Gunga- A rose by any other name is still a rose

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To many American ears the words Bratislava, Slovakia sound none too inviting and possibly even harsh. Perhaps it is the word 'brat' which has such negative connotations to it as in " Whew! I'm glad that little brat isn't MY kid". Or maybe it is the 'slov' in Slovakia that sounds, well, trampy or slovenly. On the day we left Budapest on a 10 hour trek by bus to Prague I didn't know what to expect. Only the night before I had learned we would be stopping in Bratislava for lunch. Great, I thought, that adds another country to the already packed list for this trip.

Slovakia is small, about the size of W. Virginia. with a population of 5.4 million. Most of it is mountainous (the Tatras) except for the area around the Danube which is, to be honest, rather boring flat agricultural land. As for its history you all pretty much know the drill by now: The Slavs came in the 5th century. In the 800's some Greek missionaries came and introduced the Hlaholika alphabet. In 907 the Hungarians invaded and ruled until the Austrian -Habsburgs in 1526. After WWI the Slovaks joined with the Czechs. In 1920 the - was dropped and Czechoslovakia became the most democratic state of all the Habsburg successor states.. Then came 1938 and Hitler. Even as Germany was annexing Czech lands, Slovakia declared independence in 1939 and allied with Germany in WWII. That move still stirs controversy today. Upon Germany's defeat, the Soviet's Red Army helped install a new unitary Czechoslovak government. Slovaks suffered greatly under forced Stalinization and persecutions in the 1950's. During the '60 Alexander Dubcek created "socialism with a human face." This experiment met with an abrupt end when the Soviet led Warsaw Pact troops crushed the movement in Aug. 1968. Economic stagnation and Gorbachev's changes in the Soviet Union laid the foundation for the fall of communism in 1989. In 1990 Slovaks began pressing for a greater voice in their own affairs. In 1992 the Czech Prime Minister and the Slovak Prime Minister decided to split the state peacefully and fairly. As of May 2004, Slovakia had become a member of the European Union.

Our bus pulled to a stop near the river and we embarked on a walk through the 'old town'. First, we viewed the outside of a famous church (possibly St. Martin's) built in the 14th century. There was a lovely sculpture in a square outside it commemorating those killed during Hitler/ Stalin times. All the buildings were architecturally elaborate and people in our group were already going gaga over them. Hmmm, I thought, you ain't seen nothin' yet, wait till you see Prague. There were several humorous bronze sculptures seemingly randomly placed- one of a man crawling out of a manhole cover with a sign saying ' men at work'. What made it even funnier was that there was a mime dressed in the same clothes mimicing the sculpture. We continued along a shaded pedestrian walkway lined with flower pots, charming bookshops, cafes, and benches. It was so welcoming that none of us wanted to leave. We all wished we were staying longer as the city turned out to be quite lovely.

So, the moral of the story is don't judge a place ( or person) by a name. Next blog: Prague!

Carolyn/Gunga

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