Shopping Malls

There are several big shopping malls around Brno. The closest one from our house and thus to the city center is called Vaňkovka, and it is about 3 mins tram ride from the nearest station. It is also right next to TESCO (store equivalent to Target or Walmart), so if you want to do a serious shopping, you basically go to the area. Vaňkovka also contains a grocery store, pet store, book store that sells English books, bio stores which sells canned soup (believe me it is so hard to find canned soup here!), and a mid size food court, so I would go there for lunch and finish whatever the business I need to take care by just strolling up and down the mall.

Stores here sometimes don't provide you the bags to carry your shopped items. Typically people carry their ecobags, and in my case, I have been utilizing my old Yahoo backpack as my shopping bag (the size is just perfect!). I also stash a couple of extra bags just in case in there. One thing I haven't been able to do ever since I left the US is to exercise every day. But, certainly the shopping has been a great exercise for me, as you end up carrying 20-30 lbs of weight on your back and on both hands (sometimes) and walk 15-20 mins! Even if it is -5C outside, you come back basically sweating as if you ran for 20 mins.

Another mall that we started to go whenever we have a car is called Olympia.  It is about 15 mins drive south from the city center.  It is a HUGE mall with hundreds of different stores.  There are two big furniture stores called ASKO and KIKA that we also bought some of our furniture from.  We also made the big purchase of our first TV and DVD player at the store called Electro World (something like Best Buy) that is also located in the mall.   The mall also contains a grocery store called Albert, so it is very convenient.  The first time we went there, we didn't know what stores are located where, so we ended up walking around the mall for about 4 hrs straight.  I remember we were so exhausted with our heavy coat on ourselves that we could not even talk to each other.  Now we have been there several times, we became very efficient doing shopping in the mall.   And the best thing is that we now know who to talk to in English :)