The Slovak Spectator team back in 1996. (source: Archive of Rick Zednik)
I remember the first English teachers who discovered Slovakia after 1989. Some arrived with a saviour complex, determined to civilise a post-communist country – eager to spend a year or two in a communist time capsule, now flung wide open for young Americans and Brits.
Others came for the cheap beer and the admiration of Eastern European women. Some may have dreamed of writing a bestselling novel or publishing a poetry collection about this unfamiliar land.
Four Americans – Rick Zednik, Daniel Stoll, Eric Koomen and Richard Lewis – who found themselves in Bratislava during this post-revolutionary period had bigger ambitions than just keeping an expat’s journal on life in Eastern Europe. They founded an English-language newspaper. And something happened that they likely never expected: the paper survived for 30 years.
The Slovak Spectator was born at a time when only a handful of people in Slovakia spoke English. Many young Slovaks were learning it by translating lyrics from Western bands, each according to their musical taste – Duran Duran, The Cure, Depeche Mode.
