Living in Bratislava (Part 2)

We claim to be living in Slovakia, right? And this is baseball, right? All true. Two of our American teachers play in the Slovak league, and Jon told us that they'd be playing an American team a couple of Saturdays ago, so we went. It was the Slovak League All-Stars against an American fantasy league team made up of some Minnesota Twins fans and some Boston Red Sox fantasy campers, all, ahem, older gentlemen. Actually, though, a couple of them were former major leaguers. In the picture above, our American lead teacher is coaching third base. We sat behind some women who came with the team and one of them turned out (small world) to be from Le Mars, Iowa, where Paula went to college. Westmar has now gone out of business, so they spent part of the time catching up on what was happening to the former college. Le Mars is now best known for being the home of Blue Bunny Ice Cream. The Slovaks won, 10-3, but the Americans may have been jet-lagged and didn't use their best pitcher.

We've had two concerts by the Slovak Philharmonic, last Friday and yesterday. Last night's was excellent. They are playing in the National Theater while their own hall is being renovated. As you can see from the picture, the substitute hall is not shabby. Today we took a trip to Trencin, a small city about 120km from here. It is famous for its castle; they closed the main section for renovation, but we walked around the grounds and the old city. A Roman inscription dated CE 179 indicates that this area formed the Northeastern-most boundary of the Roman Empire. As you can see. the castle has an ecologically friendly lawn mower; we even found the place where the lawn mower is kept.

The sun kept us company all day; it was about 56 or so by noon, and we had lunch outside on Ludovit Stur Square. If you don't know who he is, Google him! Then we walked around the city some more and visited the restored Early 20th Century synagogue; it had been desecrated at the beginning of World War II. While the city has provided a small worship room, there was little or no Jewish population left in Trencin after the war. The city now uses the space as an art gallery.


In brief, while we like Bratislava rather a lot, several nearby places recommend themselves as well. And last, lest you believe Bratislava has a corner on humorous statuary, we offer this Dickensian person climbing out of a well on the square where we ate lunch. If this leaves you wanting more, Paula promises to put additional pictures on Facebook soon, and we'll be back with new facets of the adventure in a couple of weeks or so. Ciao!