Field of wheat by a roadside stop en route from Poland to Brno, Czech Republic.
After visiting the Auschwitz Museum, I pointed the car back towards Brno in the Czech Republic. Here I stopped to visit the stomping-ground of one of my heroes - Gregor Mendel, a priest and scientist whose experiments with pea plants laid the foundations for the science of genetics. I didn't have much luck in Brno - the Mendel Museum, and the Capuchin crypt, which were the two things I really wanted to visit, were both closed "for technical reasons" (whatever that means!) on the day I was there. However I still had a beautiful visit.
Outside the closed Mendel Museum was the big abbey garden in which Mendel used to work, and some thoughtful person had put a series of signs around to give visitors the history of the place. So I saw the foundations of the glasshouse in which he worked, and learnt about his experiments with meteorology and bee-keeping (which I hadn't known about - I'd only heard of his pea-plants, but Mendel had published a few papers on meteorology and had presented himself as a meteorologist during his lifetime - the import of his work with pea-plants was only really recognised after he had passed away).
Pea plants growing in what was once Mendel's garden.
When I peered through the window of the museum and saw the stiff figures of mannekins in replica outfits, I was actually relieved it had been closed - I didn't have much time in Brno, and if the museum had been open I would have spent my time rushing through there trying to absorb as much information as possible - information which I can probably get, just as well, from the internet. Instead I spent a blissful while wandering through what was Mendel's garden, visiting the spot where his garden shed was, and which he had set up as a sort of early man-cave: his work desk was there, but also a desk for play, with a game of chess set up and ready to go. People would drop past to spend time with him, having a game or a chat. I felt such peace and contentment being in this garden, and thinking of the man who used to work here. As I left, I had a secret smile to myself: God and a garden, what more could anyone want?
To get to the Capuchin crypt, you had to pass down a narrow alleyway. Looking up at the roofs of the buildings on each side of the alley gives you some idea of how close together they were built.
Examining the walls (nothing like a homily in a language you can't understand for admiring the decoration of a church), I noticed that although they were all stone, there wasn't a single stone in any wall which didn't have its decoration - each one was painstakingly hand-painted. I read once that the Parthenon (or was it the Acropolis? One of them, anyhow) in Greece was once painted in bright colours and I wasn't able to picture the broken grey stone alive with colour until I saw these walls. In addition to the intricate hand painting there was gold and silver aplenty of course, and a whole host of figures carved from marble with such skill that you felt that each figure was just frozen in the act of moving. Such cheery figures they were, too - little cherubs, and saints, rendered in such a way that you didn't think of the heaven that they were obviously issuing from as a solemn, almost grim place, but could see that it was somewhere happy and loving and welcoming. The sculptor was obviously a person with a conception of heaven after my own heart.
In addition to all of this visual beauty there was the music. Nothing thrills my soul like a pipe organ, and the organist made full use of this one, from its highest notes to its deepest tones, sounds so low that you almost couldn't hear them, but just feel them. And then, to add to that, there was a vocalist with a voice which so perfectly matched the richness of the organ, and was warm and clear besides, that all together it made my soul sing - and I lifted up my voice and sang along with it.
The last happiness of my short stay in Brno came at the end of Mass, when the two younger priests who had celebrated the majority of the service, helped their much, much older fellow down the aisle - there was no follow-the-leader here, all three of them squeezed into the aisle together, the oldest man (I imagine he was in his 90s, and very frail) between the two younger men, who each took a hand and led him safely down. It seemed such a good example of the spirit of what they had been preaching. It was the perfect end to the service, and to my Brno visit.
Every village in the Czech Republic seems to have its shrine. They vary in size - some are very small and simple, a pillar of stone with a cross on top. This was one of the larger and more ornate ones and was dated 1891. I found it in Moravia.
Then it was just a quick two-hour drive to Vienna, through countryside which felt like a cornucopia of nearly-ripe fruit, grain being harvested late into the evening and an abundance of flowers. What a perfect day. :)