More than a dozen of Brno’s museums and galleries will host the 8th Museum Night on Saturday, May 19. You may see many places usually unavailable for public together with regular exhibitions, for free or for a small fee.

Paying for visiting museums during this special event was unthinkable in the recent years and its introduction upset many people. But it has two good reasons: the museums need to make some extra money due to budget cuts and it was also almost impossible to get to some exhibition in the last years, as too many people were curious about them.

You’ll have to pay CZK 20 to get to Technical museum or Moravian Museum. Museum of Romani culture will keep free admission, Moravian gallery will let people pay what they want.

The event has a good English-language website. Visit it for more information about participating venues and for a great hour-by-hour guide.

What I like about the museum night is that Brno becomes a swinging town at least for a while. I avoid the crowded museums but I love to watch the whirl from a garden of some café. So meet you downtown on Saturday!

The best restaurants of Brno will join the town’s first open-air food festival, set in the court of Špilberk castle.

Špilberk Food Festival takes place from Friday to Sunday. It will be the first event of its kind in Brno, as it focuses on the “haute cuisine”, contrary to similar events.

Town’s gourmands are looking forward to a debut of two hot new venues: Riccardo Lucque’s Il Mercato opened at Zelný trh sq. last week. Some time soon – but no one knows when – U Kastelána restaurant will move to the beautiful 1920s building known as Zemanova Kavárna; the new place will be called Pavillon. Both Il Mercato and Pavillon will have their stands at Špilberk castle, together with Koishi, Leporelo, Noem Arch and other places.

Check out the programme and information on prices on the website of the festival.

Look at some great pictures of Brno’s most spectacular event.

Last weekend, photographer Carlos Lopez covered Animefest for Brno Now. You can see more of his pictures at carloslopezphoto.com.

As the last year Anime fest brought some color to Brno. Fans of anime and Japanese culture gathered in the exhibition ground for 3 days of workshops, movies and seminar about anime and manga.

This year with around 2000 visitors, 400 more than last year attended the event making from it was a success.The cosplayers were, in fact, visually the main attraction who came form other parts of Czech republic, Slovakia, Hungary etc. dressed as characters of Naruto, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Gintana, Start wars, Magi, etc.

As example these girls, which know by their nick names::

Kana dresses as Simbad and Asu as Ja'far from the anime Magi

Kiri as Gintoki and Evina as Hijikata from the anime Gintana

They all came from Bratislava. They have been cosplaying since 2009. They have the support of their parents which came just with a big warning “don’t spend too much money on this” and is true a good costume can cost around 100 euros to more, enough said.

My justification about the retouching of my photos

These images have over-saturated colors. They are not “real” but my intention was not to represent reality. Anime is about fantasy and therefore cosplay too and in my photographs I want to show that fantasy, that unreal world of rich colors and fictional characters.

For me they are portraits of people who has the valor, courage, craziness and dare to live their dream at least for a day incarnating someone they admire or like. Obviously some just want to have fun but still require courage to dress like that and go out to the streets.

On Tuesday, March 8, at 2 p.m., two cubs of kamchatka brown bear will have their public debut at Brno Zoo.

The ultra-cute bear twins were named Toby and Kuba, based on the results of a poll at the Zoo’s website. Their mother Kamčatka gave a birth to them back in January.

The young fellows could finally improve Zoo’s visitor figures which have been falling down for years, as the garden is located on the outskirt of the town, isn’t particularly nice and its management has somehow amateur attitude to marketing.

(Photo property of ZOO Brno.)

Gothic maids and other strange beings will be stroling through the streets of Brno again. A popular event Animefest, focusing on contemporary Japanese culture, is about to hit the town this weekend.

2012 Animefest festival takes place in Pavillon A at Brno Exhibition Ground; tickets cost CZK 500 with prior registration and CZK 600 without it. You can sign up for the event at its official website, which also carries a detailed schedule and some background information:

Animefest.CZ is the oldest and largest anime and manga convention in the Czech Republic, organized by a non-profit organization Brno otaku. As the name suggests, the festival takes place in Brno. More than 200 fans visited the first event in 2004 and each following con attracted more people, with over 1600 attendees in 2011. The festival program offers a mix of contests (e.g. cosplay and AMV), workshops, talks, discussions and, of course, anime screening.

Together with the festival, a Weekend of Japanese Culture takes place in Brno; Kunštátská Trojka café hosts most of its event, which usually have free admission. (See the schedule for more.)

You can visit a nice photo gallery showing last year’s participants by Carlos Lopez, from which comes the image on top.

For ten years, Fléda club at Štefanikova st. has been the centre of alternative culture in Brno, hosting both promising local bands and globally known artists. It has an uncertain future now, due to a controversial public notice.

The local council of Královo Pole quarter gave a clear order to the owners of Fléda: “All clubs and pubs located between 18 Štefánikova st. and 28 Štefánikova st. must turn off music at 10 p.m.” Reason? Complaints of people living around the venue.

Although it may seem to be reasonable, the notice raised several issues:

• Why don’t the order apply to all clubs in Královo Pole, just to Fléda?
• Why didn’t the council give Fléda a chance to isolate the building? The owners already invested around €100,000 to solve the problem, further repairs were planned.
• Why didn’t the complaining residents let officers measure the levels of noise in their apartments? Also, some of the complaints were filed when Fléda was closed.
• The owners of Fléda also claim that before the neighbouring apartment house was bought by Jan Kratochvíl, noone complained. Kratochvíl sits in the council and has voted in favor of the notice Mr. Kratochvíl later disputed that, but there is no record of the poll. He claims that the town should buy the building hosting Fléda and repair it. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?
• The notice does not apply to nearby casinos attracting gamblers all night long – even in the Kartochvíl’s building.
• Also, the institutions of local government are schizophrenic: Fléda is often praised by the town council for attracting tourists to Brno and being one of the private venues that nourish the cultural life. On the other hand, it faces both financial and operational problems due to the Královo Pole council.
• Finally: the notice is actually not so clear. Fléda is oficially registered as a cinema, so a new notice or a court decision may be needed to solve the problem.

The case will evolve on. A petition will be launched in the forthcoming days. It is also possible that Fléda could move to another building. That would be a pity anyway, as the “Fledermaus cabaret” at Štefánikova st. has been hosting various cultural institutions since early 20th century.

After more than four decades, ice hockey club Kometa Brno has a chance to win Czech national cup again. The tickets for the final series are already sold out but you can still watch the games in the middle of a 5000+ crowd – thanks to the big screens located at the town’s central square.

You can see some pictures from the first final game here and here. Note that the Brno “cock clock” got a protective cover. (Big thanks to Tomáš Papež for the big picture above!)

In the last three years, Kometa club gained a huge fan base in Brno. This explain why there are so many loud, celebrating people roaming the streets in these days or why there are hockey dresses decorating shop windows.

Schedule of the final series and the screenings

I am going to refocus Brno Now towards dining out, restaurants, food festivals, pubs and cafés. Let’s start with summing up what happened during the recent year.

• The two most talked about restaurants opened at Veveří st. in December. Franz (Veveří 14) is a “bistro” serving good, simple meals cooked mostly from local, seasonal ingredients. Its extravagant interior was designed by Martin Hrdina (café Alfa, café Art). Cattani (Veveří 6) is the first pasta bar in Brno; they have a simple menu, home-cooked pasta and a funny brand “identity”, reminding the fictional detective Corrado Cattani, fighting against mafia.
• My favorite restaurant opened last year is Kabaret Špaček (Kopečná 46). This beautiful bistro with open kitchen offers only one or two meals a day – always with great price/value ratio. Bohemian beers, moravian wines, stylish ambient music… no wonder I am the Foursquare mayor!
• After being shut down for decades, the legendary Café ERA finally re-opened in Černá Pole neighborhood. Two well known traditional sweetshop were relaunched downtown: Café Zeman (Josefská 4; they screen Czech movies with English subtitles regularly) and Kolbaba (Kounicova 11), the later one struggling to keep the quality of service at least in the average levels.
• Sklizeno shop (Křídlovická 47) became the place to go for “the real food”, which means local ingredients from Moravian and Bohemian farmers.
• The Vietnamese market at Olomoucká st. became mainstream, esp. restaurants Bún Cá Hải Phong and Thuan Lien. Few years ago, it was hard to imagine that so many people would enjoy the beef noodle soup phở bò or bánh mì baguettes.
• Indian restaurant Annapurna (Josefská 14) launched few weeks ago and offers excellent food.
• Antalya Doner Kebap located right at the main train station serves excellent… doner kebab. And right across the street you can enjoy the first bubble tea in Brno.
• Leporelo+ (in the House of Arts, Malinovského náměstí sq.), Sunset (Příkop 4) and Don Pintxos (Dominikánské náměstí 3) got some very positive reviews in local press. French restaurant Le Marcheé (in Reduta theatre at Zelný trh sq.) is quite controversial, some love it, some hate it. I do not know these place well enough to share my opinion with you.
• I fancy the beer made in Líšeň brewery (Kotlanova 5), the youngest craft brewery in Brno.
• For the first time I really enjoyed the Christmas markets (take look at a stand of Cafe Zastávka on the picture above). Yummy home baked cookies, warm juice with a drop of brandy, live jazz music… exactly how markets should look like.

What to look forward in 2012?

• U Kastelána, one of the best restaurants in Brno, will move to Zemanova kavárna, a beautiful 1930s building at Koliště park. The venue will be called “Pavillon”.
• Famous chef  Riccardo Lucque is going to open his first restaurant in Brno, “Il Mercato”, at Zelný trh sq.
• Two food festivals will take place in Brno: Špilberk Food Festival in May and Jídlo z blízka (“a close {look on} food”) in July.

Czechs say that everyone should eat or drink something green on Maundy Thursday. Starobrno brewery has been using this as an extremely popular marketing tool, brewing a special, strong green beer just once a year.

Updated: green Starobrno not great, says a beer expert. Recommends Richard and Pegas.

I am not a huge fan of Starobrno – I prefer craft breweries to the big ones – but I loved the taste of the green beer last year. And I was not alone. The streets and parks of Staré Brno quarter and other neighborhoods got really crowded.

You can get the beer in almost every pub that has Starobrno on tap. It will be draught only on Thursday, April 5 — and maybe for few more days.

If you want to be a part of a huge partying crowd, the brewery is the place to go on the Thursday night.

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The building of Faculty of Fine Arts at Údolní st. in Brno got a new decoration – an outdoor urinal.

I took the photos few days ago, so this is not a fools’ day prank.

Marked with OUT OF ORDER sign, yet quite functional, the urinal puzzles passers-by. You can find it halfway between cafés Mezzanine and Do vany.

The urinal is fully functional, it just does not have water supply.

The art installation is located near a new public toilet booth, built for CZK 3,000,000 (more than €100,000) at Joštova st. last year. This may be the urinal’s possible explanation.

Nobody really wanted to be photographed near the piece of art.

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It has been a long cold lonely winter — but here comes the sun. And blooming flowers.

Only few people know about the botanical garden of Masaryk university, located right at Veveří st., across the street from The Immigrant pub. This is the best time to visit it and enjoy all the blooming flowers – unless you suffer from pollen allergy.

Everything is nicely labelled, so you will learn something about the nature.

The garden is open for general public every day except national holidays. Admission is free, you only have to pay CZK 40 to get into the green-houses.

The garden is a great spot for a date.

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Other places where to enjoy blooming flowers and trees

• Pasqeflower park in Nový Lískovec quarter
• Botanical garden of Mendel University (CZK 50 admission fee)
• Botanical garden of Mendel University (CZK 50 admission fee)

Bonjour! Aïe! Salut! – Just like every spring, Bonjour Brno festival will let you taste French culture and lifestyle without leaving Brno.

The festival is organised by Alliance française.

I especially like these events:

• Gourmet weeek in La Bouchée (33 Údolní st.) from March 30 to April 6.
• Concert of IMG at Fléda (24 Štefánikova st.) on Saturday, April 14.
• Concert of Yann-Fañch Kemener & Aldo Ripoche (two excellent artists of Brittany) at University of technology (1 Antonínská st.) on Tuesday, April 17.
• Dance evening “Fest-noz” at Design Museum (14 Husova st.) on Wednesday, April 18.
• Screening of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée at Cinema Art (19 Cihlářská st.) on March 30.
• Pétanque tournament at Lužánky park (Lidická st.) on Saturday, April 15, at 11 a.m. – including a tasting of Ricard pastis.

Again, the website does not contain an English version. If you want to learn more, try machine-translating the French one.

Check out the price of tickets (free admission is marked as “vstup volný”) – and buy them in advance at the venues or at the stand in the first floor of Dům pánů z Lipé (86/17 Náměstí Svobody sq.).