The Czech Health Care System

We are taking a day trip to Kromeriz today. The Archbishop of Olomouc built a chateau there and we are going to tour it. Besides, Olomouc is not very big and we get to see another small Czech town this way. It is only about a 40 minute train ride including a short connection in Hulin. Our train gets to Hulin late and we boogie to the connecting train which seems to wait for the main line trains. It is an 8 minute ride from Hulin to Kromeriz. At Kromeriz, there are well visible signs pointing the way to the chateau and town center.

Chateau Secret Service

They confirm my directions and we arrive at the chateau in about 15 minutes. We find the ticket booth and get tickets for the Czech guided tour. No English tours here but they give you an English text guide for the tour. We will see how that works. We get a combo ticket that includes the picture gallery of the chateau for .85 cents more and have 50 minutes to see it before our tour starts.
The gallery has some interesting works dating from 1400 to 1800. I like the two fools painting by Hans Hoffman.

Apollo and Marsyas by Titian

There is also an Italian Titian painting about Apollo and Marsyas. Marsyas challenged Apollo to a musical contest and when he lost, Apollo had him skinned for his presumptuousness. The painting depicts this act. In the last room, I am taking a picture when the museum lady in the room, comes running over to ardently tell me that it is not allowed. There were no signs anywhere but she is really animated and agitated about it. At least that’s what her body language says, as I can’t understand a word of Czech she is saying. She acts as if this is the first time she has ever seen this and then runs to the phone in the room and starts yelling at someone. Since we were done anyway, we don’t wait around to see what form of torture is in store for us and walk out of the exhibit. We wait in the nice courtyard about 10 minutes for our tour. No one comes to arrest us.
The English descriptions we get are very good. While our guide talks in Czech, we have plenty of time to read and look at the described items. The first room is a game room with mounts reminiscent of Franz Ferdinand’s room in Konopiste. The only difference is that the heads in this room are not real. Just the horns with name and dates of the shooters. The Archbishops friends must have kept the real heads. The many rooms are beautiful with several Czech crystal chandeliers. Then we go into the main hall.

The Main Hall

The chateau became more important when in 1848, the Austrian parliament drafted the first Austrian constitution here. The room itself is magnificent. From the hall we go upstairs to see the Archbishops apartments and end up in the very ornate library. There are two old globes here,one of the earth and one of the the constellations in the night sky. We enjoyed this tour very much.
We leave the chateau and decide to look for some take out food to eat in the chateau gardens. Along the way we see several churches and check them out. Then we walk around the town, central square, and several small side streets before we settle on Kebabs to go. In the chateau gardens, we pass some bird cages, and a small zoo of sorts, before finding a nice shady park bench to eat on.
When we finish eating, we walk around look at the birds, a few monkeys, guinea pigs, reindeer, and peacocks.

Wine Drinking Monkey

Then we head back to the train station where we catch a waiting train back to Hulin. At Hulin, it looks like the next train to Olomouc leaves in 10 minutes , but when it arrives , it has Leo express written on it. I ask the conductor guy if our ticket is good and he says no, different company. So we have to wait another 25 minutes. I knew the connection and timing was too good to be true.
Arriving back in Olomouc, we relax in the apartment. This doesn’t last long, as Carol was counting out pills, and something is not adding up. She gets a worried look and starts looking through all of her stuff. I give her a calendar to add up our remaining days and she is 17 days short on her levithyroxine which is one of her more important medications. It helps to regulate her metabolism and other functions that her missing thyroid used to do. This is not a good situation. We start weighing our options and how we are going to deal with this while she is getting more upset. It is 5 P.M. and tomorrow we head for Poland. I suggest that we go to a pharmacy and see what they say. Neither of us is optimistic that this is going to get us anywhere but we go out anyway.
Heading towards the train station, we see a pharmacy and go inside. We ask if the lady speaks English and get a no in response but she is able to get a colleague who speaks some English. We show her the pill bottle and say we are 17 days short and This is a very important med for Carol. She goes I the back and comes back with a box of pills. It says levithyroxine in English under the Czech. The pill size is the same and we notice it is made by Merck. She writes down 118 CZK I and I ask her how many pills are in the box. She says 100, is this good? Heck yea, we buy 100 pills with no prescription for the equivalent of 5 dollars. We pay 30 dollars for a three month prescription back home that has to get approved every 6 months by the insurance companies. We thank the nice lady profusely and leave the pharmacy, two very happy people. We now love the Czech Republic even more as this could have been a very big problem and it was easily solved.
We head out to dinner a short while later to celebrate our luck. We go to two places that we had thought about trying and they both turn out to be closed today.

Very Happy Carol

This leads us back to where we ate last night only we get to sit outside this time. We toast a hearty ” na zdravi”, thankful for our good fortune with our crisis. It is a beautiful night sitting on the square and we are both in a good mood. We have just had our last meal in The Czech Republic and have had a great time here. Tomorrow, I get to learn hello, cheers, and thank you in a new language. Time to practice in my sleep.
Expenses
Train to Kromeriz 233 CZK
Archbishops Chateau. 320 CZK
Kebab Lunch 116 CZK
Pharmacy Bill 118 CZK
Dinner at U 470 CZK
Walked 11.4 Miles