Life in Bratislava, Part 1

Bratislava, Monday 14 September 2015

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own personal opinions, not those of the Fulbright Commission or the U.S. Department of State.

I must apologize for last Friday's post. No pictures, not very lively descriptions of anything, and really nothing much to describe. I'll try to do better today and going forward!

This will be the first of many posts that will try to describe interesting details about living in Bratislava and Slovakia. Be warned that it is more of a random collection of observations than a coherent narrative.

Our landlord's music

While chatting with our landlady, she mentioned that all of her family was involved in the arts. It turns out (after a little research) that her husband Ján Lehotský was a genuine Slovak "rock star" of the late 20th century. He was the leader of a band called Modus, which (judging by our small sample) seems to be well known to every Slovak. You can see some of his work on YouTube, for example, here. It's a soft rock style that is quite pleasant.

Their son Juraj, whom we met when he made an unsuccessful attempt to get our satellite TV working, is a film director who apparently does a lot of commercials and has done at least a couple of full-length films. Daughter Ela, who first showed us the apartment, is an actress on stage and screen.

A very talented family and, so far at least, very amiable landlords.

Quirks of the Slovak language

The last three days of last week we began our language instruction with a crash course provided by the Fulbright Commission. Some aspects of the grammar were familiar from other foreign languages: gendered nouns, multiple cases, formal and informal "you," etc. But there are a few things that were very different from any language either of us had experienced.

First, the easy part: The entire language is phonetically "perfect." Everything is pronounced exactly as it is spelled (or should I say spelled exactly as it is pronounced?). There are no silent letters or letters that can have multiple sounds (like the English "c" that can be soft, hard, or lots of other things). I'm not sure if this is correct, but it seems likely that this is because the current written language was not developed until the 1840s, so there has not been very much time for spoken forms to deviate from the more fixed written words. This means that once you get the idea that "c" is pronounced "ts" and č is pronounced "ch" and so on, you can reliably sound out any word that you see.

But there are a few things that are more difficult. There are no articles, so "a table" and "the table" are both just "stôl" (pronounced "stwol," like someone who can't pronounce "r" saying "stroll"). 

They also often leave out the subject pronoun, allowing the form of the verb to indicate whether it is "I," "you," "we," or "they" who is doing something. So while a literal translation of "I have a table" would be "je mám stôl," it is common to leave out the "je" and simply say "mám stôl" with the fact that it is "mám" rather than "máš" (for you) or "máme" (for we) to indicate that it is I who has the table.

And then there are the vowels, or the lack thereof. Ľudovít Štúr, who codified the language 170 years ago, was way ahead of his time. Americans didn't start having to "buy vowels" until the advent of Wheel of Fortune in 1975. But vowels must have been very expensive in Slovakia in the 1840s because Štúr seems to have avoided using them whenever possible! The word for "sun" is "slnko." That's not a typo, and it's pronounced just like it sounds. "Always" is "vždy," with the ž taking the "zh" sound. "Where" and "who" are, respectively, "kde" and "kto." "In" and "from" are even simpler: "v" and "z." Naturally, with no vowel sound to make a real syllable, these tiny words usually end up getting smushed together with the word that follows, making it a challenge to parse them aurally. But, when you think about it, why couldn't English spell "pull" as just "pl" and "skirt" as "skrt"?

We have found many online resources to help us with Slovak. Including one we found from Portland that provided the always useful "Moje vznášadlo je plné úhorov," (spoken) which translates to "My hovercraft is full of eels." I can't wait to find a way to use that! (The hilarious but now-truly-frightening Monty Python sketch from which this comes is here.)

It's fun to have a challenge. I'm catching on to the pronunciation quickly, but my vocabulary is still very, very primitive and some aspects of the grammar are way beyond me. 

Communism

I'm sure that I'll have a lot to say about Communism and its legacies in Slovakia over the next five months. As an economist, my thoughts about Communism and the transition to capitalist democracy are always first about economics: what our dear departed colleague Carl Stevens used to call "unscrambling the socialist egg." But from my early impressions, the people here think of the end of Communism as the beginning of freedom much more than a change in the method of resource allocation.

One of our new acquaintances related a story about her family when she was young in the 1980s. Her father had been something of a dissident: he once made a disparaging comment about the Communist Party that was overheard and reported. He desired to go to the university to become a geologist; the government instead sent him to work in the mines. His daughter, who was telling us the story, barely knew him growing up because he was away from home in Central Slovakia working long, back-breaking days as a miner.

She talked about the fact that Bratislava is close enough to the Austrian border that she could listen as a child to Western radio broadcasts, but only with the sound turned down low so that the neighbors could not hear through the walls lest she be turned in to the authorities. I was reminded immediately of the wonderful film The Lives of Others, but as revealing as that movie was, it's somehow much more vivid when the story is being told personally as the experience of someone you know. Slovaks have a great appreciation for the freedoms that many privileged Americans (including me) often take for granted. 

And they seem to retain a vivid antipathy for Russia. I asked her whether Slovaks typically have strong feelings of "pan-Slavism" toward other countries of the region; her response was that they were very close to the Czechs (except in international hockey competitions!) from their days as compatriots, and that they are EU partners, NATO allies, and good neighbors with the Croatians, Slovenes, Poles, etc., but that she did not think that there was much feeling of ethnic kinship, particularly not toward Russia.

Immigration crisis

Of course, the big news from this part of the world (or perhaps from the world in general) is the crisis of migrants entering the E.U. through Hungary. Even though we are only a few miles from the Hungary and Austria borders, there is simply nothing happening here that we can see. We get our news of the crisis from the New York Times, just like you do. 

Borders in Schengen-land are really the equivalent of borders between states in the U.S. There is a sign with the E.U. flag saying the name of the country you are entering, but no border-control stations or personnel on the border at all. It's hard to imagine logistically how they would re-impose restrictions without massive investment in personnel and massive delays in crossing. It would be a bit like trying to suddenly close off all of the crossings between Oregon and Idaho. Not totally impossible, but a nightmare for the governments and travelers.

Tomorrow is yet another national holiday in Slovakia---The Day of the Virgin Mary of the Seven Sorrows, but of course you probably already knew that---and we had planned to visit some restored Roman ruins just across the Austrian border. It might be better to postpone that one and confine our travels within Slovakia until we see how this all shakes out.

I'll post a first-hand account when and if this situation affects our lives. Until then, read the Times like I am!

Cinnamon rolls and other Kitchen Stories

(Note: If you don't understand the reference, follow the link and then download it from Netflix immediately!)

On Sunday/Monday, we made our first batch of cinnamon rolls in Slovakia. Lois had told the Slovak Fulbright director Nora in an email about my cinnamon rolls, and she remembered! Nora mentioned it to me as we were heading to the notary on Thursday, so Suzanne and I decided we needed to make some to take to our meeting with Nora on Monday morning. 

It was a challenge, but ultimately a success. Shopping was, once again, difficult. It's easy to translate "powdered" and "sugar," but do the Slovaks call powdered sugar by these two words? (Yes.) And where do they hide the yeast in grocery stores? And which of the several kinds of flour in the store corresponds to "all-purpose flour" in the U.S.? We probably spent an hour at Tesco assembling ingredients for this (and other recipes). 

We have no electric mixer, so it was a whisk-and-elbow-grease effort to get the dough together, and likewise for the frosting. We have no rolling pin, so these cinnamon rolls were rolled out with an empty wine bottle! They tasted a little different, but we brought along a supply of Penzeys' Vietnamese cinnamon so at least the main ingredient was the same. I would rate them at 90% as good as the ones from home. 

Meanwhile, Suzanne has been making wonderful meals, just like at home. The buffalo cheese from Quattro Portoni seems to give a special and excellent new flavor to old recipes. She made a pasta with their buffalo mozzarella over the weekend that was výborný bordering on perfektný! And the gnocchi that she improvised (without her magical gnocchi tool from home, but with one of the buffalo cheeses) today was brilliant. Maybe I'll have to find a way to use buffalo cheese in the cinnamon rolls ...

Some random pictures

Over the course of the last few weeks, we have accumulated some photos that haven't made it into blog posts. So here are some pictures from our travels, mostly in Bratislava, but first one from Beaune: a statue of a man that should have been sub-titled "cut out the middle-man!"

Although the picture above is from France, Bratislava is famous for the amusing modern metal sculptures that adorn the central city. Among the most famous is a bronze statue of a man emerging from a manhole:

Another famous one is this one of a soldier in Napoleon's army who, while besieging (but never conquering) Bratislava is supposed to have fallen in love with a local woman, defected to the other side, and taken up making sparkling wine (his name was Hubert, the name of the best-known brand). An additional fun observation about this statue is that directly behind it, with his derriere protruding directly at it, is the French embassy.

This statue is of Ignac Lamar, a beloved local who was famous in the early 20th century for standing on this particular corner and complimenting young ladies on their pulchritude, handing them flowers, and tipping his hat.

Speaking of Napoleon, when he besieged the city in 1805 the local authorities offered to waive the taxes of anyone whose home was struck by a French cannonball. There are no actual recorded strikes, but quite a number of home-owners surreptitiously embedded cannonballs into their buildings, then claimed (unsuccessfully) to have suffered damage from the French. This particular one is in a narrow street and from the direction of French fire would have had to come up the street and make a 90-degree right turn to achieve this position!

A couple of interesting buildings we saw last week: First the narrowest house in Slovakia (though not in the world). It was fit in between two other buildings just inside St. Michael's gate. A kebob shop is on the ground floor with a two-story, 1.5-meter wide house above.

One the other side of the gate (which is at left in the above photo) is the executioner's house. At one time, Bratislava had the only executioner in the region, so he needed to identify his house so that anyone requiring his services could find him, hence the gruesome statue:

Another weird thing about Bratislava houses: They all have two numbers, as in the 346 and 2 on the house above. In the time of beloved Empress Maria Theresa, who had a special fondness for Bratislava, the houses were numbered chronologically. The first house in the city was #1, the second #2, etc. This was, of course, a nightmare for the postal service. So at some point they started a more logical numbering with consecutive numbers on each street, much like America. But the old numbers are still there, too. The executioner's house was the 346th address registered in the first district (the indistinct Roman I in red to the left of the 346 numeral), but is the first house on the even side of the street in modern times (so numbered 2).

Europe is known for its huge, ancient, and ornate churches and cathedrals. But one of the most interesting churches in Bratislava is the "blue church," built in the early 20th century.

That's all for now. We'll be celebrating The Day of the Virgin Mary of the Seven Sorrows tomorrow, then I need to get back to campus and finish up my reading lists. I'll try to post more at the end of the week, or whenever there is something newsy worth posting.