After Bitoc castle and the Znojmo underground we went to a little winery in a very old monastery. (Very old, old and new all have slightly different meanings to me now than when I first arrived.) Wine is aged in a Gothic cellar with a series of hash marks carved into the wall where a trio of monks were once punished for drinking wine off of the monastery ground. At the wine tasting I gave my wine away to our teacher (not to be a suck-up or anything) and to Marek, our Czech interpretor and sometimes tour guide and general organizer of amazingness. They were both very appreciative of the wine that I shared. I did drink the first taste of white wine, it was a good sweet one, and when I taste it again I think it will remind me of my favorite moment on this trip which came shortly after the winery.

After our tour and tastings we all trouped outside into the sun and sat picnic style under a grape arbor, eating bread and cheese and briney olives and everyone else drank wine from the little winery shop. We lingered for so long that they shut the front gate on us. THe bus was parked a mere twenty feet from the front gate. We slipped out a side gate and started searching for another way to get to the fenced-in bus parking area. We found a tall wooden fence and a metal door that was open, four feet up. Marek climbed through the opening and rather drunkenly suggested that we all do the same. In the end he just went and informed the bus driver where we were, and brought the bus to us. When we finally got on the bus he handed out the phonetic version (and rather bad English translation) of a Czech drinking song. He had the song on an SD card, and my MP3 player was the only one that would play it, so I went and sat up front and showed him how to work it. We jerry-rigged it so that he held the headphone to the bus microphone and it actually played the song quite clearly. We listened once, and then sang along stumblingly a dozen times until we were home, back to Olomouc. I have been singing this song ever since.

Veenechko beele
si od may meehey.
boudou vas peet
tso boudou jeet.
Veenechko beele.

One of the things that made the singing so sweet was when Marek explained to me a little later, sharing his wine, that he was very shy to sing in front of people, but he loves to sing. It was a small moment, but full of kindred spirit because I feel the same way.

I will be home on Monday, and I am very excited about this fact. I probably won't sleep in Prague, and I might not sleep on the plane, so I may be some hiccuping zombie by the time I fly in.