Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own personal opinions, not those of the Fulbright Commission or the U.S. Department of State.
Greetings to all. Before I start into today's post, let me say that I am totally humbled by the fact that yesterday marked the 2,000th page-view for this blog. When I started doing this, I'd have been content with 20 and surprised with 200. But 2000? Wow! It's exciting to think that there are quite a number of people who seem to be following my posts quite regularly. I hope that I can continue to inform and amuse you sufficiently to keep you reading!
No news from the Foreign Police. I have two students in one of my classes from Thailand. They are remarkably diligent---always the first to submit assignments and ever punctual---so I was very surprised that they were not in class on Wednesday evening. They both arrived at our break, around 6:30pm, and the young man apologized profusely and explained that they had been at the Foreign Police since Tuesday night and had just now (Wednesday late afternoon) successfully submitted their application. Despite having spent most of 24 hours there (and presumably without sleep), he was in a far better frame of mind than I was after 3 hours in that place. There is much to be said for the resiliency of youth and for the patience of those who, unlike most Americans, are accustomed to such things being inconvenient.
Shopping in Austria
About the end of last week, Suzanne and I hit a wall. The novelty of Bratislava had worn off and we were ready for something new. So Saturday we went to the border town of Hainburg an der Donau in Austria to shop at an Austrian grocery store and shopping center. Hainburg is 10 miles from our apartment by road, but only about 6 as the crow would fly. Another American had said that he goes there to shop in preference to the Slovak markets, so we wanted to give it a try.
The store, Merkur Markt, is large but not huge, and it has a somewhat different selection of items than the stores---even the larger ones---in Slovakia. We found wine vinegar (which must exist in Slovakia but we haven't found it) and real Viennese "semmel," a flat, twisted hard roll that we remember fondly from our summer in Vienna decades ago. Suzanne also found index cards, which apparently do not exist in Slovakia, in a stationery store in the shopping center. She used them all up in one day making Slovak language flash cards, so now we'll have to go back!
This was the first time we had been out of Slovakia since arriving and we were slightly concerned about the border controls that many countries have instituted in this part of the world. But everything was smooth. There was no hint of any control going into Austria. Coming back into Slovakia there were two polícia cars at the border, but they paid no notice to us in spite of our auslander plates. We have been told that they only stop large vans and trucks that could be carrying human cargo. (But really, why would refugees leave Austria to come to Slovakia?)
Day trip in the Danube Valley
Having briefly touched the soil of another country on Saturday, we headed out again on Sunday, but downstream along the Danube instead of upstream. Other than a couple of trips into the wine country north of Bratislava, we have not explored the areas outside the city at all. Our Sunday journey took us on some very bumpy roads down the river valley through the town of Dunajska Streda, which literally means "Danube Wednesday." Apparently the town was named after its Wednesday market day, with the Danube appellation being added later to distinguish it from other Wednesday markets.
Not much to see in Dunajska Streda on a Sunday, so we continued on to Komárno, a larger city on the north side of the Danube just a short bridge away from Hungary. This part of Slovakia is has a majority of ethnic Hungarians and all of the road signs are in both Slovak and Hungarian. We drove into Komárno, parked the car near what the GPS said was the center of the city, and set out on foot.
The first people we encountered were two older men staggering up the street in front of us. One of them was leading/dragging/carrying the other one to his house up the street. After depositing the hopelessly inebriated man inside his door, the other turned and returned down the back street onto which we turned to a bar. Perhaps this scene would have taken us by surprise less had it not occurred at 11:00 on Sunday morning.
We wandered a few blocks in a dismal residential neighborhood wondering where the center of the city really was. Following the usually reliable rule that the old city is always near the river, we soon emerged into a lovely pedestrian-only district with the church, a couple of lovely plazas, and lots of (closed) shops. It turned out to be a nice little city; you just couldn't get to the nice parts in a car.
Having stretched our legs in Komárno, we headed north toward the town of Nové Zámky. Back in April, long before our departure, we had dinner with a Reed student named Emmie King who lived in Nové Zámky for a year as a high-school exchange student. Emmie was the only person we could find in Portland who knew the Slovak language and had significant experience in the country, and she gave us many valuable insider tips. We wanted to at least drive through Nové Zámky to see where she had been. The town actually reminded us a lot of mid-sized agricultural towns in the American Midwest, but with a few historic buildings and a few of the ubiquitous Soviet-era apartment blocks.
From Nové Zámky, we continued north to Nitra, a larger city with a long history as a center of Slovak culture. Nitra is a lovely city with a two universities (including the Slovak Agricultural University), sitting at the first Carpathian foothills adjacent to the flat-as-a-pancake Danube Valley. The cathedral, castle, and historical center lie on the side of the hill, with the modern city and the universities below. There is a large, paved square in the center with a beautiful modern theater building on one side. It was well past noon and we were hungry, so we walked down the (empty on Sunday) main street of the city looking for (vegetarian) food. Pizza is always a reliable veggie alternative, so we popped into a pizza place that seemed to be kind of open. There was one other occupied table in the restaurant, with an attractive young couple snuggled on the same side of a corner table. They looked like the stereotype of young lovers, but in the thirty minutes that we sat across from them in the restaurant, I don't think that they said 10 words to each other. Then they got up and left. These situations always make me wonder what's actually going on in the lives of people whom I casually see in public. If I were a writer, I might have created a short story around this scene...
The pizza was good and very quick. We ate up and headed back through the deserted streets to the car and back to Bratislava on the motorway.
If you are like me, you'll be looking at maps to try to follow where we went. I'll save you the trouble: you can see our route on the map below.
The haircut
Having lured you into reading this post with the promise of a haircut, I guess I have to deliver.
First of all: I love my Portland barber! We found her at Supercuts in 1988 (though she has since moved) and she has now been cutting my hair for 27 years. She even came to our house to cut the family's hair while she was on maternity leave from Supercuts. No one else has touched my hair with a clipper or scissors since 1988.
Needless to say, I was very nervous about getting my hair cut in Slovakia, and put it off until I was certifiably shaggy. Finally, this week, I just had to get it cut. I had asked a couple of Americans about barber shops where they might speak English, but had not received a lot of encouragement. One said that he had been to a couple, but that both the English and the haircut were disappointing. But he recommended Gentleman's World as the next one he planned to try.
I wasn't sure quite what to expect. In the United States, an enterprise named "Gentleman's World" would be more likely to feature lap dances than haircuts (or maybe both?). They had a phone number for reservations, but given my less-than-rudimentary Slovak a phone conversation seemed risky. The gestures that I have come to rely on to supplement my Slovak vocabulary don't work on the phone.
So I went into the city on Friday morning like a scared sheep headed for shearing. I arrived at 10am and found a pleasant-looking glass-front barber shop with 6 chairs, only one of which was active, on the ground floor of a large bank tower, sandwiched between a pharmacy (note the green cross!) and a bank branch.
There were two employees in the room, one giving a straight-razor shave to a customer and the other at the appointment desk in the back. Approaching the desk, my first words (as they so often are) were a desperate "Hovoríte po anglický?" ("Do you speak English?") The young man at the desk gave the universal, modest Slovak response, "Yes, a little." They could not cut my hair right away, so I made an appointment for 11:00 and joined Suzanne at a coffee shop across the street to wait for my time.
I returned just before 11:00 and sat in the waiting chairs for a few minutes. The person who was at the desk before was now cutting a new customer's hair and the first barber was also hard at work. Just after 11:00, another young man entered and plugged in his clippers at the chair between the other barbers. He was destined to cut my hair, and he spoke "a little" English.
I had the foresight to have Suzanne take pictures of my last Portland haircut from the front, side, and back, in case I had trouble communicating with my Bratislava barber. I told him that I had pictures and showed him what I wanted to look like. He seemed to think that he could accomplish this and started off buzzing and snipping while I sat nervously staring at my unfocused (without my glasses) image in the mirror. After about five minutes, I relaxed, figuring that whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and I really never have to look at my own hair anyway! I kept thinking about an old favorite cartoon, in which the barber has just finished with a customer and, pointing to a wall of hats, says "You're right, that is a terrible haircut. Do you want to buy a hat?"
It seemed like he took forever, going over and over the sides and back with his razor as my long, gray fleece accumulated on the floor. Then he took the scissors to the top. Finally, after about 25 minutes, he asked if this looked OK. I put on my glasses and got my first peek at my "new look." Mostly it was fine, although he left the top a little longer than usual and wanted to comb it back off my forehead rather than across. So I approved, thinking that I was finished. But no ... next came the wash, which I actually appreciated because I hate having the little hair clippings falling all over my neck and clothes for the rest of the day. After the wash was the scalp massage, which consisted of him pulling the skin up toward the top of my head from every direction. Then was the combing, blow-drying, treatment with hair tonic, and finally application of hair spray. I can confidently say that never has so much attention been given to my thick, gray mane.
The results? I'll let you judge for yourself. Here's the before (August) and after (October):
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| August |
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| October |
I can live with this, and after one more haircut in December I'll be back to Portland and can have it the old way!
Slovak Philharmonic
This week was the opening of the fall season of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra. Kind of at the last minute, we decided to see if we could get tickets for Friday night. The online ticket site has an English version and is very easy to navigate, with clear seat selection options. Five minutes and 26 euros (for two top-price tickets!) later I was printing out our tickets. The convenience of their ticket process (with no service charge) puts American ticket vendors to shame!
We got all dressed up and took our stand-by #6 tram into the city. We had been warned that European concert goers are more formal than in America, so I put on my black suit, a white shirt, and a conservative tie. Suzanne wore a long black dress with her black-and-white jacket over the top. We arrived (as we always do) 30 minutes before the 7pm concert at the Philharmonic's concert hall Reduta, next to the old national theater and around the corner from the U.S. Embassy. We were surprised that the concert began so early, as many things in other parts of Europe (like dinner) have been quite late in the evening.
As we walked by the Reduta concert hall last month, there was lots of construction work going on inside. The results are magnificent. Inside the building, a young lady glanced for an instant at our tickets and waved us up the stairs. (Surprisingly, this was the only ticket check.) The main staircase leading to the lobby is amazingly beautiful; Central European 19th century style at its best.
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| Reduta upper lobby |
There are two halls on opposite sides of the upper lobby, the larger one where the orchestra plays and a smaller one for chamber music. Finally, at 6:45, they sold us a program for 50 cents (so the concert actually cost 26.50€, still a tremendous bargain) and let us into the hall to find our seats. The hall is surprisingly small (seating just over 500 on the main floor, with a small balcony), but is every bit as beautiful as the lobby. It has large windows on the right wall as you face the stage, and three small boxes of seats on the left side.
Our seats were near the back, just under the balcony. The organ whose pipes you see behind the stage is brand new. You can just see the box containing the organ keyboard at the side of the stage under the front window in the picture above. We can't wait to go back and hear something with organ!
After hearing about the relative formality of European concert halls, we were surprised to see everything from suits to jeans, though more of the former than the latter. I guess it is the 21st century and no performing group is going to turn down ticket money from the shabby rabble.
Although the requisite "Turn off your cell phones" announcement was done in Slovak and English, the printed program was solely in Slovak. We battled our way through as much of the program as we could, relying on easily-translated Slovak phrases such as postbeethovenovským symfonickým komplexom and mendelssohnovskou atmosférou to guide the way. Unlike American symphony concerts, the stage was empty when we entered the hall. The orchestra filed in as the lights went down, taking their seats and tuning before the conductor's entrance.
The evening began with the premier of a work called Stimmung by local composer Anton Steinecker. It was one of those insufferable modern works in which even the (presumably) right notes sound wrong. This was probably the worst possible way to begin our experience with a new orchestra. We were thankful it was only 10 minutes long.
Next up was a violin (husle in Slovak) fantasy by Josef Suk, a Czech composer active in the early 20th century. Suzanne has played a Suk symphony with the Oregon Sinfonieta, so his work was familiar. The soloist was a brilliant young Czech huslista named Josef Špaček, who studied at Curtis and Julliard in the United States and at age 29 has been the concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic for four years. The performance was wonderful and the audience would not let him off the stage without an encore and numerous curtain calls.
After the intermission came Dvořák's third symphony, on which the orchestra was at its best, turned loose for the first time in the evening from the earlier atonal noise-making and basic orchestral solo accompaniment. The concert hall is small, so at times the fortes were almost overpowering. The lower strings and brass seemed to resonate more than the upper-register instruments, but perhaps that was just because our seats were under the balcony.
Overall, a delightful evening of Czechoslovak music. The orchestra is good; probably about on the level of our beloved Oregon Symphony. But we missed the subtleties of interpretation that Carlos Kalmar brings to that group and I particularly missed the brilliant pianissimos that we have learned to love from the Oregonians.
Breakfast!
We love going out for breakfast! Almost any weekend day in Portland we are likely to be found at Genie's, J&M Cafe, Marco's, or one of another half-dozen favorite breakfast spots. Naturally, one of our first searches here was for places with good, substantial breakfast menus. The Web site Best Breakfast in Bratislava was very helpful and we have now visited most of the places it recommends. Mostly we have been either somewhat disappointed or moderately satisfied. There are usually only a couple of egg dishes without meat and the overall tastiness has been uneven. But the first place on the list is one that is worthy of Portland's breakfast/brunch scene. We revisited it this morning for the second time.
Rannô Ptáča (roughly "morning chickadee" as nearly as we can translate) is a branch of the Štúr Café chain of coffee shops around the city. It is located across the street from the entrance to the cul-de-sac leading to main train station and is accessible for us with one transfer on the trams. The staff are delightful, speak excellent English, and the breakfast menu is the most complete and delicious we have yet found. I've had one of their breakfast burritos (with scrambled eggs, avocado, homemade salsa, and sour cream) and the Mexican omelette with corn, cheese, salsa and sour cream. Suzanne vouches for the Greek omelette (feta and spinach) and the Italian eggs (fried eggs on tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese base). There are several other enticing veggie choices, so I'm afraid that we'll end up being regulars there before long.
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| Rannô Ptáča from the outside |
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| Suzanne inside. Note the wings hanging from the ceiling to complement the chickadee theme. |
Random pictures
This post is getting a little long, so I'll close with a couple of pictures from around the city that I haven't included in earlier posts. The first is one of the iconic buildings left over from Communist Bratislava. It is the headquarters of the Slovak television company. Why would someone build a building in the shape of an upside-down pyramid? Maybe just to show that they can! Capitalist architects have no monopoly on weirdness! (The building that you can just see a bit of at the right is the base of the tallest building in Slovakia. Fittingly, it's the central bank!)
Last month they had a several collections of award-winning photographs displayed in large panels on the Hviezoslavovo Namestie, the wooded pedestrian avenue/square in the old city that is the closest Bratislava has to a Champs Élysées. (And which has the historic national theater at one end and the U.S., German, and Czech embassies on one side.) There were a lot of interesting photographs, but one in particular caught my eye every time I walked down the street; I'm glad that I took a picture of it before the exhibit was taken down. The three generations, babka, mama, and dievča, all in traditional Slovak clothing and all buried in their cell phones, tells a lot about life in Slovakia as it races from a traditional society into the 21st century.
So dovidenia for now. I hope that all of our friends in Portland and around the country are enjoying the fall.
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