Nightlife in Olomouc L-Z

Pod Limpou is an atmospheric bar in a Gothic stone cellar below one of burghers’ houses on the Lower Square . The name means Under the Limpa, which was a flat wooden implement used to level the excess froth from a mug of beer in centuries past.

Entry is down a staircase, inside the archway of number 43, and the heavy wooden doors at the bottom open into a long space with an arched roof. The stone has, for the most part, been left exposed, and the massive old wooden benches and tables add to the sturdy feeling. Old ceramic insulators hold the lighting wires from the walls and the seats, and the coat racks and bar stools all feature individual artistic blacksmith work. At the rear of the bar is a fireplace-grill, and while it’s in operation during the colder months, you’re quite likely to see (and smell) meals being grilled above it. A few bales of straw spread around the floor, and you wouldn’t be far from a beer-swilling, pig-roasting inn of the 16th century.

Pod Limpou is also a restaurant, and its kitchen stays open later than most places. Starters include strooooong garlic soup and traditional Slovakian halusky (potato gnocchi) with goat cheese. While not as good value as the Hanácká Hospoda, the meals are reasonably priced; fried cheese and chips or goulash with dumplings are around 90Kc/€3. Be aware that the price for fish is per 100grams, so if your fish weighs 150grams, you’ll be charged 50% more than the figure on the menu. A lot of places use this system, so it’s generally best to stay away from fish if you’re counting the pennies/crowns. The lady that runs the bar is lovely and speaks English very, very well, but the staff is continually changing, and you might have to either repeat your order or try to return something that you didn’t ask for.

During summer, Pod Limpou also runs an outdoor beer garden on the lower square, and it’s a great place to watch the sun go down over a few drinks. There’s an abbreviated food menu, but all drinks are available and they have live music a couple of nights each week (Wednesday and Thursday). The beer garden may close earlier than you’re expecting (10pm), because Olomouc is a city in which a lot of people still reside within the historic centre and the noise controls for outdoor pubs are strict.

The main beer on tap at Pod Limpou is Bernard. It’s a little more expensive than most beers, but a lot of people really love it and seek out places that stock it. Half a litre is 27Kc and a small glass is 18Kc. The music never strays far from rock’n'roll or blues, but it's thoughtfully chosen and appropriate to the slightly unrefined atmosphere. The bar attracts a wide range of patrons, and you can find yourself rubbing elbows with everybody from local students of philosophy to members of motorcycle gangs.

Metro Chill-out-club is a small, comfortable underground place with more sofas than a furniture store and a penchant for electronic music. If you miss the tall, narrow black banner with jagged fire-red stripes that hangs in the street, the bar is kind of hard to see. The entrance is set back from the footpath in a dark archway and the only clues are the illuminated Pilsner beer company sign and the green-and-orange zebra-striped door if it happens to be swinging open at the time.

Inside the zebra-striped door you’ll find a zebra-striped staircase, which turns three corners before it reaches the first of the three subterranean bar rooms. The first two rooms are long and narrow and served by the same bar. The larger back room is surrounded by low built-in couches and somewhat unfortunately has a large Foosball table plonked right in the centre of it. There are also a couple of little seating nooks and crannies that each seat two or three people at most. There are some clever artistic flourishes in the design of the bar, but they’re obviously from a few years ago and are starting to get grubby and look a little worn now. With a good, thorough clean-up and a stronger ventilation system, it would certainly rank among the best set-up bars in the city.

Metro’s relatively small capacity helps to give the place the slightly exclusive feel of a club. The staff is generally fairly pleasant, and even if they might have to come back to double-check your order, they’re likely to do it with a smile. The music is what you might expect from a “chill-out-club;” laid-back American groovy electro-jazz. During their busier times, they often have DJ’s playing several nights per week, usually Friday and Saturday and sometimes either Wednesday or Thursday as well. The patrons are usually fairly easy-going and casually dressed.

Metro is the kind of place that makes your clothes stink of cigarette smoke within about 60 seconds after entering. There are quite often people standing just outside the front door smoking, but the smoke there has a somewhat fustier aroma. The bar staff probably tends to smoke outside more than in, if their short-term memory loss is anything to go by.

The beer is Pilsner: 300ml bottles for 25Kc, 500ml bottles for 35. The same beer on tap is cheaper-300ml for 17Kc and the half-litre glasses are 25Kc. It’s supposed to be open until 7am, but I once walked past at about 9:30 one morning and saw a big group of disheveled but well-clothed 20-somethings who had fairly obviously been up partying all night staggering from there out onto the street.

Hard to find unless you know it’s there, but on a good night, it’s one of Olomouc’s best bars.

U Netopyra/At the Bat’s is a deceptively large bar just off the lower square on Lafayettova Ulice.

Only a very small part of the bar is visible from the street, but the best parts are the rooms towards the rear and the seating area in the backyard. By the front door is a row of puke-orange booths with tables and seating for about six people each. Past the booths is an archway that leads you off to a smaller side room with seating for about another 20 people, and a low wall that surrounds a circular collection of sofas that look fairly comfortable but are rarely unoccupied.

Behind the sofa nook is a small room with a couple of long tables surrounded by high bench seats. The walls are a more natural colour, and there’s an interesting collection of old junk. Apparently the back rooms were originally used as horse stables and there are saddles, harnesses, and working-horse memorabilia displayed on the walls and hanging from the ceiling beams. There’s also a stylish collection of old radios from the 1950s and some antique enamel advertising signs.

At the very rear of the bar are the toilets and the door to the courtyard beer garden. Even though U Netopyra doesn’t get as smoky as most bars, the freshest air is to be found outside and the natural wooden furniture, wood deck, and bright umbrellas could almost make you believe that you were somewhere by the seaside. Well, maybe after you’ve had a few of the half-litre glasses of Gambrinus 10*(19Kc) or the Pilsner 12*(24Kc), and if your imagination is a little on the active side.

They also serve pizza, and it seems to be pretty good value; the cheapest is the Margherita for 59Kc, and the most expensive is the house special, the Netopyr, with chilli, capsicum, garlic, bacon, and the local stinky cheese, tvaruzky, for 85Kc. I’ve only ever had one pizza there, and it was pretty good without being spectacular. They don’t offer a delivery service, but unlike most of their competition, they will provide you with a takeaway box for no charge.

For no apparent reason, the bar tends to not be especially popular with university students but attracts a late 20s/early 30s clientele who generally seem to be fairly good-natured. Perhaps the music is not loud enough for the students? I’ve never heard it obtrusively loud, and you certainly don’t have to shout to make yourself heard. The staff is friendly and professional, and at least some of them are capable of switching to fluent English without batting (what’s that saying about puns?) an eyelid.

U Netopyra is one of the better spots in town for a quiet night out with friends. They’re open from 10am to midnight from Monday to Friday, 11am to midnight on Saturday, and 11am to 10pm on Sunday.

You might expect the outdoor cinema nestled beneath the city walls beside Sv Vaclav cathedral to be a pleasant place to watch films under the stars, but it’s also a fairly lively place to listen to some music and have a few drinks with friends. Being outdoors, it’s only open in the warmer months of the year, approximately from the beginning of May until the end of September. Opening hours are subject to demand and weather conditions.

The entrance is on Pekární Street near the horseshoe-shaped building (Podkova). You can’t see the cinema screen and can just barely glimpse the beer garden from the street, but if you walk through the gates by the mini-golf course you’re in the right place. The huge outdoor beer garden has space for up to 1,000 people, and it’s often fairly busy. There’s no table service, so you’ll have to go up to one of the bars in the small wooden buildings backing up to the stone city walls. Most of the seating, the jukebox, and the open-fire grill are under the shelter of tarpaulins, so even changeable weather is not enough to disrupt the flow of beer and laughter.

The cinema itself is another matter. There’s no shelter and they insist on a minimum number of viewers before they will show a film. Fortunately, though, it doesn’t rain that often and the well-chosen films almost always attract enough of a crowd. There’s no assigned seating, and even if there was, most people would struggle to find the correct seat in the amphitheatre with a capacity of 4,000. Sometimes the films are new releases, Czech, or foreign (original language with Czech subtitles), and sometimes they are cult classics. The last films I saw there were Skrítek and Kill Bill 2, preceded the week before by Kill Bill. Entry to the films is around 70-80Kc, and they start as soon as it’s dark enough, which is about 9:30pm mid-summer.

The beer garden can get a bit rough at times. The cheapest beer in the centre attracts a wide range of characters, some of whom have been known to get a bit unruly (i.e. start fist fights) from time to time. The tough looking security guards and their pit-bulls look as though they can handle most problems, but they can’t be everywhere at once, so it’s probably a good place to mind your manners and make a special effort not to draw too much attention to yourself.

Ponorka is a raucous old-school favourite of Olomouc pub-goers. It’s an honest, unpretentious, old-fashioned Moravian pub, and therein lis its charm.

Its real name is Hospoda U Musea (Pub by the Museums), but everybody knows it as Ponorka (submarine) because of the round porthole in the front door and the submarine propeller suspended beneath the ceiling. The floorboards are bare, the heavy timber benches and tables are left uncovered, and it’s all surrounded by half-paneled wooden walls painted billiard-table green.

Just inside the door is a big square table with enough space for about a dozen people, and right behind that is the bar. If you decide to sit down the back, you’ll pass between the two long narrow tables in the middle of the pub. To the right is the small stage, which is the setting for occasional performances of live music by a haphazard collection of bands. Usually there’s no cover charge, but for more popular bands or special events there might be a small entry fee. To the left is another room of smaller tables.

All of the tables are lined with long bench seats, which support the old customs of sliding along to let one more person in and squashing up amongst strangers. Being selfish about personal space in a pub is a foreign idea in places like this. Its loyal crowd of regulars, near-iconic status, and proximity to the university mean that you’re unlikely to ever find a table to yourself. Which is fine with most people, because if you wanted to be by yourself, Ponorka is about the last place you would come.

The barmen here give you the impression they’ve been bred specifically to be barmen. The pub is always busy and they pull one beer after another and then another. There might be two workers behind the bar, or one might be around the front of the bar ready to lope off towards the back with three brimming jugs in each hand. It’s good to watch them work, and even at the end of the night their grace under the influence of monstrous portions of alcohol is remarkable. On your drinks ticket the barman/waiter will write your name, and if he doesn’t know it, he’ll write what he wants to call you. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, if he hears you speaking English and thinks you’re from Utah, you’re from Utah until you’ve paid for your drinks at the end of the night. If you look kind of athletic but calm, you’ll be "tai chi"; if you remind him of someone he knows, you’ll be "little Venca;" and if you’re otherwise uninspiring, you’ll be "three boys" or "blue shirt."

Ponorka is open from 10am until midnight 6 days a week and from noon until midnight on Sunday. The beer is Staropramen and goes for 18.5Kc/500ml glass, regardless of whether you choose the light, half/half, or dark beer. I don’t think they have small glasses.

The enigmatically named 9a is a great new bar that opened on Nábreží Premyslovcù in October of 2005. (Listed under Q, because if the number 9 could become a letter, that’s what it would be).

Entry from the street is down a short staircase to the main door, and once inside you’ll go down a few more stairs to be completely below ground level. Immediately on your right is the main bar with a row of stools and some standing space. In the next section there’s a long arrangement of benches, tables, and chairs along one wall, but the centerpiece of the room is the circular bar. It’s made of exposed brick and is topped with a pale-coloured wooden counter, above which only the gleaming Kelt and Velvet taps rise. From here, the narrow doorway takes you to the back room, in which there’s another long arrangement of benches and tables along the entire length of one wall. There are also a couple of freestanding tables and a high-tech table-football contraption (10kc for 10 balls).

Throughout the bar, most of the original brick and stone walls are stripped of their plaster, while the remaining walls and the ceilings are finished in a warm cream colour. With the dark wooden floorboards and blonde wood furniture, the wide uncluttered spaces still feel warm and comfortable. The tables don’t rock, and the angle of the bench backs is just right (that’s not so hard, you might say, but how many bars have you been to that can’t manage it? Or just can’t be bothered?).

If you’d turned left instead at the bottom of the entry stairs, you’d either be in the toilets or would have walked down a long corridor to find the true back room of the bar, where there is a... climbing room. As in rock climbing. Fully set up with hand and footholds across walls and ceilings and a thick layer of mats for those with finger strength more suited to beer glasses.

“I bet this all comes at a pretty price,” you say? Nope. Kelt is 25Kc, and Velvet 23. Staropramen 12 is 17 for a small glass and 21 for a large, while the Staropramen 10 is 13 for a small glass and 18 for a large (cheaper only at Vertigo and the Outdoor Cinema). If you’re not partaking of alcoholic beverages, or would like something to mix them with, a cup of tea is 15Kc, soft drinks are 21Kc, juices 22Kc, and Red Bull 50Kc.

The staff is friendly and efficient, and there’s not the slightest hint of any snootiness or cooler-than-thou-ness you might expect from a stylish new bar of this standard. The owner seems to be in his late 20s and takes great care to make sure everything is as it should be. He’s certainly done a good job setting up the bar and employing staff.

At the time of writing, 9a is The Best Bar in Olomouc.

Bar Rasputin is the Russian-themed bar beside the small tunnel through the historic water barracks building. It’s small and doesn’t get as rowdy as some of Olomouc’s bars, so it’s a good place to go if you’re with somebody you’d like to talk to as opposed to shout across the table at.

The water barracks is the long low brick building with a grassed roof that also houses Belmondo and the Irish bar. It was an important part of the baroque fortification of Olomouc and is now the one discernible nightlife zone in the city. There are five or six bars side by side here, so it’s not a bad place to start an evening out, because if you don’t like the atmosphere of one, you only have to move next door.

The Russian theme at Rasputin is evinced by the borscht and different varieties of vodka on the menu, the transparent window murals of St. Basil’s cathedral and Rasputin, and the framed orthodox religious prints. The internal walls are painted a deep, dark red, and the arched brick ceiling has been left unplastered. The furniture is a well-chosen mix of wooden tables and chairs and upholstered sofas and armchairs. Some of the high-backed armchairs are quite dramatic, the kind that you see turned to the wall in films from the '70s while the evil mastermind plots the demise of the film’s hero.

Rasputin also has a good outdoor seating area for the summer months. Alongside the walls of the old brewery on Mlynská Ulice, it’s not close to any residential buildings and therefore has permission to stay open later than many of the other outdoor beer gardens, which must close at 10pm to comply with noise restrictions. Sitting outside also makes it apparent how they can offer a range of pizzas and pastas, without having space for a kitchen. Every so often, you’ll see a barman leave Rasputin and trot two doors along to Captain Morgan’s. After a few moments, he’ll reappear with a couple of pizza boxes in his hands and scurry back towards Rasputin.

The pizzas are good and their prices comparable with what you might pay elsewhere in the centre. The prices range for 67-139Kc for topped pizzas, but the best value for money on the menu is the garlic bread for 29Kc. The garlic bread consists of a pizza base with at least five or six large cloves of garlic sliced up and baked on top. Delicious, but not for those who are averse to smelling like garlic for the next day or so. The borscht is also delicious and excellent value at 34Kc. The beer is Gambrinus (22kc/half-litre) and Pilsner (29.5Kc/half-litre).

Rasputin is open from 11am to 1am on weekdays and 3pm to 1am on weekends.

The Konvikt student club is a cavernous and curvaceous bar deep in the bowels of the original university building.

It’s pretty hard to find if you don’t know it’s there. Entry is through the main gates of the fine art campus. Then it’s through the passageway to the courtyard, left, and through the heavy glass and timber doors towards the restaurant. Past the restaurant, through another set of similar doors into a large foyer with a stage at one end, the entrance is down a set of stairs to your left. Phew! Luckily for non-Czech speakers, Student Club is Studentský Klub, so it should be fairly easy to ask directions if you wind up somewhere that you didn’t want to be (in a lecture?).

At the bottom of the stairs, the first thing you will see will be the bar. Greet the bar staff with dobrý veèer and continue on to the right, where the broad white line on the polished concrete floor leads you past the jukebox and into the main room of the bar. A long, narrow space with a curved roof, it has a row of tables a long each side and around the end. There’s probably space for 80 or 90 people to sit, and with the few tables out near the front bar and the standing space tucked away in the curved corridor off to the side, the overall capacity would be about 130 to 140 people.

When you’ve found a seat and looked through the drinks menu, you’ll find hat the student club is one of Olomouc’s least expensive places for a drink. The beer is Krušovice and the light Musketýr is 16Kè for a large glass, while the dark beer is 15Kè. Mulled wine is 27Kè, a black Russian will set you back 29Kè, and soft drinks are 15Kè. If you’re there early you might prefer a cup of Segafredo coffee for 14Kè (18with milk) and a toasted sandwich (from 27-40Kè).

The bar hasn’t really been decorated so much as designed. The floors are bare, the furniture functional, and the walls all white, with just a few sections picked out in red. That said, it’s quite a welcoming place. The furniture is comfortable enough and the jukebox has plenty of good music to choose from (if you get to it first). The other patrons are used to sharing their space with foreigners, and the staff is patient and friendly.

It’s open from 5pm to 1am Monday to Friday and tends to get busy earlier than most places, with students nipping in for a quick drink before they go home. Later in the night it can be quieter and there tend to be more non-students around.

It’s a good place to keep in mind if you’re interested in meeting local university students or stretching your budget to its limits. Or both.

The Moravian Theatre building is on the western side of the main square, near the Holy Trinity column and the Arion fountain. Upcoming performances are displayed outside in the glass-fronted cabinets, and the programs are available for free from the racks just inside the main entrance doors. The program is also available online.

Tickets can be pre-purchased from the box office on weekdays between 9am and 6pm. It’s usually also possible to get a ticket just before the show; it just may not be one of the better seats. There are four floors of seating for attendees, and even the cheapest seats in the very highest gallery give quite a good, clear view of the stage. If you’re tall, you might want to consider one of the more expensive seats, if only for the sake of extra legroom.

As soon as you enter on the night of a performance, you will notice that people dress very well to go to the theatre here. Women are in elegant dresses, and the vast majority of the men (even the young ones) are in suits and ties. Fear not, however, if your travel wardrobe doesn’t extend this far. I’ve met backpackers who have been in there in ripped jeans and grimy tops, and despite a few sideways glances in the beginning, once the other attendees realised they were really there to see the show and hadn’t just come in to use the toilets, they were treated very well, with people shuffling along to make sure they had the best seats possible. If you happen to be staying at the Poets Corner, there might be a jacket you could borrow from the clothes swap box, or you might be able to find something suitable for a few crowns at one of the many secondhand clothing stores.

Drama, opera, and ballet are all regularly performed at the theatre. The evening performances usually start at 7pm, and on weekends there are morning shows of fairy tales for children and afternoon showings of the regular program. The full program is available on the website of the theatre.

For intermission, there is a bar on the ground floor, off to one side of the opulent entrance hall. Also down in the hall are the coat checks, toilets, and displays about the different local companies that perform regularly in the theatre. The bell to signal the end of intermission is not obtrusively loud, so you may want to keep an eye out for the rest of the crowd moving towards their seats, especially if you have four flights of stairs to climb before you get to yours. There are large signs, only in Czech, above each of the entrances asking attendees to respect the starting time of performances and explaining that it’s not permitted to take photographs, operate a video camera, or have your mobile phone turned on while performances are in progress.

Tickets from 55-170Kc

The ">U-Klub is the university music venue on the right bank of the Morava River behind the law campus on Trida 17 Listopadu/17th November avenue.

The club is open 6 days a week, from 2pm until everyone is ready to go home, but it’s best to go when there’s a concert on, which is up to twice a week during the main season and not at all during summer, when the students are out. The law campus is the former communist party headquarters and all the buildings appear quite similar. The easiest way to find the U-Klub is to walk towards the river from Envelopa tram stop and then walk to the left along the bike path that hugs the river bank. The bike path is literally on the bank of the river, less than 5m from the water’s edge. Don’t make the mistake of following the closest bike path to the tram stop, because that takes you somewhere that you don’t want to go (Envelopa Nightclub). After 50m or so along the bike path, you’ll see the entrance lights of the U-Klub, and after another 100m you’ll be there.

After presenting or purchasing your concert ticket at the door, you’ll be able to check your coat in the cloakroom and enter the main hall. The hall has a stage across one end, the entrance to the bar room at the other, and space for about 1,000 people to stand up in between. The ceiling is quite low, and it can get stuffy with so many people, so the best spot is often across near the windows if it’s the time of the year that they might be open a little. Failing that, you’ll be able to get a stamp on your wrist that will allow you to go outside for some fresh air and get back in without paying for another ticket. The small bar room is usually as crowded as the main hall, mostly with people queuing up for a drink. At the U-Klub you need to pay for your drinks as you take them, and the bartenders will like you more if you have roughly the correct amount in coins. Half a litre of beer is 17Kc and half a litre of Kofola soft drink is 20Kc.

A wide range of performers have played at the U-Klub in the past. Everyone from the most highly regarded performers in the country (Iva Bittova, Czechomor) share the billing with local university bands, comedians and even puppeteers. Tickets are usually available at the last minute on the door, but for more certainty, it’s also possible to prepay them at tourist information on the main square or Indies music store at Denisova Ul. 6. Entrance to most concerts will be around the 150-200Kc range, although it could be as high as 300Kc (for Czechomor) or even free (for theatre performances in conjunction with the annual film festival).

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.

Wine is the lifeblood of Moravia. There are dozens of wine bars and wine cellars sprinkled across every Moravian city, and in any of them you’ll see a wide range of characters partaking of the nectar of the vines.

The grapes used for Moravian wines suit marginal regions without too much heat. Other marginal regions are Champagne, Alsace, and Germany, and the varieties used here can also be found in those regions. Because the types of grapes grown are very thin-skinned, the weather conditions really affect the quality of the wine, much more so than in sunny Australia and Mediterranean areas, so like in Champagne and Alsace, not every vintage in Moravia is going to be fantastic. Generally the warmer years are better and there is a description they sometimes put on Czech wines meaning late harvest, and those will generally be the better wines. Another word to look for is Spatlese, which means higher sugar at time of picking, which will mean more flavour and alcohol but not necessarily sweetness. Along with the Wachau in Austria, Moravia is one of the areas fastest growing in reputation.

You can buy good Moravian wine from a wine cellar (vinný sklep) and take it home, or out for a picnic, in a plastic bottle that you brought along yourself. It will cost you around 60Kc to have a typical 1.5-litre plastic water bottle filled direct from the barrel. That makes it about 20Kc per half-litre, which is approximately the same amount as a glass of beer in a pub. If you want to sit down for a glass or two of wine, you can also do this at any wine bar (vinoteka or vinárna) and all but the smallest of wine cellars. Try Svatovavrinecké for a strong drier red wine, Modrý Portugal for a medium dry, and Frankovka for the sweeter red wine. Muller Thurgau is a good white wine.

In Olomouc the best of the establishments devoted to wine is Vinoteka U Domu, just a cork’s throw from Sv Vaclav cathedral. Past the bulk-wine sales counter is the main bar area and the seating areas where the walls, arched doorways, and window recesses are decorated with all manners of wine paraphernalia. The staff is friendly and attentive and the wine list is extensive. Bottled wines are from 120-140Kè for white wines and 130-140 for reds. A glass of mulled wine is 28Kc, medovina (honey wine) is 35Kè, and wine punch is 36Kc. A large “celebration cheese plate” is 370Kc for a total of 1 kilogram of seven different types of cheese. They also serve quite good coffee for 20Kc and soft drinks for 27Kc.

More wine bars in the centre of Olomouc are at Horní Námestí 5 in the passage beside Beta bookstore, at Pekarská 15 by the Koruna tramstop, and on Havlíèkova across from the courthouse. There’s also quite a good one connected to the end of the Jazz-Club on Sokolská and owned by the same people.

Café Destiny is a stylish new café/bar that recently opened in the ground floor of the historic building U Zlaté Štiky, just off one corner of the main square. The building dates from the early 1700s, and Gustav Mahler lived here while he was bandmaster of the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra in 1883. Destiny is the kind of place that will appeal to people who like modern facilities and an exclusive atmosphere in a bar.

The first thing you will see inside the glass front doors is the brand-new, spotlessly clean, and brightly lit bar. Nice enough in a veneer and moulded perspex kind of way that reminds me of a place I saw in Sydney. Or was it across the square at Potrefena Husa? Only trouble with these veneer and perspex places is that they all look the same.

Pass through to the long, narrow area that would have been the entrance hall of the original building and Café Destiny starts to show some style. Clever custom-built wooden furniture, subdued upholstery, and the original stonework around the fireplace smoothly are complemented by some artistic blacksmith work. Very nice. G o up a few steps to the large back rooms, which have been sensitively renovated with a pleasant mix of exposed brick arches, stone, and woodwork, obviously not done by the person who chose the furniture. Unusual chairs and tables made of small pieces of wood, the rainbow-coloured curtains, and the light fittings from IKEA, while all okay independently, somehow make you want to turn around and go back to sit in the long narrow room you just walked through.

When you do sit down and look through the menu, you’ll see that Café Destiny is among the more expensive places in Olomouc. Coffees are around 30Kc and hot chocolate is 40, while Starobrno is on tap for 25Kè and bottled beers are 35Kè. There are pages and pages of cocktails divided into sections according to which spirit they contain. The cheapest ones are 75Kc, while the Long Island Iced Tea was the most expensive I could see at 125Kc.

The staff is a real lottery. The girl with the 1920s haircut who also works around the corner at the hot chocolate place always seems to be smiling and has a way of making patrons feel welcome, but the girl with the art mullet and the face like a ferret sucking on a lemon can be outright rude even before you’re fully through the front door. The guys behind the bar seem alright.

Open 8am to midnight Monday through Friday and 9:30 to midnight on Saturday and Sunday. Some people will really love Café Destiny, others will hate it, and if you’re like me, it will inspire in you enormous indifference. I’ve been there three or four times now and am in no rush to go back.

During the warmer months, the zahrádky (outdoor beer gardens) that take over Olomouc’s streets and squares are some of the better places to at least begin a night out. The season lasts from May until the end of September.

The zahrádka with the best location is the one run by café/restaurant Caesar, right on the main square, just a few metres from the astronomical clock. They’re open at lunchtime and continue serving meals and drinks well into the evening hours. The wait staff can be a bit snooty, but that’s as far as the similarity to the outdoor cafes on Prague’s main square goes. The food and drinks are the same price as indoors and there is no extra fee or charge to sit outdoors. Nor will you be turned away if you just wish to have a coffee or a beer.

On the main square there are three other zahrádky, one belonging to Café/Kavárna Opera, one belonging to the overpriced Moravská restaurace, and the one run by Kavárna Mahler (named after the composer Gustav Mahler, who lived just around the corner while he was bandmaster of the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra). For coffee during the day, Opera is best, but for nightlife, the Mahler beer garden at the other end of the square is better. It’s open later and the beers and wines are better priced. Just stick with the cold drinks unless you like your coffee scalded.

You’ll find another two zahrádky just off the square on Riegrova Ul., and the one in front of Varna nightclub is very popular with overdressed young ladies, burly shaved-head men, and taxi drivers. If you turn the corner at the end of Riegrova onto Tøída Svobody, there’s a good little zahrádka in front of the Trattoria. The Trattoria itself s a bit of a dive, but outside they have supremely comfortable cane armchairs with thick cushions and a wonderful location for people-watching in front of the busy Námìstí Hrdinù tram stop. If you cross the avenue up near the red church, there’s another good little zahrádka around the corner in front of Lucerna/The Lantern. At least one friend believes that Lucerna serves the best beer in town.

Another of the better gardens is the big one in the middle of the lower square run by Pod Limpou. They often have live music during the week and you’re within sight of the Marian plague column, the domes of St Michaels, and the Capuchin church. Also on the lower square is a smaller zahrádka belonging to one of the dodgy bars up Panská Ul, but like the bars themselves, the zahrádka is better avoided.

Potrefená Husa, Leguán, Rasputin, and the Outdoor Cinema all operate beer gardens in the season. The one at the outdoor cinema has some of the cheapest beer in town and is always lively but can be a bit rough in the way that cheapest-beer-in-town places can sometimes be.