Czechia's "Iron Heart" and a brown bear.

I am in the town of Ostrava - A random selection of a place to stay in Czechia (basically just point and pick a place on the map!). But first a story about a bear - Wojtek, the Soldier Bear Statue is a memorial to a brown bear that served in the Polish army during World War II. It was located just around the corner from where I was staying in Krakow. The story is almost a fairy tale. It begins with a group of Polish soldiers in 1943 who were released from the Soviet Gulags after the Nazis invaded the USSR. During this trip to freedom, the group stumbled across a lonely bear cub that they decided to adopt. Over the years the bear grew up into a fully fledged soldier. He could carry supplies, drank beer, and enjoyed cigarettes. He also enjoyed wrestling soldiers. The soldiers were very attached and they enlisted the bear into the army as a private, since the army forbade pets at the battlegrounds and it was the only way that Wojtek could come with them. After the war, Wojtek and his regiment moved to Scotland, where he lived until 1963. The bear was very popular in Scotland and there is even a statue of him there. However, back to Ostrava, which was once known as the “Czech Republic’s Iron Heart,” largely because of a huge industrial plant that opened in 1830. The plant housed an ironworks, a coal colliery, and six coke furnaces. It was the only one in Europe that processed iron from start to finish in one location, and it was able to do so simply because the site was so massive. The plant operated until 1998, when it shut down. Today you can walk amongst the blast furnaces and coal mine - kind of like a James Bond film set. It is one of the most amazing thing I have seen. Some of the sheds have been converted to art gallery's and climbing walls. Ostrava is very industrial (even the visitors brochure has the steel mill on the cover!) but that's what makes this place so fascinating.