News digest: Refurbished Slovak National Gallery to reopen on December 11

Slovan returns to top-flight club football after 53 years, Slovakia may have allowed exports of arms components to Russia, and a Slovak book wins the Red Dot design award.

(Source: SME.sk / Hej,ty)

Good evening. Here is the Friday, November 4 edition of Today in Slovakia – the main news of the day in less than five minutes.

For weekend events and news on travel and culture in Slovakia, see the latest edition of our Spectacular Slovakia newsletter.

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Slovak National Gallery gears up to reopen after extensive refurbishment

The Slovak National Gallery (SNG) is preparing to reopen its refurbished main site in Bratislava. After taking over the newly expanded premises from the builder, Hornex-Strabag, on October 27, it launched the reopening approval process with the construction office.

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The gallery will not to wait for the interior to be fully equipped and furnished with exhibitions, but instead plans to let people in as of December 11 to have a look around. Afterwards permanent exhibitions, a cinema hall, a modern library, a café and a gallery bookstore will be gradually opened over the course of the next year.


Today's feature story

Is honey from your office roof the best in the world?

The green roof of the Einpark administrative building on the edge of Bratislava’s Petržalka borough serves not only as a space for employees to clear their heads during working hours: it is also home to thousands of bees. The honey they produce is not only very tasty; it also has demonstrable health benefits. Laboratory tests have repeatedly confirmed its high quality.

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The results are no surprise to beekeeper Tomáš Blaškovič, who takes care of the bee colony. He says Slovakia's urban environments are actually a lot cleaner than people assume.

“Even before this, we had analyses done, including for polluting substances in the honey, and we knew that urban honeys are of high quality,” Blaškovič told The Slovak Spectator.

Is honey from your office roof the best in the world? Read more 

More stories onSpectator.sk:

TOURISM: A boathouse has become the latest attraction at the Ľadovo water reservoir on the outskirts of Lučenec.

SCIENCE: Read an overview of the successes of Slovak science.

TOURISM: The Sláviček tourist shelter, featuring unique architecture, is a new facility in the Tŕstie nature reserve in Muránska Planina national park.

SUCCESS STORY: Rado Varchola talks to The Slovak Spectator about how he ended up in New York City, where he has become a successful real estate broker.


If you like what we are doing and want to support good journalism, buy our online subscription. Thank you.


Picture of the week

After 53 years, Bratislava's Slovan football team will again compete in the final stages of a European-level club competition, in spring 2023. In a European Conference League match on Thursday, Slovan beat Lithuania's Zalgiris Vilnius 2:1 and advanced directly to the round of 16 as the winners of Group H.


Other news

  • Hiking paths in the High Tatras closed for tourists on November 1, 2022 as part of annual nature protection measures. They will reopen on June 14, 2023. Only paths leading to cottages (with the exception of the one leading to the cottage under Rysy summit) remain open.
  • Demand for electric cars is growing in Slovakia with 327 e-cars sold in Slovakia in the third quarter of this year, up 16 pecent year-on-year. In the first nine months of 2022, 992 electric vehicles were sold, an increase of almost 40 percent compared to the previous year, data published by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) indicate.
  • Slovak customs officers have allowed the export of goods to companies that supply Russian military contractors, the Denník N daily reported on Friday. It published a list of thousands of goods that Slovak customs officers have allowed to be exported directly to Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Some of these products, such as bearings, machines to produce tyre parts, and even entire engines, can be used in the manufacture of heavy weaponry. The daily also linked the suppliers of some of these products to producers of Russian military technology.
  • Viewers in America will soon be able to watch the Slovak-Ukrainian TV series The Slavs. As of November 8, this fantasy adventure series, set in the 7th century and following the lives of the occupants of the Carpathian basin in the period before the union of Slav tribes, will be on offer via the streaming services Amazon FreeVee, Tubi and The Roku Channel.
  • A Slovak edition of the book Don Quixote, published by the publishing house Spolok Svätého Vojtecha (SSV), has won the prestigious Red Dot Award 2022 in the category of communication design. The design of the book, which features illustrations by Miroslav Cipár, is the work of the design studio Pergamen. The studio has won the ‘design Oscar’, as the Red Dot Award is known, in the past.
  • The Finance Ministry's Value for Money Department (ÚHP) is recommending that rail infrastructure operator Železnice Slovenskej Republiky (ŽSR) reviews the design of the new Bratislava Main Station in order to increase its capacity. It proposes expanding the rail yard by using the plot on which the current station building is located, something that has also been proposed by the Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava. Other options include moving the whole station further east, or allowing freight trains to bypass the station.
  • On Monday, November 7, the municipal forestry company Mestské Lesy v Bratislave (MLB) will hold a mass hunt of wild boars in the city's forests. The hunting will take place beetween 8:00 and 13:00. Last year MLB hunted 237 wild boars.

If you like what we are doing and want to support good journalism, buy our online subscription. Thank you.


Anniversary of the week

Poľana, one of the four biosphere reserves in Slovakia, joined the first celebration of the International Day for Biosphere Reserves on November 3 with a hike to Zadná Poľana hill. The network of biosphere reserves includes a total of 738 localities. The other three in Slovakia are the Tatras, Slovenský Kras (Slovak Karst) and the Eastern Carpathians (Východné Karpaty).


If you have suggestions on how this news overview can be improved, you can reach us at editorial@spectator.sk.

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