Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own personal opinions, not those of the Fulbright Commission or the U.S. Department of State.
As we realized that we were entering our final days in Bratislava, we took quick stock of places we wanted to visit (or visit again) before we left. So this is a quick chronicle of our last two weeks in Slovakia (and nearby countries).
Vienna again
Vienna is a wonderful city. We both love Vienna. One of the biggest attractions bringing us to Bratislava was that it is only 40 miles from Vienna. Yet we had only been to Vienna a couple of times in five months here. So last week we hopped on the train and headed to Vienna one more time.
The train between Bratislava and Vienna is an excellent value. For 18€ each we were able to get a round-trip ticket on the train (an hour each way), plus a 24-hour pass on the Vienna transit system to get around once we were there. It is cheap, easy, and solves the hassle of parking in Vienna.
The Bratislava and Vienna train stations epitomize the difference in status between the two cities. The Hlavná Stanica in Bratislava is left over from Communist days, and it looks it: functional but dark, dirty, and spare.
The newly remodeled Hauptbahnhof in Vienna is like a sparkling modern airport, with a multitude of opulent (by comparison) shops, restaurants, and lovely modern design. (I should have taken some pictures, but here is their Web site!) Vienna is definitely "first world" where Bratislava is currently somewhere between first world and second world.
Our first stop in Vienna was St. Stephen's Cathedral, which I had visited with Sarah and Alex earlier in January but which Suzanne had not been inside since 1980.
Then we went back into the center with the idea of touring the Haus der Musik, a relatively new museum of music and musical instruments. Alas, our Budapest bad luck with museums carried over to Vienna---it was closed for renovations on the day we were there.
We decided to try our luck with other museums and headed out toward the ring. On the way, we passed Bösendorfer Straße. Sure enough, occupying a whole block, there was the Bösendorfer factory.
I've never been to the Steinway factory in New York but I'll bet it's not nearly as beautiful, on the outside at least.
Just outside the ring near Bösendorfer is Karlsplatz and the ornate Karlskirche erected by Emperor Charles VI in the early 1700s. Sitting in the middle of the park adjacent to Karlsplatz is Johannes Brahms with a muse at his feet, looking a little cold on this wintry day.
The Karlskirche, dedicated to St. Charles Borromeo (Suzanne's maternal grandfather was named Charles Borromeo!), is a feast for the eyes, inside and out. The scenes sculpted on the two spiral columns commemorate scenes from the saint's life.
Entering the church, which is currently under renovation with scaffolding blocking the views of some parts, the eye is assaulted with a blaze of light and color. The front of the church depicts the saint's ascension into heaven.
The rear is just as colorful, including a beautiful organ. (Sadly, no recital today.)
The frescoes on the walls and ceiling were not all visible, but what we could see was magnificent.
We were glad that we had gone ahead and paid the rather steep (for a church) 7.5€ admission fee.
Near Karlskirche on the ring is the home of the world-renowned Wiener Staatsoper. For a variety of reasons, we did not get to Vienna either for an opera or for a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic---perhaps our biggest wish-we-had-dones of this trip. Unable to make any of the late-January or early-February opera performances work, we decided at least to tour the opera house.
We had an hour to kill before the tour, so we headed down the street to one of my favorite Vienna museums, the Albertina, and spent a delightful hour browsing through their large collections of romantic-era and impressionist paintings, plus a large room full of Picasso.
Near the end of World War II, much of Vienna (including St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Albertina) was severely damaged or destroyed by Allied bombs. The opera house took five bombs and two-thirds of it was destroyed, including the stage and seating area. The exterior has been reconstructed to its 19th century glory, but the interior decor shows a clear contrast between new and old.
The grand staircase off the main entrance hall was not destroyed. It is adorned by statues of the muses.
This is one of the intermission galleries that was not destroyed. It has busts of great opera composers lining the walls above the windows: Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Dittersdorf (yes, Karl Ditter von Dittersdorf is actually there), and others. The music would have to be spectacular to make me want to go back in the auditorium after spending intermission out here!
Apparently some of the emperors did not always go back into the auditorium! But they had this amazing tea room just off the imperial box to which they could discreetly "retire" for a while.
The auditorium itself is a modern structure. It is nice, but not ornate in the same way as the older parts of the building (or the old opera house in Bratislava, see below). It is built like a classical European opera house (which, I guess, it is!) with three layers of boxes around the sides of the auditorium.
In the 1980s, opera companies began responding to the preferences of the modern audience by installing "surtitle" projectors in their theaters. These project the lyrics onto a screen, usually above the proscenium. But in what language? In the United States, the choice of English is obvious. In Bratislava, they projected in Slovak the night we were there (though I have been told that it is sometimes German). But the audiences at the Staatsoper come from all over Europe and indeed all over the world. So each seat has its own little projection screen on the back of the seat in front. You can leave it off, or choose to have the lyrics projected in any of a dozen or more languages. Even the standing-room spaces (which are an incredible bargain at 3€ or 4€, but you have to stand in line to get them, first-come, first-served) have their own little screen on a stand. Amazing!
 |
Laxenburg again
Back on Halloween we visited the Schloßpark at Laxenburg, a Hapsburg hunting park and palace south of Vienna, and the site of IIASA, where I worked in the summer of 1980. We remembered the park as beautiful in the summer. It was equally beautiful in the fall (see this earlier post) and at that time I vowed that I wanted to come back and see the park in the snow. Last weekend it snowed a few inches on Saturday, so off we went on Sunday to trek through the park in the snow. It was as nice as I expected.
This view looks out of the courtyard of the Altes Schloß (Old Palace), which now houses the Austrian Film Museum.
These artificial caves were used to store ice cut from the lake, so that the emperor and his guests in the palace could have cold drinks and refrigeration for food during the summer.
This is the Grünes Lusthaus, located in the middle of the park, with quite lovely frescoes of hunting scenes in its dome.
And the Concordia Temple sits in another clearing where several trails meet.
Many people were skating on the lake, despite open patches of water that suggested that the ice was not very thick.
The Franzensburg Castle, essentially a life-sized toy castle built totally for decoration, is lovely in the winter.
But the swans are somehow less graceful when the water is frozen.
A nice, chilly day in snowy Laxenburg. Another "must-see" checked off the list.
AKKOORD concert
The European Union wastes a lot of money on pomp and celebration, but some of it is wasted on good things! The Slovak Republic serves its first six-month term as president of the European Council (the group of heads of state of all of the EU countries) starting in July when it succeeds the Netherlands. The EU presidencies now work as "trios," with three countries working together over the 18-month period that the leaders of the three serve as presidents. The current trio is the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Malta.
In honor of the trio presidency, the Netherlands and Slovakia organized a concert last week in Bratislava called AKKOORD, a Dutch word with both political and musical meanings. (I'm not sure what happened to the Maltese, who were conspicuously absent except for a brief note in the program.)
The strings of the Slovak National Theater orchestra presented three works by Dutch and Slovak composers. The first was "Four Pieces for String Instruments" by Peter Zagar, a contemporary Slovak composer. We both enjoyed this work a lot. We were not as excited about the second work, Ilja Zeljenka's "Musica Slovaca" for violin and string orchestra, though the Slovak soloist Milan Paľa played very well.
The highlight of the evening, and the reason that we bought tickets (for 8€!) was the world premier of Dutchman Micha Hamel's "Your Memories Will Remember You," for solo wind player and string orchestra. The solo wind player plays on seven instruments during the piece, including the fujara, a bassoon-sized Slovak shepherd's flute that we have seen in gift shops and festivals but never heard played. Perhaps the only person in the world who could play this work was the Dutch soloist Raphaela Danksagmüller, who has become an expert performer on the fujara and other exotic wind instruments.
Our reaction was that the piece was longer than it really needed to be, and we sometimes lost the musical plot, but the solo wind parts were amazing. In addition to the fujara, Ms. Danksagmüller played five recorders and a tall, rectangular wooden instrument on a stand that may or may not have been an even larger fujara. One of the recorders had the range and timbre of a tenor saxophone, despite being smaller than a clarinet. A fascinating concert! I hope that the trio presidency is as successful as its musical opening. We couldn't get a good photo of the performance, but here is the soloist with her fujara from the concert Web site.
A second reason for going is that the concert was held in the Historical Building of the Slovak National Theater---the only large classical music venue we hadn't yet attended. The grand theater building sits at the head of the Hviezdoslavovo Námestie, perhaps the most impressive square in Bratislava. The exterior picture below is from the summer.
The interior lobby of the old theater is lovely in much the same way as the orchestra hall across the street.
And the theater is truly beautiful, with the opera-house style of boxes tiered around the sides.
In this case, the boxes and the balconies are being held up by a ring of large, beautiful statues of naked women washing their hair (bottom center of picture below). At least they look like they are washing their hair. Maybe they are plugging their ears because the piccolo player is out of tune. Or something else. But it is very curious to see a whole ring of statues running all the way around the theater in which each of the women has her hands on her head.
Another evening (among many on this adventure) of good memories.
Conference in Olomouc
This week was the "Mid-Year Conference" organized jointly by the Czech and Slovak Fulbright Commissions. This year's conference was held in Olomouc, a history-rich city in northern Moravia. The conference was interesting, featuring presentations by all of the Fulbright scholars in both countries. A couple of us were at the end of our stays and many more were just arriving, with some having full-year appointments.
The Fulbright students---actually recent college graduates serving as English-language teaching assistants (ETAs) in far-flung villages all across the region---also made short presentations. The ETA presentations were structured as 15 pictures, each of which was projected for 20 seconds, limiting the presenter to 5 minutes of description. It was very interesting to see the experiences that the ~20 students in the two countries have had. Their presentations were much more interesting than some of the faculty presentations, especially the ones where the scholar spent 15 of his 10 minutes talking about all of his wonderful academic accomplishments---about as interesting as someone reciting his CV!
Olomouc is a well-preserved fortress-city with roots going back a millennium. The city walls are intact around half of the old city and many of the old churches and buildings still stand (or have been restored). Our hotel was a lovely, modern high-rise just across the park from the old city. (The park was built on the area outside the walls that was kept clear so that anyone approaching the city could be easily seen.) This is the view from our 7th floor window:
The conference presentations kept us busy most of the day on Thursday, but before dinner we headed across the park (muddying our shoes in the process) and explored the city center, which centers around an upper and a lower square.
This is the Trinity Column in the upper square, which is an impressive configuration of statues and structures.
The old city hall lies in the middle of the square, and features an astronomical clock on one side that chimes the hours with performing figures.
The Moravian Theater, home of the Moravian Philharmonic, also sits on the upper square.
Both squares are full of fountains (turned off at this time of year) and sculptures. I don't know the story behind this one, but if it's a fight I'm betting on the dolphin!
And Neptune is well represented.
And of course, there has to be a Plague Column.
After the last session on Friday we got a guided tour of parts of Olomouc, mostly of the area around Palacky University. The brass markers below are examples of a particular genre of memorials. These small plaques with names and dates were put into the sidewalk in front of homes from which Jews were taken during the Nazi occupation.
This is the upper square in afternoon sunshine.
Olomouc has had two particularly famous residents (not counting our landlady, who was born there). Gustav Mahler was born and got his musical start there, and Gregor Mendel attended the university in Olomouc.
Although there are a lot of beautiful churches in Olomouc, the streets are so narrow that it is difficult to get a clear view from far enough away to get a good picture. Here's an exception.
In recent demolition work for a new university building, they have uncovered ruins of old city buildings, including a small church. Apparently the new (still-standing) generation of buildings was built right over the top of the old ones, filling in the older ones with dirt and rubble.
 |
| The wall of an old building underneath current ground level |
 |
| Another old building beneath the new |
After the formal tour, we walked through the park outside the walls that are still protecting the south side of the city.
It is a measure of the depth of history in Central Europe (and the depth of my ignorance about it) that a city of whose existence I was totally unaware would have such a rich history and architecture.
The conference was an opportunity to meet all of the other senior and junior Fulbright scholars in the former Czechoslovakia, and they proved to be a delightful group. I was the only faculty scholar in Slovakia during the fall, with four others arriving for the spring. Although I'm anxious to get home, I kind of wish we were staying to enjoy Slovakia with some new-found friends!
They took a group photo of all of us at the end of the conference. Kind of a crazy picture with people looking every direction.
Dinner invitations
The Slovaks are very nice, generous, and friendly people. We have had almost no negative experiences with anyone that we have known or even strangers in stores, buses, etc.
Given their overall good nature, we found it surprising to reflect that in five months in Bratislava we had not once been inside anyone else's house. I had talked in general terms with a few friends and colleagues about "let's get together some time," but then neither of us ended up following up.
Until this week.
After all of these months, we have three dinner invitations in our last four nights in Bratislava. Last night after returning from Olomouc we had a delicious dinner at the home of Igor Valentovič, the proprietor of the Music Forum music store in the old city where Suzanne has spent many hours perusing their flute collection and sipping coffee with Igor. Sadly, his wife Vlasta was called away to be with her ailing father, but Igor and his son Gregor proved to be most delightful hosts. We also got to sample a cabernet sauvignon from Vlasta's brother's winery. I'm always prepared to be skeptical of "brother-in-law wine," but this was really very good. I doubt that you will ever see Golguz wines unless you are very lucky (and shopping in Slovakia), but I recommend them!
This evening, we are going to visit a young university couple from the social and labor economics department with whom I spoke about labor markets and unemployment earlier in the year. He is Hungarian and finishing his PhD at the university; she is Slovak and has just been hired as a faculty member after finishing her dissertation. Because they were married in Hungary, Slovakia does not recognize their marriage---xenophobia permeates the bureaucracy here---so they simply live across the border in Rajka, Hungary, and commute 10 miles up the road to the university. Tonight we get to go to dinner in a different country!
And tomorrow the chair of the department has invited us out to dinner. She has been wonderfully accommodating at the university, even coming to our first language class with us to make sure that we could find the room and that everything would work out. But she is so busy that I have rarely gotten more than a few minutes to talk with her. It will be nice to get a chance to get to know her over dinner, even if it comes just two days before our departure from Slovakia.
Miscellaneous photos
In going back through our vast accumulation from the past five months, I've come across some favorite photos that I don't think have ever found it into the blog. So before we leave Bratislava I want to post a few.
 |
| Amazing sunset along the Danube |
 |
| My kind of restaurant! |
 |
| Interesting adornment atop a building on Kollárovo námestie. Vaguely Soviet, but the lion? |
 |
| My favorite bronze sculpture, inside Eurovea shopping mall |
 |
| From Kapucínska tram stop in city. Portland needs a castle on the hill! Maybe the Lewis and Clark campus? |
 |
| Buying burčiak at a street festival. It tastes like it looks... |
 |
| One final sunrise from the apartment. I could never stop taking pictures of sunrises and sunsets. |
So we are down to our last three days in Bratislava. Monday we will pick up our young friend Lani (one of the young Fulbright scholars, front and center in the picture above) and drive her back to her posting in Rakovice, where she is going to inherit all of the kitchen supplies that we have bought and all of the food items we have not eaten. Tuesday we finish cleaning the apartment. And Wednesday our lovely landlady comes at 11am for the final inspection, after which we bid good-bye to Bratislava.
I will post at least once more from this side of the Atlantic, reporting on our northward trek. We have a lot of music booked for the trip: Magic Flute in Prague at the Czech National Opera, Mahler's 10th Symphony at the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and Marriage of Figaro at the Gothenburg Opera on the night before we fly home. I'll have reviews and news from the road some time next week. Until then, dovidenia!
