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Published: February 19th 2013
Okay, you ready???
How-about we play a little game...
I’ll give you ten seconds to name five famous Austrians...
............................................................,eight.......nine..........,
That’s it. Times up!
So, how did we do?
Well, I’m guessing the Austrians amongst you actually found this pretty easy.
The rest of us, though, probably struggled a bit.
The sad truth is that outside America, there are very few people who are truly world-famous, who will live on in our collective minds forever.
Think a little longer, though, dig a little deeper, and you’ll come to realise that almost everywhere has its own little list of notable heroes and villains, and Austria, it has to be said, has some real crackers...
Adolf Hitler, Niki Lauda, Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart... more than one or two stories between them, that little lot... Charisma, bravery, intellect, drive, creativity and, very probably, more than your average amount of drug-taking. Every one of them has exhibited at some time behaviour likely to render them institutionalised.
You’d struggle, though, to claim that they weren’t interesting. So while visiting the folks back home in the UK we thought we’d pop over to
Austria and check out its architectural and cultural delights.
Just five minutes on the web was enough to book ourselves a flight to Bratislava.
And, as even those of you who failed to name a single Austrian have probably noticed, Bratislava is not actually in Austria.
It’s..., well..., somewhere else...
I have to say I enjoyed Bratislava a great deal even before arriving, mostly due to the bemused looks on friends’ faces when they heard we were going.
‘Should be good,’ one or two managed unconvincingly, but from most there was just an incredulous ‘Why?’
‘Well, its close to Vienna, isn’t it.’
‘Oh yeah, course it is...’ they’d nod nonchalantly, before taking their leave in search of someone slightly more sane.
And I have to admit I’d been surprised myself just how incredibly close many European capitals are. We could easily have squeezed Budapest and Prague into our little five-day break as well, but would probably have ended up seeing very little except the inside of a bus. So we decided to stick with our original duo, two-and-a-half days a-piece. That’s just twelve hours for each of my five famous Austrians, and,
if I’m honest, slightly longer for all my favourite Slovakians.
Of the two I have to say it was Slovakia that had me the more intrigued. It was to be my first visit to Eastern Europe, a half of the continent which seemed impossibly enticing. Finally, here was a chance to find out exactly what had been lying behind the Iron Curtain all those years ago.
I vividly recall being very confused about the Iron Curtain as a child, an impenetrable barrier imprisoning millions on its far-side. What puzzled me most was that all the curtains I knew had a big gap in the middle and a free end by the floor and were, frankly, a doddle to crawl behind and hide. Sure the other side was sometimes cold, dark and unwelcoming, but it wasn’t such a bad place to hang-out for a few minutes from powers-that-be. All it took was to remember to keep the tips of your toes well-hidden. Admittedly an iron pair would have been a good deal heavier, I’d imagine, but I’d hardly call them impenetrable. What the bloody idiots should clearly have built was an Iron Wall. It was just one more hint
that these adults who looked after the world might not really be all that bright. Alarmingly, in the intervening years I haven’t really seen anything much to change my mind.
On arrival, it turned out that Eastern Europe wasn’t so different after all. Admittedly the beer was a tad cheaper, which is never something to be sniffed at, and slightly more folk than usual resembled shifty Cold-War spies, but other than that, they were just like you and me.
We were taxied in from the airport in a shiny new Mercedes, through whose heavily tinted windows passed the bright lights of a buzzing modern metropolis. In just fifteen minutes we arrived at a smart, up to date hotel with efficient English-speaking staff. Complimentary Wifi was offered in the lobby, but with central Bratislava beckoning somewhat mysteriously outside we decided, despite the lateness of the hour, that we’d be tempted out for a little explore.
It wasn’t long before we stumbled upon a couple of little cafes, full of families on a quiet night out, enthusiastically enjoying each others’ company.
At midnight.
On a Sunday.
In a ‘What do these people know that we don’t?’
kind of a way.
We decided to find out by joining them for a late supper, immediately pleased to find that at least this half of the holiday would be in no danger of blowing the budget.
Come the morning, the sun now bathing the cobbled streets, we ventured a little further into the picture-perfect Old Town not much more than a stone’s throw away. It was almost a caricature of a miniaturised European renaissance city, only slightly larger than the sort of thing that might conceivably be knocked-up at Euro-Disney. This idea was only reinforced by the sheer numbers of tour groups snaking this way and that, disgorged from busses and boats to follow their own personal placarded mother goose. Dazed and confused, these overheating New-World retirees staggered this way and that under the sheer weight of cameras, guidebooks, and superfluous knitwear, being spoon-fed a quick potted history of the entire country, or at least as much detail that could be squeezed in before the next stop for coffee and cake. The scenic-cruise liners of their once-in-a-lifetime European break lay bobbing patiently on the banks of the mighty Danube nearby, a safe haven to which they would
shortly return for lunch and a once-in-a-lifetime nap, before weighing anchor and setting off for the next stop on their paint-by-numbers Old World tour.
Still, perhaps I should learn to be a little less harsh. After all, the day may come a few decades hence when I’m forced to join their waddling ranks. In fact, should I hang around in Bratislava too long that day may come all too soon, as we were about to discover that the local fare could not exactly be described as health-food, most dishes revolving round some sort of meat-laden fatty goulash. Despite this, I managed to enjoy my first Slovakian lunch a great deal, mainly due to the entertainment provided by the menu.
Now, I hate to admit this, but one of my very favourite features of travelling, belying my appallingly colonial and juvenile psyche, is the endless amusement to be gained from the locals’ attempts to translate their impenetrable mother tongue into the Queen’s Own English. Yeah, I know, I know: it’s my fault really. If I tried to learn even a smidgeon of the local lingo they wouldn’t have to bother at all. In my defence, I have been known
once or twice to stray far enough off the beaten track for this to become a necessity, which is actually rather fun. It's nowhere near as much fun, though, as carefully scrutinising a crudely laminated card and choosing only those items likely to cause maximum hilarity. Today this came down to a straight choice between the ‘Sausage in a Fur-Coat’ (possibly the least vegan dish ever, surely), or risking it all on the ‘Tried Potato with Cheese’, and hoping it really wasn’t one that someone else had tried yesterday. The only other option was the ‘Steamed Knee’, which I felt might be a step too far, as it was likely to be exactly what it said on the tin. Always been more of an ankle man, myself, though I suppose if you are what you eat, then maybe over the years I should have tried a little more hip.
After lunch we strolled down to the Danube, on whose far banks we discerned the outline of the communist era New Town, the very antithesis of what we’d just left behind. It displayed all the charm and originality of your average mid-1970s industrial estate, as much as they could muster,
presumably, after the toil of hanging up those damned Curtains.
Suitably unimpressed, we turned on our heels to revisit the charming little streets and squares, acquainting ourselves with all the famous Slovakians, whose many busts peered out grimly, immortalised in copper and stone. Their brows were forever furrowed in anger, presumably over our feeble attempts to pronounce their names, which were, to a man, almost entirely devoid of vowels. And, when I come to think of it, they were all men, the great and good of the last few centuries, doctors, politicians, architects and generals, a right miserable looking bunch the lot of them. Maybe if there’d been one or two women among them there might have been a bit more smiling I suppose, though I have to say even with the ladies it’s rare to find a statue sporting a grin. Then again, if all I had to look forward to was being snapped with gurning tourists and crapped on by pigeons I might not end up so chipper myself.
Or perhaps that’s not it at all.
Perhaps what was irking them was the same thing bothering me; the one blight on this otherwise perfect little
place, in eyesight almost wherever you looked. The youth of the town, it seemed, were keen on a spot of immortality themselves, but hadn’t the gumption to achieve anything to warrant it first. Instead they’d decided that the town was in need of redecoration, and spent most of the moonlit hours spraying their names on every available surface.
‘Graffiti Artists’, they’d have called themselves once upon a time, or these days more likely just ‘Taggers’.
Me, I’ve got a different name for them.
I call them little shits.
Even back when I was a little shit myself, I could never begin to understand what the fascination with spraying your name here, there and everywhere could possibly be. What exactly are they trying to prove, these guys? Let’s face it, as shots at immortality go, it’s more than just a little weak. Do they walk past the next day, do you think, and give themselves a little pat on the back, say to themselves proudly “Man, I did that!”... Wow, brother, you must be really something...
Having said that, once, way back at school, I was given a detention for vandalising the walls myself. This will
no doubt come as news to my mother, whose eyebrows, I would imagine, are hovering somewhere just below the ceiling right now.
And not just any walls, either. We’re talking the toilet walls here.
Classy.
Not that I actually did it.
(That faint sigh you just heard was my mother exhaling in relief.)
What happened was the whole year was punished when a couple of its brighter members decided it would be a great idea to redecorate the toilet in its entirety, mostly with juvenile taunts directed at various members of staff. In keeping with their character the spineless gits then didn’t have the guts to own up, so we all copped a misdemeanour charge. The weird thing was that we all knew who did it, but preferred to write them off inconsequential little turds than hand them over to the powers that be, who were at the time, in common with my father, of the opinion they should be strung up by the testicles.
It was only a toilet, after all.
Time is a great healer, so they say, and I’ve no doubt that three decades on they’ve finally grown up, learnt
the error of their ways and moved on to greater things, and are probably dreaming of the days they’ll have statues of their own. On the other hand, they also say like father like son, and I have to admit that if I ever laid hands on any of these little pricks these days, I’d have them strung up by the testicles in no time.
With razor wire.
Good to finally get that out of my system I feel.
In some ways it’s actually a shame the communists aren't still in power, as I’m not sure they'd have been all that touchy-feely with these guys either.
Sadly in modern Bratislava the Bad Kids have been set free to run amok all round town. Not even they’ve had the balls to invade the castle though, which is a real shame, as the walls of the old town are an historic treasure, while the castle, it turns out, is entirely fake. It wasn’t even started until 1957, making it only slightly more historic than the aforementioned school toilet.
Having completed the monstrous New Town across the river, the communist rulers decided, incongruously, that what the town really
needed was a mock historic folly on the hill above town, constructing an impressively large white edifice which is used these days for precisely nothing.
It does give the tourists a chance for some exercise on the way up, I suppose, though most choose to be bussed right up to the gates instead. As usual with mass-tourism, this leads them to miss out on the best bit of all, specifically the descent down the ancient little alleyways on the back of the hill, in the walls of which lie an eclectic mix of cafes and bars. Here the more ethereal members of the Bratislavan intelligentsia have left their mark in quirky artwork and creaking bookshelves, below which their young student disciples now gather to chew the fat.
These surprising little finds for me sum up the essence of why we travel. In an increasingly homogenised world it’s rare to stumble on something that's actually different, and these tiny little enclaves just oozed character, their genuinely lived in ambience achieved wholly without the need for any of the faux decor of your average fake-Irish bar. There was an almost surreal air of mystique, each little group huddled in its
own alcove wreathed in spirals of cigar-smoke, conspiring with each other in foreign tongues. It was easy to envisage political plotting and intrigue all around, even if in reality they were just squabbling over the footy or bitching about the wife.
Finally, here was a glimpse of the Eastern Europe I’d been searching for, a mesmerising mix of not-so different folk with whom we share a common present and a historic past but an oh-so different in-between.
And we were to be here for how much longer?
Just one more day, and then off to Vienna.
Bummer!
Who Wants to Live Forever?
I do.
Cause there’s just too many good places left out there to see.
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Billy
non-member comment
Publish !
Hi Andy, you hit the mark yet again, great short travel story and a very entertaining read. Why don't you put all your travel tales in a book, at the very least an online book and publish it with Amazon for Kindle. I read so many travel books (hung up my trainers, sandals & boots now ), even if it was in the 99p bracket you'd make a few quid, but most of all, you'd provide some great reading to people who don't know about your blog. Honest mate, there really is some crap travel books on Amazon, but your writings would make a brilliant compilation put together as a collection of short stories. The writing is great, the experiences are, what can I say ? varied, interesting, scary, comical, etc. Think about it. All the best.