guest) who were unable to drink it. The amounts weren't huge (shots basically) but the alchohol content was enough that it burned quite a bit going down.
Because of the short notice the only place I could find in town for the night was an absolute dive, but it got me out of the rain and at least a few hours of sleep. Now I just need to find something to do for the day before I can check into the original hostel.
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