Vertigo is a popular bar among the university students of Olomouc. Its location across the street from the fine arts campus and the cheapest beer in the old town are probably the main contributing factors.

The front door opens onto a long orange corridor. There’s a room to one side with a table football game, but the bar proper is at the end of the corridor and downstairs. The first of the two rooms has a bar along one side and booths that can seat about eight people along the other. The second room is all tables, chairs, and benches. There’s a fireplace in one corner and above it a television set used for showing films on Sunday afternoons.

The entire interior is painted a deep red-orange and decorated with murals. Apparently the bar is named after a film starring James Stewart and Kim Novak. I must admit that I hadn’t previously heard of it, but one of my companions had. His synopsis of the plot was "they do a lot of driving around in cars… and someone’s scared of heights," which would explain the name of the film I guess, as well as the mural of a well dressed gentleman hanging from a rafter by his fingertips. Not sure if that has anything to do with a bar in a cellar, but there’s probably more to the film than just that.

The staff is friendly. It’s the kind of place where you order your second drink with a nod or a lift of the eyebrows. There hasn’t been too much expense put into the furnishing and the toilets are not kept at the height of cleanliness, so it’s the kind of bar you’d go to for the atmosphere and cheer, not for the facilities. It’s also the kind of place where you have to speak quiet loudly to make yourself heard over the music. The selection was quite good when I was there a couple of nights ago, everything from Deep Purple to Bjork to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

The other customers all seemed to be fairly good-natured. The 20 or so people in the booths near the bar seemed to all know each other and be trading seats every few minutes to talk to somebody different. Out in the back room a light hearted coaster-flinging fight broke out at one stage, but apart from that people were just talking amongst their group of friends. If there had been no free tables, I’m sure it would have been fine to share one of the long benches with people who were already there. “Prosim Vas, je tady volno?” (Excuse me, is this seat free?) should do the job.

There’s no nonsmoking area, and your clothes will reek of the smell within about 10 minutes of sitting down, but if you can put up with that, Vertigo is probably the best place to rub shoulders with local students.