A Day in Slovakia

Bratislava, Slovakia

The greatest thing about Europe is that you can hop a flight to another country in the way you'd hop on a bus to Erie. The hardest part is picking where to go.

It's Trinity's Reading Week this week, which means that we have a week without classes where we're supposed to be studying and writing and being scholarly. The unspoken assumption is that no one is going to be doing that, and that everyone is going to travel somewhere, and that's exactly what I did.

On Friday, I got off the plane in Bratislava, Slovak Republic in the smallest airport I've ever seen, and walked outside into the freezing cold. Whoops. Should have checked the weather forecast there, buddy. The unfamiliar sounds and accent marks of Slovak drifted in the air. Not an American in sight. Perfect.

I grabbed a map and made my way to the small bus stop to take a bus downtown. Buying a ticket was nearly impossible: the words on the ticket machine were a blur to me. I ended up missing a bus just by trying to guess which ticket was for adults and which was for students. In the end it didn't matter. Everything is so cheap!

The bus dropped us off at the central train station. The first thing, of course, was to find some good Slovakian food. A street vendor lady was selling schnitzel, and I bought a schnitzel sandwich for about 2 euro. It was FANTASTIC. Holy baby cow! Maybe it's because I was really hungry, but I savored ever last bite like it was a delicacy.

I didn't know what to do or where to go, so I wandered vaguely in the direction of tall buildings. A few English signs here and there, some posters of Michael Jackson that read, "Thank you Michael Jackson: Benefičná Muzikálna Show". Street trolleys and buses, clearly decades beyond their intended use, puttered past me. The crowds began to thicken, and a steady cloud of cigarette smoke filled the air. Never have I seen so many people smoking all at once.

And then I found the historic quarter. The streets were cobblestone, the buildings centuries old, with pieces of their stone facade falling away, revealing stained and broken bricks beneath. The alleyways were narrow and winding, sometimes leading to dead ends, sometimes opening into little squares. And hundreds of spires dotted the skyline, both onion-shaped churches towers and tall iron spikes.

There were tourists around, and a few side shops catering to them, but they weren't chain stores. You could tell that the little lady sitting there had actually made those bracelets, or those painted porcelain eggs, or whatever. And there wasn't any fake tourist music blasting from every shop! You know? In Dublin, shop owners seem to think you need to play blaring Celtic flute music to lull tourists into a buying trance.

But I heard some music coming from far away. I imagined it was just some street performer, so I walked in the other direction. But I heard it louder this time, and a crowd of people was moving that way, so I followed them. I came around a corner, as the music got louder, and I realized that I was in a street festival. The Festival of St. Martin.

A group of children was singing, and another was playing instruments, and one by one, different dancers would come onto a stage and dance traditional Slovakian dances, and sing in Slovak. The crowd was small: obviously a mix of local parishioners, proud parents and whatnot, and a few tourists. Some stands were set up nearby offering Slovakian wine from the countryside. But not just any wine.

I asked for a cup, which cost me a euro, and was given a giant plastic cup of HOT wine. Hot wine! I had never heard of that before, but it's a traditional autumn beverage in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Delicious. All of a sudden, I stopped shivering. I felt like it was the exact thing I needed.

People wore furry hats and chugged their wine and ate giant sausages and laughed heartily. The music was heartfelt, and warm. The different groups of dancers were laughing and sometimes messing up on stage, sometimes tripping over their own feet, but always smiling and singing.

And all the while, a giant castle loomed overhead, like some kind of a fairy tale. I wish I knew what that was. Keep in mind, I previously knew nothing about Bratislava. Honestly, I envisioned it just as my launching point for getting to Vienna. But it turned out to be one of my favorite cities in Europe: unassuming, unpretentious, accessible, and beautiful. And cheap. I'd highly recommend going. I know I'd love to see the rest of the country too.

I made my way back to the train station, and gestured my way from the ticket booth onto a train to Vienna, Austria. The two capital cities are the closest situated national capitals in the world, and the train ride took less than an hour. When I got off in Vienna, I was hit by the sudden realization that this was one of the most significant cities in the history of the world.

Vienna is the Europe you've imagined. It's what people mean when they talk about Europe.

(By the way, German people look like Americans; Slovakian people look like Pittsburghers.)

I'm in Prague, Czech Republic now. I'm staying in a hostel, and I'm on one of their computers. I'll write more later, about Vienna too, but for now I'm going to explore the city of Praha, what some people say is the most beautiful city in Europe! (And I could really go for some more schnitzel...)