Living in Bratislava (Part 1)

We've been here more than a month now, and that makes us instant experts, right? Well, maybe not, but we're getting more and more comfortable, and we do know where St. Michael's Gate is. Perhaps that's because we're in the midst of Indian Summer right now, with highs in the 70s and lows around 50f. That's much better than the weather as we first began our commute to the school, when the temperature seldom got much above 60f.

So what's life like here? We've shown you some things, like chocolate at the "Old Square," folk art festivals, and so forth, and Paula's put some pictures of our apartment on Facebook. But here are a few other visions of Bratislava.

First, public transportation gets us wherever we want to go. What you see here is a tram, which runs on rails and is powered by electricity. The trams were shut down in our neighborhood when we first arrived because of work on the tunnel which carries them underneath the castle. Now, however, the work is done and we jumped for joy when we heard them running again, the very day that school started, September 2. Our excitement diminished a little when we heard the squealing sound they make when they round corners. Generally we ride buses. This is the Number 80 at the Zochova stop, where we catch it in the morning destined for the other side of the Danube, where the school is now. This morning the red sun was just coming up as we crossed the river, and the harvest moon was just setting. There is also a third type of transportation, the trolley bus, which runs on tires like a bus but gets its energy from electric wires. So take the picture of the tram, cross it with the bus, and you have the trolley bus. No underground here as in Vienna, where the U bahn gets you around quickly--if you happen to be where it runs and want to go where it goes.

We've posted pictures of Ikea, and shopping for food is just as plentiful as you could want. There are some things that we've hunted in vain for, but that may be because we've just not looked in the right place. Not every store has every thing, and one of the challenges will be to find where foodstuffs are located that we want. We've not taken pictures of the huge malls, the ubiquitous McDonald's, KFC, or Burger King. On introduction day, Paula let her classes play "twenty questions" with her--yes/no answers only. One question was, "do you like McDonald's?" Her students, jaded as they are, urged us to go to Prague for our Fall break. "The shopping is better. There are the same stores, but better selection."

We're pretty sure that the best Slovak cooking happens at home. Oh, Bratislava has a plenitude of great restaurants, but when Slovaks want to eat out, they choose Vietnamese or Chinese or Italian--yep, you guessed it, pizza. We had some delicious pizza in a local place called "Pilgrim's" and brought our leftovers home in this box. We've been mostly eating at home, partly because cooking is therapy for Paula (so Jim believes), and partly because it's just too darn much hassle to go out. One of the other American teachers, Sue, wants to go to the Moroccan restaurant, and she'll convince us one of these days.

Tomorrow we go to the school director's house for a cookout, so that will take care of Saturday. There is also a new wine festival in her town (a Bratislava suburb), but we found out when we went to another of these festivals a couple of weeks ago that new wine is nothing to be sneezed at; it tastes like a wine cooler but with more alcohol than it will have when its aged. Phew! We won't drink before we go to the boss's house.


The familiar mixes with the unfamiliar. For example, pictured is a "lokse" stand. Lokse is, you guessed it, familiar to those of you with some Scandinavian heritage, a big potato flat bread, lefse. Paula took a picture of the ladies making them. The unfamiliar comes when they put goose fat and grilled onions on it. Uff da. But there are some wonderful traditional specialties as well, including wheels of bread that garlic butter is poured on--yum! Eat your heart out, Papa John! And fresh potato chips, cooked in oil and put up in little cones. Aaah.

Slovakia is a very traditional Roman Catholic country. Church bells ring out at regular hours like calls to prayer in Fez and Istanbul. Like Fez and Istanbul, Slovakia is a very secular country. Bells ring, and a few folks (but only a few) respond to them and go to mass. We observed a holiday on 15 September, Our Lady of Sorrows, Slovakia's patron saint, so it was a national observance. For most folks (including us, admittedly) it was a day to shop. Big stores all gladly took your money, holiday or no.

We'll tell you more about where we live in Bratislava, and more about the city, in future posts. Here's a teaser. Is this a live tourist? Performance art? A tabloid photographer? Nope, it's one of several whimsical statues in downtown Bratislava. More of that, and of those, later. Now it's bedtime!

The First Week, Coronations, History, and Skype

All of the American teachers, at least by their own accounts, survived the first week well. Paula found her 4the level classes a bit--well--sophomoric? There's a vocabulary word for you, students! Her 5th level folks are more mature, more focused, as well they should be, since they'll be taking the maturita, the big test, at the end of this year. How they perform on that test will determine their futures. Some will go to universities all over the European Union and the world, some will go directly into professional schools, and others may opt to take some time off before going, well, wherever they're going.

We were surprised by the "direct to professional schools" option. That means medical school, dentistry, law, the seminary, whatever. As one father admitted, some of them really haven't matured enough to make an informed decision, and don't succeed very well. Some will go to school for a year or two, and then drop out. Some come back to it, some go on to other things.

A weekend (or in Slovak, vikend) ago was the Coronation Festival. For nearly 200 years Bratislava (then known as Pressburg to the Austrians and Poshony to the Hungarians, served as the Coronation site for the Hapsburg emperors of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Maria Theresa was crowned here, for example. The Slovaks celebrate that part of the past with a parade, a coronation reinactment, and lots of partying. We walked up to the castle, which is just above us, to catch the Sunday version of the parade. The drums were loud, the jester energetic, and much of the crowd followed the "king" and "queen" down the hill for the reinactment. We stayed around the castle, however, since we had not been there before.


Of particular interest to me is the statue of Svatopluk, a leader of some renown in the Ninth Century, about the time of the Great Moravian Empire in this area. The statue is very controversial in Slovakia. First, there's argument about what he looked like; the sculptor made him very modern-looking. Then, the sculptor put an insignia on his shield that looks rather like a swastika. Third, the inscription on the statue talks about his concept of a Slovak people, when those ideas didn't come for another couple of centuries. Historians are upset and say the statue should be moved somewhere else with a new inscription. However, it was sponsored and unveiled by Smer, the political party which just got voted out of office. They led the election with nearly 35%, but in the end were not able to form a coalition. Moving the statue would be "un-Slovak," they say, and you should hear that as if it were "un-American." What will the current government do, especially with Smer rising in the polls? Stay tuned. It will be interesting to see what happens; history, and statuary, as political footballs.

We're fans of Skype! Not only does it help us keep in touch with our children and friends, but it allows us to show what our lives are like here. We appreciate the two-way communication; better (and cheaper) than telephone calls. Next time we'll go where the laptop can't, like outside. Meanwhile, keep y'all's powder dry (is that an idiom?).

School Begins

School at the Evanjelicke Lyceum began on Thursday, September 2, with a worship service at the Big Church. Now, that stands some explanation, but only a little. When the Hapsburgs allowed the Protestants to build churches again (actually, that stands some explanation as well, but you'll have to look it up yourself), the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (the Lutherans) built a big church and a little church. The Little Church is used for the English, German, and Hungarian services, and the big one for Slovak. Anyway, faculty, students, and parents, including the primary and secondary, gathered for a worship service in Slovak. One of the hymns was the Slovak version of "Tryggere den ingen vare," or "Children of the Heavenly Father," which (of course) is a Norwegian hymn. Or maybe Swedish, depending on your point of view.

Then the students all went off to meet with their class teachers, who shepherd them through all of their years in the Lyceum. On Friday, the English teachers (but not the librarian) had to proctor a placement exam for English and German. Many students had no German at all, and stared at their tests. Classes met for the first time on Monday.

So what do we do? We walk out of the apartment to the bus stop. Then we take the number 80 bus to the second stop and walk to the school. When we get there we go in, go up to the second floor, and sign in. Paula's office is right there (the "English Office" or the "Fifth Year Office"), but the English Library is on the other side of the building where, incidentally, most of the English language classes are taught. I have been trying to parallel the hours for the library with Paula's hours for teaching which, although she has the same students each day, vary from day to day as the schedulers fit in math, sciences, informatics (computers), and so forth. To us it is no wonder that, at the end of the first week of school, there is yet no permanent schedule of classes.

According to Paula, classes went very well for the first two days. We will write more about that in future entries. Jim is learning his way around the library, still unconvinced about the Dewey Decimal System and beginning the process of shelf reading. Without question, the students are very smart. They wouldn't be in this school if they were not. Some of them are more mature and ambitious than others, but that holds true around the world, we suspect. Certainly it holds true in the US of A. More on students, and our continuing social life, in future posts.

Getting to Know Bratislava, and Getting Ready for School

Although students showed up at the school yesterday, September 2, we will start earlier. Yes, we took a trip to Ikea to get some "essentials". Pastor Arden Haug took the Fredells (the other couple) and us after church, bless his heart, and had to make two trips to get us back to the apartment

We've also been downtown a lot, which is not saying a lot since it's only a kilometer or two from where we live. To the right is the square around the Primate's Palace, which was built to house the head of the church when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was essentially run from Bratislava. Several clubs from around Bratislava made lace in the square the next Sunday; it was very expensive. Don't expect lace for Christmas!
Walk down from the Primate's Palace and you arrive at the Old Town's main square. There you can get a wonderful cup (bowl?) of hot chocolate. We were there because we were going to the craft fair, which we had found the day before, after venturing through Aupark, a megamall not too far away. Artisans come from the three cen-tral regions of Slovakia (west, central, east) to demonstrate and sell wood carvings, metal work, ceramics, cookies (yum) and preserves, traditional music and dancing, and a bunch of other stuff.

Yes, we are here to work, and we have been! We've been squired around to the Foreign Police to begin the process of getting our resident visas, to the clinic to make sure we haven't brought any noxious foreign diseases into the country, and to the bank to open up an account into which Paula's salary will be deposited. Jim's been learning his way around the library which, while small, has many resources. Paula has been figuring out what she'll teach 4th years about British literature, and 5th years about Latin American literature. We're glad for predecessors, but we have to learn our own way around, too. Paula especially has worked hard, and will continue to develop lesson plans as the year rolls by. Next time we'll blog about (we've been itching to use that term) our (unintended) second trip to Vienna, and the opening of school.