Sun 24.Jul.2011
Bratislava, Slovakia
A thoroughly boring drizzly week in Bratislava. Cold enough to wear a
jacket going out! Temperatures here are schizy; when the sun is out, 90's °F
is the rule. When the sky is overcast, temps hang in the 60's. 80°F is actually rare!
An excellent day to relax with a cappuccino in the cafe at the (indoor) mall, and
compose a photo page.
Whatever eye I sometimes have for dramatic photos has deserted me in recent weeks.
I am just documenting what Bratislava looks like.
Which is a melodramatic way of
saying I've run out of subjects in the photogenic Old City, so here is the prosaic
new city.
An actual tourist sightseeing train that plies the Old Town.
Right outside my apartment window, an amazing amount of double parking goes on.
Uually just for a few minutes, but the other day some clown left his car there the whole
day. What happens when somebody needs to get out? I don't know.
Across the street, a side view of the Palace of Justice.
My shutters are made of horizontal wooden slats that roll down like
a big heavy window shade. Being on the ground floor, security demands that I leave
them almost all the way down when I go out on sunny days, because I leave the windows
cracked open at the top for ventilation. When the shutters are still down in the
morning, the rising sun puts stripes of light on my curtains.
A sunny afternoon on Hviezdoslav Square in the Old Town. Good free entertainment.
I got a ride through a modern part of the city that I don't usually visit. Nothing
dangerous as far as I know, but nothing much interesting either. There are miles of
modern Bratislava that look like this. Old Comunist-era projects, freshly washed and
- sometimes - colorfully painted.
How did I come to get a ride out there? By not paying attention, and getting on
the wrong tram. Piece o' cake!
With the right attitude, there is comedy in familiar words spelled slightly
differently. This one is on the shelves at a supermarket, next to Dezerty
A tasty hot meal in a cafeteria on the edge of the Old Town. The whole works cost
me less than 5 euro. I could have paid four times as much at any number of places within
a few minutes walk, mostly with English-language names.
With a cafeteria, the "point-and-pay" method works fine;
no fluency in Slovak needed.
Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Bulf