A Northerner Abroad....Part 4

Like the rest of continental Europe (well, the bits I’ve seen), the Slovaks also get certain things right that we Brits will never enjoy. The first of these I have already mentioned, but I will go through it in detail because it’s an alien concept in the UK. Basically, imagine you want to get the bus. You go to the bus stop, and there you find a ticket machine. You put a few coins in, take your ticket, and wait for the bus. When it comes, it is one of those long, bendy busses with about 3 sets of doors. You let people get off, then climb aboard and put your ticket into a machine by the door, where it is stamped. Then you sit down and enjoy the ride. All of which means that the bus takes a few seconds at each stop meaning that they generally arrive and leave on time. In fact, on the bus timetables it tells you how many minutes it will take to get to each stop, and I’ll be buggered if they are ever late. Right, so now you are thinking, “Ah yes, but it’s too easy to just not buy a ticket and ride for free.” And indeed it is, but only if you are British, or just generally not the kind of law abiding person the Slovaks are. It’s a cultural difference maybe, but take the metro in Barcelona, the U-Bahn in Cologne, or the tram in Vienna and rarely do you see someone who hasn’t paid. When I lived in Newcastle we used to say that the Metro was a free service with the occasional £10 donation; here nobody would ever think of not paying. I remember once being stood on a platform waiting for a tram in Cologne, it was late at night and there was only a punk on the platform to keep me company, so needless to say I was doing my best to not attract his attention. He started coming towards me and I tensed a little, natural really I’m sure you’ll agree. Then he asked if I could change a 5€ note so he could buy a ticket! Didn’t punks in England used to go around ripping the upholstery of busses and trains with their Swiss army knives in the hope of bringing down the government? Not in Germany.

It’s not just bus tickets that impress me though, thankfully. The trains are always on time, and by that I don’t mean vaguely on time like in the UK, but to the minute. This never ceases to amaze me, along with the fact that never once in a European county other than the Britain have I heard a tannoy announcement apologising for the delay/slow running/general crapness of the service, it just doesn’t happen. Granted, if it were in Slovak I would be none the wiser given my vocabulary of one solitary word. We will come back to this point shortly, but just to keep you on tenterhooks a little longer, the word I know is Ahoj, any guesses?

The next think I appreciate in many a fine European city is the idea of having a central square, where people can meet, have a coffee in the sun, dangle their feet in a fountain or merely admire the passing Slovak girls. Now, obviously every city in Britain has a square of some sort, but they are generally bordered by a post office or similar, and taken over by market traders for most of the day. Also, I admit that the weather in Britain isn’t always conducive to al fresco living. London has a few nice little squares like this to be fair, as do other cities I’m sure. Bratislava, as I have already suggested, has a beautiful central square, Vienna has an abundance of tranquil little hideaways, Paris too. My favourite though has to be Barcelona, and a place called Plaça Reial. If you get there early enough it is simply charming, an enclosed courtyard about the size of half a football pitch, surrounded by cafes and bars and a brilliant restaurant called Els Quinze Nits where you can eat like a king for a fiver. But at night it really comes alive, people sit on the fountains, the floor, the many walls and benches, in little groups usually where they have brought their own beer and music, or else they buy a few cold ones form one of the many Asians who walk around with coolers full of drinks. At night it is not quite as pretty as by day, there is a continual police presence too, presumably to keep an eye on the drink sellers who do a little sideline in hashish, but I absolutely love the place, and spent many a summer night there relaxing, having a couple of beers, or even on occasion when the police had been called away, having an impromptu game of football, much to the dismay of the bar owners! Bradford has a central square, and recently they have developed it a bit to add a few bars and restaurants opposite the town hall. It’s nice enough, but the town hall itself is surrounded by roads on all sides, so it’s hardly the nicest place to sit and relax. An architect by the name of Will Allsop drew up plans to redevelop the north of England along the M62 corridor, from Hull to Liverpool, ranging from creating Tuscan style housing in the hills of Barnsley to flooding the entire central square of Bradford to make a lake. Not sure what the flat caps of Barnsley thought of his plans, but many a head nodded in agreement in Bradford.

We come now to one of my personal favourites, fashion. Being a modern metrosexual who owns a jacket or two from Zara, I consider myself at least moderately aware of fashion. Not saying I’m fashionable myself per sé (up north there will be thousands of people currently saying “who’s Percy?”), but I have a rough idea what is and isn’t. I remember having a conversation with a hairdresser in Cologne (and yes, they all talk bollocks there too) about why the British seemed to always where jeans and a t-shirt, regardless of the weather. I didn’t really have an answer, particularly as I was wearing just that. Since then I have started to pay a bit more attention and it’s true, it’s like a uniform or something. I’m not suggesting that we have a monopoly on t-shirts and jeans, but we certainly seem to wear them an awful lot more than the rest of Europe. The people in Bratislava seem fairly fashionable to me, the shops certainly suggest this, and a couple of afternoons spent with a beer and a notebook in the centre have backed this up. But then again, like I have already said, Bratislava is rich by Slovak standards, the cars on the road are certainly not the cars of the poor, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and I even saw a Bentley. Although, I have noticed with immense satisfaction a number of Skodas and Ladas on the streets too, no Trabis yet, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled. But you still don’t see people in tracksuit bottoms, or leggings, or anything that shouts PINK across the street at you. And personally, that is how I like things. However, that being said I did spy a man walking through Bratislava clad head to toe in white; white linen trousers, white vest, white shirt (open, naturally), white espadrilles, and the bit that made me laugh the most, a white flat cap. Not the kind of cloth cap I see at home, obviously some kind of designer number, but no matter the name it was still a flat cap in my eyes. I guess a male model on the catwalks of Milan could have pulled the ensemble off, but a middle aged man with a beer belly is a different matter altogether. I should point out here that the first thought that when through my head was “how does he eat without spilling something?”

Which brings me nicely onto my next little subtopic; namely food. Now, I will keep this short, because it will come up again and again. I had asked Saša what the local dish was, with the intention of trying it before I left. I did so one evening alone in town. I love going to restaurants alone, some people think it’s sad and lonely but I think its brilliant, like going to the cinema alone too. So, I went to a restaurant just outside the old town, a place called Apetit. The place was dead except for me and the waiters, and there was a slightly disconcerting smell or stale cigarettes and old people about the place. I didn’t let it put me off though, for I had already eaten here the previous week and knew the food was good. I ordered a starter of deep fried cheese with salad, a main course of the local speciality and a beer. The cheese dish I had tried and liked the week before with Saša, but the main course was a mystery really. Even the description I had been given was a tad ambiguous, “it’s a bit like gnocchi, but not really, and with sour cream”. When it came I did my best to look enthused, but it was difficult. I looked very much like a plate of cottage cheese with some grated cheese and bacon on top. That may sound appealing to some, but personally I have always grouped cottage cheese together with skydiving and bomb disposal, basically things I would rather leave well alone. But, and I mean this, it was very nice. A bit on the stodgy side maybe and probably best eaten in winter, but it was tasty, filling and generally pretty good. I finished it all, ordered a coffee and then gasped in disbelief at the bill, £4 for everything. I think I like Bratislava.

It is not all good news though; there are a couple of little things that grate slightly with me. Firstly, the currency. There are about 50SK to the pound, which is fine by me, nice and easy to work out. But they have notes for 20SK, or about 40p. This means that buying a bottle of water with a 200Sk note, which I did one morning, has left me with a hernia from trying to lift my wallet and manoeuvre it into my pocket. This isn’t just a Slovak thing though; when the Euro was introduced I would have thought it was a perfect opportunity to get rid of all the small coins. Think about it, what do you do with anything below 10p other than collect it in a jar and take it to the fancy counting machine at Asda? You can get Euro coins for 1 cent or about 0.7pence in old money. What is the point of that? Why not round all the prices to the nearest 10 cent and get rid of all the silly little coins? It’s trivial I know, but if i were in charge.....