Olomouc

It was Friday, 23rd April 2010. I woke up early, and was ready for breakfast at the ground floor at 7 AM. I found the ransack (Lowepro CompuPrimus) I bought earlier before coming to Czech Rep was really satisfying. Not only I’ve got it cheap, good quality, but also the laptop sleeve provided with the bag was really useful and it was not a shame to walk around with.

I looked around the hotel restaurant (Sigma Hotel, Olomouc) to find an electrical socket for my laptop and started to search for the wi-fi. Alhamdulillah, I’ve got it done and started to surf the internet.

9 AM, I had a job, as a photographer to snap a few photos for my wife’s poster presentation. It was still quite early when I reached back to the hotel. I looked at the clock at the bottom right of my laptop, it was 9:30 AM. So I decided to surf the internet and made a few calls provided by http://www.nonoh.net/. It was free. I was addicted to internet, and during that period, I managed to watch Malay Film, Muallaf, directed by the late Yasmin Ahmad.

It was 11 am and I was ready to tour Olomouc city, when I realized that I haven’t changed the time zone in my laptop. Ya Allah, it’s 11 AM UK time, means 12 PM local time. So I made the move. Hopped in the tram and hopped out whenever I like. Pedulik haper khanz. I didn’t have any specific program, but I knew that there was a FLORA festival this month somewhere near the botanical garden. I heard other tourists said FLORA in their conversation among themselves, and amazingly, I was at that FLORA. I paid Kr 80, (almost £3) for a student ticket. I thought it was like Keukenhof, but I was wrong. It was just like a normal flower exhibition with Sunday market booth.

At 3 PM I felt nauseated due to gastritis, I was hungry. I remembered my wife’s friend said that there is a halal kebab house at the end of the Main Train Station. I ordered noodle with kebab (Kr75) and a coke (Kr25). It was halal, but they sold beer as well at £0.04 per large glass. Ergh ! ! ! I was hungry and nearly felt like fainting, so I just ate the noodle. I was eating when my wife entered the kebab house, not noticing my presence there, and ordered a kebab for herself. She said, her Czech friends told her, that the hotel that we stayed was an old building in a communist era, and the train that we took from Praha was the normal old fashion train. We should have bought an express train called Pendolino which took only 2 hours journey and was much more comfortable.

So we bought Pendolino train ticket for our journey back to Prague. The price was of course much more expensive ie double the normal train. As for the hotel, we felt it was comfortable and convenient, only 2 minutes walk to the main train station and to the Regional Conference Centre. I went back to the room to pray, and my wife continued with her conference in RCC.

Yesterday Atikah and Suhaila showed us around. They stopped over at our hotel room for maghrib prayer. Before they went back that night, we made a plan for tomorrow which was today, to go to FLORA and another shopping place which was about the same as Alamanda Putrajaya. Actually not the same but easier to imagine for you folks.

We were supposed to go at 3 PM, but cancelled because my wife had a very interesting talk by her supervisor, Paul at 4:30 PM. So we postponed it to 5PM. It seemed that we were too late to visit Flora, so we cancelled the first itinerary. It was ok for me, as I have been there earlier.

I was tired and needed a short nap. When my wife came back from the conference, I told her that we postponed our visit to Olympia to 6 PM, she decided to take a short walk but ended up taking a tram which was en route to FLORA. She got off the tram in front of the FLORA and with Allah's will, fortunately met Suhaila at FLORA with 4 other Malaysian students, Zaharah, Farhana, Nadia and Seri (hopefully I wrote the right names)

After sholat Asar at the hotel, we took a free bus specially catered for Olympia customers. We spent about 2 and a half hours there. I was very tired, but really enjoyed the time there.

All Malaysian students here were studying Medicine. All their lecturers who my wife met were very impressed with Malaysian Medical students here. I was not surprised, because all of them were brilliant students, who scored all A's in their SPM.

In front of RCC attending the 6th Molecular Pathology Symposium

With her Czech friend, Dana in front of her poster

Olomouc City Centre

If you wanna to know more about Olomouc, just type it in Google search. One of it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olomouc

Town Hall on your right and Holy Trinity Column on your left

One of many flowers at the exhibition

Botanical garden. I was tired. Just snapped a few pictures and rushed to Halal Kebab House

A morning view from the hotel's 8th floor. RCC on your right and the main train station on your left

We bought 24 hours tickets here, cost Kr40 per person(GBP1.20)

Register the ticket at the yellow box once. And we can hop in and hop out in any of the transportation services, busses and trams. Very easy

The tram

This is Olympia. I snapped it from my iPhone camera. I actually brought along my camera, but too bad, left my SD card at the hotel.