Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:11:23 -0500 Subject: Bratislava Report
This is the second H.Jeffie message. I've been a bit slow about writing, since I haven't had anything fantastic to report. But I know you're curious, so here is the summary of my trip to Bratislava, Slovakia. You'll also be getting my Montreal report in a little while.
The Bratislava World Cup is March 8th-9th. I'm really short on cash, so I buy the ticket using frequent flier miles on United, and manage to borrow enough to pay for the airport taxes and a hotel for a few nights. It's a direct flight, albeit a red-eye leaving Thursday night, from Dulles to Vienna, where I plan to meet Soren Thompson and Bruno Goosens who is renting a car for the short drive across the border to Bratislava. Bruno is our US referee for this event. He has been to Bratislava once before, more than 20 years ago when the country was still Czechoslovakia, and when the distinction between Eastern and Western Europe was defined more by Capitalism and Communism than by geography.
I flew back the preceding Sunday from my 48 hour trip to London, and I've had trouble adjusting to the jetlag. When I leave Thursday night to Vienna I don't feel terribly well rested, and I end up in a seat with little leg room and a woman with an infant for a neighbor. I don't get much real rest on the plane, so I feel severely wacky by the time we make it past customs in Vienna. The airport there is remarkably smoky, it seems everyone waiting for an arriving passenger has a cigarette going. We wait an hour or two for Soren Thompson to show up, and we get on the road to Slovakia.
The drive and border crossing are unremarkable aside from a couple of wrong turns, and we decide to eat lunch in the old town before heading to the hotel. I'm staying at Hotel Bratislava, but Bruno and Soren are staying at the botel Gracia: a boat turned hotel.
Lunch is odd. It was supposed, according to Bruno's 20 year old memory of Slovakian cuisine, to be potato pasta with goulash. It's more like goulash with pancakes on the side. But I'm starving and it tastes fine. Then we walk around the old town. I'm so sleep deprived at this point I can't tell you exactly what we do, but I know we visit the Gracia before returning to the car.
But, the car has been booted by the parking police! We apparently parked in a restricted area. Handling this involves taking the ticket and finding a translator, who explains we need to call the police and they will come take payment and remove the boot, and finding a telephone that accepts coins, and getting some coins at a money changer, and explaining to the police who don't speak too much English what we want. When we get back to the car from the phone they are already there, and Bruno goes into negotiations with them. Ultimately he talks them down from 2000 koruna to 500 koruna, or about $12 US. If only it worked that way in the states!
I fall asleep in the back seat while Bruno drives around looking for the Hotel Bratislava. We arrive, I check in and go straight upstairs to continue my much needed nap.
The hotel is decorated in a style you will never find in the US. I'm at a loss to describe it, aside from saying it's 1980's communist high fashion. Everything wooden is black or red, at least twice painted over, with worn out chrome accents, the ceilings are low, and there are faux portholes on the walls. And, the hotel has its own strip club inside. Aside from the booming of the music I can hear late into the night, I can't tell you anything about that: the only advice I got about Bratislava before going was to avoid the strip club in the hotel. The good thing is that even though it's a three-star affair, the hotel, like everything in Slovakia, is cheap: $50 per night for a double.
Later that evening Eric Hansen shows up, my roommate for the trip. He had been training in Germany and caught a ride with them in their team van. Nat Burke is staying at the Bratislava with us, and Cody Mattern will show up later that night to room with him. We get together and go get some cash and head to the old town via taxi. I discover to my horror that my checking account is empty and I didn't bring enough cash to last the trip. So I start living on the goodwill of my teammates. By the end of the trip I've racked up a small debt to almost every other fencer, and to Bruno. We walk around quite a while looking for a decent restaurant that has an English menu, the problem being that if they have an English menu they triple their prices. I should have bought a book with a Slovakian translation guide, it would pay for itself after two meals. The good thing is that even an expensive restaurant in Bratislava costs very little. It's easy to eat a full meal with drinks at a place with an English menu for under $10. We eat and taxi back to the hotel to try and get some more sleep.
Saturday is the first day of fencing, scheduled start time 2pm. The hotel breakfast leaves a lot to be desired, and I don't really feel like I got enough sleep or that I eat enough in the morning. My jetlag and sleep deprivation are killing me. When we arrive at the venue, I'm seeded 16th, which would mean I don't have to fence the first day, so I wander around and don't really prepare to fence. But someone ahead of me in the points shows up who hadn't been registered by his country, and I do end up having to fence the pools. So they get started and I proceed to drop one close bout after another. I lose 5 bouts, 4 of them 5-4 losses, and my only win is (of course) against the best fencer. I don't even make the cut out of the pools to the DEs. To add insult to injury, all but one of the other US fencers make it to the second day. At this point it becomes obvious that after the London WC I should have stayed in Europe, where I could have trained with some good fencers and been well adjusted to the time zone. My jetlag made this event a waste of time, money, and a lot of frequent flier miles.
We go back to our hotels, shower, and agree to meet at a place Bruno has chosen: there is a bridge across the Danube that has a restaurant at the top of one of its pylons, a couple hundred feet above the road. It looks cool. It's supposed to be expensive but with a fantastic view. So we meet at the bottom of the bridge, but there's no one there to run the elevator. After looking around mindlessly for a while for how we're supposed to get to the top of the pylon, a passer by tells us it's closed for renovation. Just our luck. Some of the group heads off to the nearest restaurant we can see, and some of us wait for the remaining fencers who haven't shown up yet. After we're all together we eat dinner, and most of the guys (who have to fence on Sunday) head to bed. But the two of us who don't have to fence, Michael Feldschuh and myself, go out looking for something to do. We see an ad for "The Big Apple", a club downtown that looks like it suits our taste, and wend through town to find it. It ends up being expensive, smoky, and not so great. By the time we give up on it, I'm too tired to continue and head to bed.
The next day we check out of the Bratislava, most of the guys fence, and Eric heads back to Germany. We got to see some really nice fencing in the final 4, and the final between Fischer and Zakharov was one of the better bouts I've seen this year. After the tournament is done, Michael gets the idea he wants a massage, and Bruno, Soren, Michael and myself ask around and drive around for a couple hours looking for a place that will give a massage to men on a Sunday. There are a couple places that are women-only on Sunday, and we finally find a sauna that will take us. But it's "Family Day", and you have to have a bathing suit. So at this point I bail out, just wanting to try and get some more sleep, but they go to a store to buy speedos and go back for the sauna and massage.
I go to the Gracia where I'll split a room with Soren. It's not so bad, the room is reasonably large, the shower is nicer than at the Bratislava, the breakfast is better too, it's very close to the old town, and it's similar in price. I don't think you can feel the boat rocking, but it is at a bit of an angle. Fortunately the beds are all set up so you don't roll out of them, you just have your head higher than your feet.
When they get back, we all go out for dinner at "the best restaurant in Slovakia." It's pretty good, though not as good as a few places I've eaten in the states, and still only costs about $30 each for a full dinner with wine.
The next day we drive back to Vienna in the morning and fly home. This time I manage to get an exit row seat, and just in case the trip hadn't been weird enough, next to me was an air-conditioner repair man who's returning from first meeting his mail-order Bride in Russia. He's apparently very happy with the deal, and plans to bring her to live with him in Florida as soon as he can!
-Jeff