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A Postcard From Brno

Heidi Roberts

A Postcard From Brno

Heidi Roberts

This is a feature from Issue 13 of Charitable Traveller. Click to read more from this issue.

Seasonal flavours

Most visitors to the Czech Republic head to Prague, the capital and largest city, but hop on a train like I did and discover the country’s second city, Brno, instead. Brno is a mix of both stepping back in time and a modern cosmopolitan vibe. The centre is compact and easily walkable, so early-morning coffee and freshly baked pastries, or late-night beers poured with huge foamy heads (and trust me, I tried a few!), are never far away.

I walked into the Old Town square where the vegetable market, known locally as the Cabbage Market, was like entering vegetable heaven. Each stall had piles and piles of fresh local produce the sellers had brought from their nearby allotments or smallholdings. I saw beetroot as big as a cat’s head and I couldn’t stop taking photos of piles of fresh dill (the aroma was amazing) and other herbs, as well as pencil-straight carrots and striking creamy white long parsnips.

It was the start of autumn, so the stalls reflected this, and I bought large bags of poppy seeds and fresh walnuts from a lovely woman who told me, via a customer that spoke English, that they came from her own property. I’m going to bake them in a poppy seed and walnut cake.

Pick up your pocket-sized copy of the Gourmet Brno guide– from the tourist office and take your pick of inventive and great value restaurants

Plenty of surpises

Within walking distance of the Old Town, I found lots of attractions, including an ossuary (a collection of skulls – the second largest in Europe) at St James Church, a huge horse statue on Moravian Square with a cheeky surprise when you stand beneath it and look up (it’s not what you think!), and a well-known cake called MechovÝ dort (moss cake), named because its main ingredient spinach turns it green.

We also experienced a sunset at Castle Špilberk high above the city, which made for a fond farewell before I took the train out of Brno to Vienna in Austria and my flight home.

Z10, a communist-era nuclear bunker that’s now a museum, gives an insight into the Cold War

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This is a feature from Issue 13 of Charitable Traveller.