Sat 18.Jul.2015
Bratislava, Slovakia
Summer is here, and the time has come for short pants, t-shirts, and lots
of sweat after a good exercise walk. Drink lots of fluids, but no beer for this kid,
even in this land of superb Czech and Slovak brews.
We enter ...
... and leave the castle.
Across the Lazy River
The south side of the Danube is a vast, sprawling high-rise borough
called Petržalka. As recently as 2009 when I first came here,
the whole massive thing was still brutally ugly bare concrete tower
blocks. Something like a quarter of the city's population lived there.
Sometime in the early 2010's, Petržalka got a technicolor face lift.
More recently, I spent a night there in a small classy penzion.
It seems that my regular apartment near the old city is now listed on booking.com.
For a couple of weeks in late June, after schools got out for the Summer,
I was moving in and out like the Firesign Theatre's motor-operated pushover,
because other people had booked "my" apartment before I got to it. Poor Mr
landlord did his best for me - drove me from point A to point B, cleaned every
apartment just as if I were a fresh guest each time.
Next year, I'll reserve in about April.
I did get better acquainted with some new - to me - neighborhoods,
including a corner of Petržalka.
Back in old Bratislava.
A fountain on a skylight, complete with circus figure.
A few avatars of Harvey Krishna.
They are not alone; I
have been approached in recent weeks by a pair of Mormon missionaries,
and a local friend reports that a "Jehovista" rang her doorbell.
They all have their work cut out for them in this deeply Catholic country.
The Mormons would probably prefer that I call them LDS, but only because
they do not share my bent toward dyslexical word play, and are much too young
to remember what it looks like, anyway.
It is only a shiny modern shopping mall, but the glass roof allows for
some lovely golden light on the long late summer afternoons. Sometimes the
klimatizácia is also welcome, but if there is any breeze at all, I
prefer to sit with a drink on the outdoor promenade and watch both the people
and the Danube flow by.
At the bookstore / coffee house
Zákony means "laws". And yes, that is
Isaac Asimov's
image! If I need to tell you who he is, you should be reading one of his books
instead of this page.
