My day started early as my Student Agency bus from Cesky Krumlov to Prague left at 7:00 am. I think the Asian tourists were still asleep because it was mostly locals going to Prague, the 3 hour ride went by quickly as I watched a movie most of the time. The same homeless guy from yesterday was waiting for my return to Prague. I didn't have time to chat with him since I had to take the subway to the train station.
After a 15 minute trip on the subway, I was at the train station with an hour to get lunch. The train from Prague to Ostrava was also owned by Student Agency under the name Regiojet. The fare was cheap, $12 for a 3.5 hour trip. I had paid $3 extra for a nicer train compartment with large leather seats.
The trip was fine, not much scenery, just the Czech countryside & small towns. I arrived in Ostrava & took a public bus to the hotel, the bus dropped me off almost right in front of the Park Inn Ostrava. This is primarily a business hotel next to an office park, so it was a 20 minute walk to town. No suite upgrade for me here, but the standard room was fine.
After a long travel day, I decided to do a 6 mile run to get in some exercise. I had to run about 1.25 miles to get to a park downtown along the river. It was funny passing other runners & they all had jackets or long sleeves with tights on even though it was in the mid 50s. After I got back, I had a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant since there was nothing else close by.
The next morning I did a run on the treadmill & made the twenty minute walk downtown to have lunch at a restaurant that served Czech food. It was pretty good, after lunch I walked around the area with some bars & some casinos. Saw an interesting advertisement on my walk to downtown, turns out it is for a payday loan place called day to day. Not much else to do, but kill a few hours before the meet at the hotel.
It took a lot of effort to get my ticket (and $60) to the meet. It is a long story, but the ticket was supposed to arrive in 5 days, but instead took 30 days to arrive, getting there one day before I left for my trip. The weather forecast was for mid 50s, light wind, & some rain. I headed down to the stadium around 3:00 pm, it took 30 minutes to get there. I took some photos of the stadium before getting into the the line for security.
I had my 35mm camera around my neck and had my zoom lens in my bag. The security guy says something about my camera & then some idiot security guy that spoke English said my camera was "too large" to take in & only mobile phones or small cameras were ok. I never heard such BS, I have taken this same type of camera to track meets since the 1980s in addition to the Olympics, World Series, Final Four basketball, etc without any problems. After 5 minutes of arguing with these jerks, I am forced to check my bag with $1,000 in camera equipment hoping it didn't get stolen or broken. I was even more angry when after walking around I saw at least 15 people with the same camera that I had. They did have a lot of cool food stands inside & it was fairly inexpensive.
My seats were in the main grandstand about 3 rows up near the 100 meter start line. The stands are covered, so I didn't even notice that the rain had started after I got to my seat. The crowd was pretty enthusiastic & the stadium was full, it holds about 15,000 people. There were some good races & some upsets in a few events. David Rudisha, the Olympic champion pulled his hamstring in the 600m & Usain Bolt was really slow getting out of the starting blocks after the starter called them up twice before finally starting the race. His time of 20.13 was really slow, but probably ok for the conditions & lack of competition. I did manage to get my camera back in one piece after the meet. The whole camera thing still seems wacky to me, will probably email someone at the meet to complain.
I head to Kraków late tomorrow morning on a small shuttle bus. There are no train connections from Ostrava to Kraków, but cost of the shuttle is reasonable ($22).
Here a few more photos from the meet, obviously not from me except for the last one taken from my iPad.
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