Things that are different here

Bratislava, Wednesday 30 September

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

Update on deportation: Before I get into the main part of this post, I want to thank all of the readers who have commiserated with us on the documentation issues. Biggest thanks to the kind folks at the Wadena County Clerk of Court office, the Minnesota Secretary of State office, and most of all to my wonderful brother Steve and his wife Lois, who picked up the marriage documents in St. Paul and shipped them off to us via DHL. They arrived today and will be translated by tomorrow, so by the end of Thursday we will have everything we need to apply for our residency permit. The agency that is handling this part will arrange for us to visit the Foreign Police (doesn't that sound like fun?) on Monday to submit all of the paperwork. Tuesday would have been better for us because we have a Slovak language class that begins on Monday, but (of course) the Foreign Police do not accept new applications on Tuesdays.


Any time that you move to a new place, you notice things that are different from what your accustomed to at home. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. We've noticed a lot of these, which is to be expected given that Slovakia is a really long way from Portland by any metric. So this post is just a list of some of the things that have reminded us that we're a long way from home.

• The elevators at EUBA. The first time I rode up to my 5th floor office in the elevator, I really doubted that we would make it. Then when I rode down from the 5th floor in the elevator, I really thought we might get there prematurely via gravitational forces. Every time I've ridden in the elevator, it rattles, jiggles, shakes, and then eventually deposits me right where it is supposed to. I'm taking the stairs most of the time now. Ten flights of stairs. Every day. Up and down at least once. Keep telling me it's good for my waistline and my leg muscles.

• Toilet paper at EUBA. The bathrooms on the floor where the economics department is located are very nice and quite clean. There are two stalls in the men's room with full doors ... and there is one toilet paper dispenser ... located outside of the stalls near the (one and only) sink. So you take your toilet paper with you when you go into the stall. No tragedies yet, but I can't help thinking that this system presumes a degree of forecast accuracy that is far beyond the most optimistic reading of economists' track records.

• Lekáreň signs. In Slovakia, a pharmacy is a lekáreň and there are a lot of them. And as in every other country we've visited, pharmacies in Slovakia are signified by a big green-cross logo on their signs. That probably won't seem amusing to those of you from outside the Pacific Northwest, but in Oregon and Washington the green cross has become the universal sign for marijuana dispensaries (which sometimes also seem to be on every corner). It took us several weeks to stop thinking "Gee, there are a lot of marijuana shops over here."

• Graffiti. Graffiti are almost everywhere in Bratislava, and in most places no one bothers to clean them off of walls, buildings, signs, etc. Some of them are very artistic and border on being murals. (The one on the art school wall by our tram stop is nice. See below.) But most are just stupid scrawled tags, on top of other scrawled tags, on top of other scrawled tags, etc. The authorities do seem to keep the buildings pretty clean in the old city, but once you leave the tourist zones it's hard to find an unmarked surface. I wish I could think of graffiti as creative expression, but to my traditional eyes it's just vandalism.

• Pictures on packages. I expect different cultures to create different kinds of advertising that appeal to the particularities of their populations. But a few of the packages we've encountered in the last few weeks have seemed particularly strange. For example, will people really buy breakfast cereal with the promise that they might "win a cow"? 

• And why would the leading local soft-drink company (Kofola) think that putting a picture of fancy brown (women's?) underpants hanging from clothespins on their label would make me want to buy their soda? (Wait, don't answer that question...)

• And finally, it seems to be very fashionable here for men to walk around with about two days' growth of beard. (I'm not sure how one keeps the beard at the "scraggly" stage without it filling in or being shaved off, but that's a different point.) Really, could you imagine a father-son advertising duo with this look on a milk carton in the United States? (Mother and daughter are on the other side. Mom does not have a beard.)

• Travel ads on satellite TV. We have a fairly strange selection of television channels available via satellite. We get CNN, Sky News, Euronews, and a vast selection of Arabic, South Asian, and other channels. We found one (Pick) from Australia that has (among other things) an amusingly staged reality show featuring cases from the Australia customs service. (What will they find hidden in the packaging of these suspiciously heavy shirts? Will they let Giovanni into the country even though he looks like he might want to find a job?) But wherever we turn on our satellite channels, we run into advertisements for tourism to unlikely places. Macedonia is doing an advertising blitz on one channel, and we've seen multiple ads for Estonia, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and other places that would not be on my must-see list. They all look absolutely wonderful in the ads, of course, which is the point, I guess. So far, we haven't seen anything begging us to come to Syria or Afghanistan, though.

• Getting the timing right. The Internet is wonderful. It allows us to maintain a few of the familiarities of home, albeit at far different times of the day (and night). We can stream NPR through the OPB phone app and often end up listening to Morning Edition ... at dinner. I have been enjoying Twins games (especially when they are winning), but only the day games. Night games in Minnesota start at 2am here and I'm just not that much of a Twins fan. So I get to watch on Sunday evening here (afternoon there) and the occasional mid-week day game. On the other hand, I've become so used to watching English football at 7am in Portland that I am totally disconcerted by watching it in the afternoon, the time of day when the game is actually being played. Oh well, when I watch in the afternoon then when Villa lose (as they almost always do these days) it only ruins half my day, not the whole day! (Watching English football over the Internet from Slovakia was a bit of a challenge, but I've managed to figure out a way. I use the Reed proxy server to fool NBC into thinking that I'm in the U.S., then log in through our Comcast account to get access. Slick.)

• Transportation.  One of the things that's unquestionably good here is the availability of mass transit. Any of you who have taken Econ 314 from me might remember that I use transit as an example of strategic complementaries leading to multiple equilibria. For those who have not (or, perish the thought, for students who have forgotten), the idea is that if more other people ride the transit system, it makes it more attractive for me to ride. Here's how it works. If everyone uses mass transit, then there is a steady stream of revenue from full buses and trams, which allows for a large network of routes and frequent service. And with frequent service on a large network, everyone is encouraged to use mass transit, keeping the buses full and maintaining the stream of revenue. It's an equilibrium situation. But low-transit is also an equilibrium: if no one rides, then there are empty buses, little revenue, few bus lines, and infrequent service. And these conditions mean that no one will want to ride, so the low-transit system perpetuates itself. Bratislava (like most of Europe) is definitely at the high-ridership equilibrium, and I have few complaints about getting around the city by bus and tram. Once in a while there will be a delay or a missing bus, but even if one bus is missing the next one is only a few minutes behind. And so far, only one or two maniac drivers.

• Shoes ... and slippers. We have many friends at home who take off shoes at the door and tramp around the house in stocking-feet. They would be very comfortable in Slovakia, where that is the cultural expectation. But in Slovakia, each house has a rack inside the door filled with slippers for guests (and residents) to wear inside. We were a bit embarrassed when our landlady came in during our first week, immediately shed her shoes, and kind of looked around for slippers. She didn't say anything, but the next trip to Ikea we stocked up on 99-cent slippers for our guests. Suzanne sometimes uses a pair, but I like stocking-feet.

• Wine. Well, the wine is actually somewhat the same as at home, but it has taken a long time to start getting comfortable with the local production. There have been a few local cabernet sauvignon products that I have liked a lot. And there is a local bubbly called Hubert (allegedly founded by the Napoleonic soldier who defected a few blog-posts back) that is really good (and amazingly cheap). I've been buying a fair amount of French and Italian wines here but the quality has been uneven. I guess it's time to visit a real wine shop and stock up. In the meantime, our neighborhood of Karlova Ves had its annual "feast" last weekend and we spent an enjoyable Sunday taking in the festivities, eating some more trdelník and zemiakové pľacky (go back two posts to the last festival for details), and this time sampling some of the burčiak, which is the new vintage, just fermented but not aged or filtered. We tried the "white," (green?) but not the red. It looks a bit disgusting (kind of cloudy and green), but tastes OK, more like grape cider than wine, really.

Wine?

• Latitude. Portland is pretty far north. Wadena is a little farther north. But Bratislava is even farther north, about even with Bellingham, Washington, and north of Bemidji, Minnesota. It's hard to believe, given that Bratislava is well south of the most familiar parts of Europe (England, Germany, and most of France), but it really is that far north. (One of the dialog sentences I remember from our 1980 German class is "Europa ist weiter nördlich als Amerika!") And coupled with its position in the eastern part of the time zone, it is starting to get dark really early here, even though daylight time doesn't end for another month. One advantage is that it gave us a wonderful view of the rising "supermoon" a few nights ago well before my bedtime. Suzanne woke up to see the (partial) eclipse here, but I slept right through it. I can hope that maybe I'll still be alive in 2033 for the next supermoon eclipse.

Super-moon rising over Bratislava

So now I'm off to class. I still haven't told you about classes, but I'll have more to say about that tomorrow, after the second meeting of the evening class and the first session with the morning class. Check back on the weekend if you want to learn more.