Celebrating the first issue at The Slovak Spectator’s office near Bratislava’s main railway station. (source: Courtesy, D. S.)
Daniel J. Stoll is the founder and co-owner of The Slovak Spectator. He lives in the USA and returns to Slovakia regularly in the summer.
Nowhere was the infrastructure of the Cold War more apparent than at the Slovakia-Austria border in 1995. Crossing into Austria from Slovakia was like an interrogation. Barbed wire fences stretched across the terrain toward the Danube River. Stern border guards would poke their fingers in any crevasse of your passport and grumpily question faded visa stamps. Crossings would take at least an hour, jeopardising catching flights.
Now? From Bratislava, the expressway takes you 12 kilometres out of your way south before hooking up with another highway back north and west toward Vienna to join a fleet of angry trucks. The trip is not geographically intuitive, but it takes about 10 minutes less. For many years after Slovakia’s EU membership in 2004, there didn’t even seem to be a border (which was awesome!), but since the Covid-19 restrictions and the influx of migrants, the angry Austrian border guards are back. At least they didn’t prod my passport this time, and we were only delayed 15 minutes.
Food
Then… It’s hard to describe the joy for a foreigner at first discovering the Slovak version of chicken paprikáš. Lunch at the Curisu Gril, a common buffet-style jedáleň (dining room) which lay in the shadow of Michael’s Gate in Bratislava’s old town, was an almost daily occurrence for fellow founders and friends of The Slovak Spectator. The thought of chicken served with creamy paprika sauce over halušky (small dumplings) by friendly yet impatient Slovak babky (grannies) as they shooed you down the line is a mouthwatering memory.
Today… Buffets have been replaced by food courts. The influx of worldly fast food found in malls may be celebrated by the sophisticated urban crowd. I can’t help but lament that these dining options are the same everywhere, whether in Bratislava, Banská Bystrica, Baku, London, New York, or any mall anywhere in the modernised world. I honestly don’t have a sense of where I am in any of these settings. Maybe that’s by design. I miss the Slovak grannies.
Látky’s football pitch, where the author's knowledge of the intricacies of the Slovak language were expanded. (source: Courtesy, D. S.)
