Always finding an excuse to travel, I was beckoned to Slovakia by the supposed Vizsla World Championship... The presumed Vizsla show (according to my savvy interpretation of the Hungarian language, and decoding of the Hungarian Vizsla Club Site) was to be in Senec, a neighboring city of Bratislava. Well, I never did see the Vizsla exhibition, and I never did confirm that it actually took place... but I had a great time with some friends in a new city regardless!
Bratislava, the former capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, and the modern capital of Slovakia, is a cool city to spend a short weekend trip. It was cool to catch up with our friends from the Czech Republic... we had plenty to catch up on and Bratislava was the perfect meeting place for us all. We got in Saturday morning, met up at the train station, and hit the town running...
After a bomb little lunch, we took to the streets... saw the Castle, window-shopped some art galleries, surveyed the dozens of sweet street sculptures (including the paparazzi), and made our way to the city centre. Of course, like every proper European city, there was a festival programme shaking out around the centre fountain. There were Solvak dancers, musicians, and artists filling the square.
And, I couldn't resist... even though I don't speak much Hungarian, I just had to experiment with the credibility of the Slovak State Language Act: the officially banning of minority languages (ie. Hungarian) within the Slovakia borders... I'll have to explore the depths of this tension in a future journal or essay... it's far too great of a topic to spit out now, but many Hungarians have very strong views / feelings about the once-Hungarian (and considered still Hungarian to many) neighboring lands.
Speaking of Hungarian border discrepancies, I did discover an epic cheese shoppe! I know... they have nothing to do with each other, but that's the beauty of the segue. The folks at Cheesy Bratislava were super kind and insisted on, not only giving me lots of fine cheese samples from around the world, but helped us book a hotel room in the city centre with a hot rate. I can't say all the people we met were this nice, but this couple hooked it up! Oh, and I couldn't get out of there without buying a few hundred grams of 6-year aged Dutch Gouda!
Emily and I took a drive to Senec to see if we could track down the Vizsla show, but had no luck. We did find Sun Lakes though... and that was pretty entertaining. There was this really famous (at least locally-famous) lobster restaurant in the middle of the lake. I asked a local where the lobster comes from, and he said in his best English... "from the restaurant... it's in the restaurant." Cool. So, vizslas were nowhere to be found except this one we came across back in Bratislava... but they had no idea what I was talking about with the exhibition either... some World Championship...
We had a great night too... it started with a traditional Slovak supper, progressed to drinks at a retro pub with a hot Rockabilly act (The Cellmates, busting out all the hits from Cash to Elvis to Buddy Holly), and escalated into the underground club scene late night... I have to admit, my friends had some pretty good moves, and it was a challenge trying to keep up all night. By about four:am, I couldn't suppress my monkey psyche any longer; I just had to climb the fountain in the city centre... it was worth it. Thanks to Calan, Emily, Brock, Kent, and Emily for a good little getaway...
No comments:
Post a Comment