Cosmopolitan

Tulln, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia

When I think of a cosmopolitan city, I would not in a million years have included Bratislava. We crossed another non-border border from Austria into Slovakia this afternoon and into the heart of old town Bratislava.

Bratislava

This is by far the most diverse and, outside of Oktoberfest in Munich, the liveliest town we have visited. (It’s Saturday, which may have something to do with the liveliness!) With a population of about half a million, it is the capital of Slovakia. I cannot quite wrap my brain around the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and who owned what before WWI, but it was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo, which was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 and is now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which kicked off the war. At the end of WWI, Czechoslovakia was formed from the collapse of the A-H Empire. Then along came another world war and the Eastern Bloc was formed at the close of that war, and existed from 1947 until 1991, ending with the collapse of the USSR. Czechoslovakia was in the Eastern Bloc.

To visit Czechoslovakia, you had to cross the Iron Curtain. I rode a train from Munich to Prague in the summer of ‘74. My dad had met a young woman, Elena, in 1973 in Spokane, Washington, who was in charge of the Czech pavilion project for Expo ‘74. My dad was a general contractor and built many of the buildings at the Expo, including the Czech pavilion. Dad invited the Czech team to our home, and mom, as always, welcomed strangers. I was in Europe the summer of ‘74. Elena returned home in the summer of ‘74 and my dad encouraged me to travel to Prague to visit. Crossing the Iron Curtain at the time meant you were tracked at all times. I remember crossing through “no-man’s land,” which in my memory was about a quarter mile of desolate nothing, and barb wire and guards on the Czech border. The train stopped and border patrol boarded, checking every single item I carried, which was one backpack, but again, in my fallible memory, it took hours for the patrol to scour the train. No one smiled.

I was met at the station in Prague by Elena, and enjoyed several days of sight-seeing around Prague under her wing. I remember a visit to the counryside and her relatives for a picnic lunch. The women were plump and wore long cotton dresses with drab scarves tied around their heads and tucked under their multiple chins. One spoke a few words of English to me. “Elena should have stayed in US,” the woman confided to me. “No good here. No free.” I think I smiled and nodded. The conversation stayed with me all these years.

I barely noticed when Czechoslovakia was “freed” from Communist rule in 1991. I barely noticed when the country split in two, to become the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (Of note, Czechoslovakia is the only Eastern Bloc country that divided without warfare, known as the Velvet Divorce.) While I remember Prague as an enchanting city, I did not visit Bratislava. So, I knew nothing as we approached the “border” of Slovakia today, and I had no expectations of a city so vibrant and full of life as it was today.

The no-border border crossing from Austria to Slovakia

Slovakia is a small country with about 5 million people, that speak Slovak. There are a couple hundred thousand people in the Czech Republic that speak Slovak, but that’s it in the world. So, guess what. Everyone thus far we have met (and a little web search tells me) most people speak English here. The “new country syndrome” hits hard when trying to read signage, but it feels comfortable to ask questions on the street. It was a little emotional riding into this free country by bicycle no less, all these years later.

There were hoards of tourist groups in town this afternoon. I noticed a little plaque on the wall across from the outdoor cafe where we ordered a bowl of bean stew. The plaque said something about Mozart. Then, along came a gaggle of short-grey-haired ladies with a tour leader holding a banner that said “Amadeus.” Mozart allegedly played a concert right here on this street in front of the cafe where we sat when he was six years old. No one seems to be able to verify it, but I imagine the tour leader expounded in great detail about little Wolfgang pulling his violin bow across the strings as his father stood by with a watchful eye.

Along with the tour group of short-grey-haired women (and a few bald men), there were large groups of Asians, some hispanics seated next to us, what appeared to be a group of young Roma’s (gypsy is apparently no longer politically correct), and a sprinkling of dread-locked black-skinned beauties roaming about. Even a bride strode down the middle of the street, followed by the string of wedding celebrants.

And then there was us, in our scraggly sticking out helmet hair and black spandex bike shorts. I wonder what people said of us. No picture needed. I think we at least added to the cosmopolitan feel of the city.

We are on the Danube tonight, watching the lit-up tour boats slip by. It’s about time for a waltz picked out on our tinny plywood ukuleles.

The Blue Danube Waltz

63 miles, 1900 feet of climbing. Working our way southward!