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!