That would be pronounced "Seal." This is the part of Czech I love best. Since every letter is always pronounced exactly the same, I can read the language out loud with some degree of accuracy; comprehension, close to zero, but I know that Ceji is pronounced seal.
This is the part of town where the Roma's live. No one around here uses that term, but, some heavy duty googling would suggest that Roma is about as PC as you can get for what people actually say, which is "gypsy." I'm not comfortable using that term, so I say "Roma." Whatever, this is the section of town we were warned about as being a bit dodgy.
If you look closely ... wait, I'll go in closer ...
There you go. So, the low rent end of town. It fascinates me that that's in English.
Anyway, story time! Last weekend was Free Museum night in Brno. Hope was staying at a friends house, and to celebrate (Free Museum Night, that is, not a Hope-less night), Jeff and I took Tom out to Jeff's favorite restaurant, Zelny Kuchka: The Green Cat. There are a lot of restaurants in CR named for cats. There's even one in our neighborhood called Our Cat that we have never been to. Why, I have no idea. By which I mean (1) why it is named Our Cat, I have no idea and (b) why we have never been to it, I also have no idea. But, that is neither here nor there. After our rather delicious, quite heavy Czech meal, the three of us decided to stroll a bit before boarding the tram for home. Actually two of us decided, and Tom was forced marched along with us.
We followed the tram route as we walked, and as we worked our way quickly (hello! small town!) out of town, we passed museum after museum full of revelers, enjoying the free cultural evening. We were less inclined to join in, as we have learned that listening to an hour of discussion in a language you do not fully understand is an hour you have lost forever and will never get back, no matter how pretty the artwork.
Within a few minutes we were walking along the aforementioned Ceji street. I lived on 126th and Amsterdam in Manhattan in the early 1980s, so I am not easily intimidated, and, frankly, at 21:00 on a Saturday night, there wasn't any reason to be intimidated. Ceji Street is Bad Section of Town Lite if you are the sort to have played pool north of 168th street at 3:00 o'clock in the morning. There were lots of families still playing on the street, and people were gathered for a chat, a smoke and a drink here and there all along the way.
But, there's nothing wrong with a little vigilance, is there? I have told the story of the time in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida) when I shifted a friend of ours out of harms way seconds before a knife wielding assailant was about to separate him from his wallet. A gram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure. Or something like that. So, the three of us were sauntering along the street chatting in English (which is our wont given that it is our only language) when I noticed a pair of men behind us. A pair of men is, of course, a signal to increase watchfulness. Man #1 is about to attempt to distract you while Man #2 steals your wallet. I have been to St. Peter'sburg and Barcelona and I know all about this crap.
I glanced back. The two men looked like nothing more than a couple of University blokes out for an evening stroll, well dressed, well groomed, and honestly, they looked as out of place in this neighborhood as we did. I glanced back again. They were closer, walking faster than we were. A gram of prevention ... I glanced at Jeff, he glanced at me, and like a pair of synchronized swimmers, only fully dressed, and without the excessive makeup and glitter, we acted. He peeled left, I peeled right, hanging onto Tom's arm and clutching my bag a tiny bit closer, and we let them pass. We re-grouped behind them, having vigilantly avoided any possible danger, and resumed our chatting smoothly and without interruption. This is a move we have executed before, and we're pretty good at it.
With that, the dudes glanced back at us. And slowed down. And glanced back at us again. I thought, "Oh, great, now they think we are going to attempt to steal their wallets." But that's not what they thought. Bloke number 1 stopped and as I came up to him, he said, in heavily accented English, "Welcome to Brno's equivalent of the Bronx!" Well, that was about as random as it gets. I mean, most people in the US would recognize "the Bronx" as being a code name for "bad neighborhood," but is it some kind of universal code word?
Anyway, he explained that he and his companion were on their way to the Gypsy Museum (hey, I'm reporting what he said) and we explained that we were walking home, which provided appropriate excuses for all parties to be in a neighborhood they would not usually be walking in at night. We chatted a bit and then they headed off to see the museum. Now, I don't know this, but I suspect they stopped to chat because they realized we mistook them for well groomed highway men and they wanted to correct the misinterpretation.
What a scare!
Posted by: Monica | June 19, 2011 at 10:33 AM