Living in Bratislava (Part 3)

A couple of entries ago the first part of this "Living in..." series ended with a photo of the back end of a paparazzo, or what might have been one, or a performance artist, or something. We asked you to guess. Well, here's the front end, and it is indeed a sculpture! Do you feel shot?

If the temperature soars to 60 degrees in your area on October 24, do you think about shorts and a t-shirt? Well, Fahrenheit thermometers did get to about 60 today, and that led to an excursion (with the photographer properly attired in a jacket) to get some more photos of some of the outdoor art, mostly in the historical center of town amid the museums, shops, and restaurants. Of course, the restaurateurs in Bratislava prepare for the cool weather. Some restaurants roll up the sidewalk tables and chairs, while others just put blankets out on the chairs. Even 60 degrees, though did not tempt people to sit outside at the Irish pub. Some of outdoorsmanship has to do with the ordnance limiting smoking in restaurants. One pizza place we patronized has about three tables in the non-smoking section, but the pizza was good and we think their business consists mostly of carry-out.

But enough about food--on to art. Bratislava's fame comes in part from the sense of humor shown in the public sculpture. You can see pictures in guide books and on line. But only here on this blog can you see some of the rest of the story. You may have seen the Napoleonic soldier, but can you imagine what tourists do to him? Some sit right down without even asking permission. Others, like the guy in our photo, lean on him or cozy up. Or how about Schone Naci? He stays happy and tips his hat to the ladies even when tourists (or locals) are rude. Cumil, even if he acts like a letch by popping up from his manhole to look up ladies' dresses, still attracts performance artists (who are none too good if you ask me, even if the tourists tip them).

Bratislava has its fair share of serious outdoor art as well. For example, the Holocaust Memorial is right by the cathedral, as well it should be. It may be worth mentioning that the only active synagogue in Slovakia is right across the busy street from the cathedral, and both are connected by an underpass and an overpass. On the memorial, in Slovak and Hebrew, is the word for "remember." Tour guides take their charges to see it before they go into the cathedral. Most of those serious sculptures and monuments, however, will have to be a topic for another post.

Next week, Fall Break begins after a church service at about noon. We intend to take the train to Prague on Friday morning and prowl around, and that, likely, will be the subject of yet another entry.

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!

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.

Here, and Oriented (Sort of)

We arrived in Bratislava, received our orientation classes, and are ready to begin life in Slovakia as faculty members of the Evanjelike Lyceum, right? Well--maybe, but more on that later. First, the process. We flew from Dulles to Vienna through Zurich on 11-12 August with few mishaps. One suitcase got delayed from Zurich to Vienna, but considering the amount of stuff we brought, that was no big deal. We opted for Vienna beginning Thursday to reset our body clocks and recover from our "farewell tour," but first we schlepped our luggage from the Vienna airport to our hotel, the Prinz Eugen, chosen because it stands relatively close to the Sudbahnhof, where all trains bound for Bratislava depart. The absence of one suitcase did not bother us then, you can believe. This pictures Prince Eugene's palace, the Belvedere, not our hotel, although they are not far apart. Eugene displayed buck teeth and great military genius, and when the Turks are at the door people ignore your less comely aspects and pay you lots of money to lead the army. That's what the Hapsburgs did and that's why he had the money to build his palace. But he never married. Go figure.

We walked around Vienna a lot and rode the U-Bahn, the underground. We also saw many churches, heard many organs, and ate very well. Monday the 16th did come, however, and we strapped on and rolled our bags the half kilometer or so to the train station. We found out that a train for Bratislava-Petrzalka left a little after noon, so rather than waiting for the 1:10 we hopped aboard. This disconcerted Peter, who was supposed to meet us, because we waited in the station rather than arriving on the 2:05.

Then we received our first surprise--rather than having an apartment in Petrzalka, the part of Bratislava where the school is located, Peter took us to our new home in downtown Bratislava.
This is the view from our place. In previous lives the apartment had two bedrooms, although Phil and Sue, who had the apartment before us, turned one into a giant living room. So, once we get it set up, folks can come to visit us and still have a bedroom--we'll just eat in there later! Many hotel options exist nearby, however, since we are downtown.

Orientation began with a "get acquainted" dinner that night. Claudia Nelson came by to get us. She interviewed us back in the spring, and was set to teach the teachers. She had first stopped two floors below to gather in Bill and Kathy, the other couple, and then we went on to the headquarters of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran church in Slovakia. Apartments there house the six singles. Eight of the ten of us are new this year. We learned how to take the bus to the seminary, where we had dinner.

Tuesday morning we took the bus on our own up to the seminary for breakfast. After breakfast Pastor Arden Haug, European Mission Director for the ELCA and pastor of the International Church here, led devotions, and Claudia started teaching about teaching English language learners. We also had Slovak language lessons and went off to get our bus passes and register with the Foreign Police. On Friday night we had a "talent-no-talent" show. Finally, this morning, we were commissioned to this work by Pastor Haug and Bishop Klatik of the Slovak church.

So what did we learn during orientation? First, Slovak is a very difficult language. Second, good teachers of English as a target language are very gifted people. Third, those who come to serve the school from the ELCA, and those who are already here are also very gifted. Will we succeed? While we know there are difficult times ahead, especially in the first couple of months, We are committed (and called, and commissioned) to try. Keep in touch!