This & that

In an effort to catch you up on a number of things, I will try to touch briefly on a wide range of happenings. Later on, I will write a This & That posting for school; stay tuned! So, for those of you with short attention spans, or a proclivity toward ADHD, this one's for you. The first topic should be entitled, FULBRIGHT CONNECTS since I recently met up with my old friend (and NOT friend who is old) Charlie. We had seen each other at Christian and Leah's wedding, but lost touch again after that. However, when the Keeley's realized they would be on a tour in Vienna, they arranged to come to BA via hydrofoil for the day. Charlie, husband Pat and I had a great dinner and conversation, which somehow even included talk of Mother Juana of St Francis High School notoriety. Charlie, Pat and kids live in Pebble Beach, but it took a Fulbright Exchange in Bratislava to get us together!

Next on the list involves gathering more stamps on my passport. I have left the country twice now, although most people around here don't think Vienna counts as "leaving" because it's only about 35 miles away. I think I read that Bratislava and Vienna are the two most closely placed capitals in the world. My first trip to Austria was with a bus tour to the wine country of Wachau, north of Vienna along the Danube River. The bus ride was spectacular, and Helen had lots to say along the way, unfortunately all of it in Slovak. We made three stops, the first one in Durnstein, a storybook village containing the castle where King Richard the Lionhearted was shackled. Two of the group hiked up to the castle and barely made it back in time; most walked the steep up and down cobbled streets of the village, and discovered a small cemetery with more flowers than Pioneer Garden in May! The next stop was Melk Abbey, a baroque structure on the UNESCO list of designated world heritage sites. Melk has a 1000 year old connection as both a cutural and religious center of Austria, Kings Leopold I and II having used it as a royal residence before turning it over to the Benedictine monks.

We hiked up to the top of its commanding hilltop position (nothing level on this trip) and toured the museum, church and incredible library. Every inch of wall and ceiling space was fresco painted and much of it in gold leaf. Outside in the garden were 250 year old linden trees along the Mozart Path. Mozart and his family have ties to Melk Abbey and signs proclaimed that, indeed, "Mozart was here." (It seems Amadeus played the organ in the Abbey Church.) Although this is a monastery, if you picture the most ornate and ostentatious castle imaginable, you've nailed Melk.

Stopped in Krems where the main purchase for most of us seemed to be pashima scarves, which everyone wore to church the next day. We were quickly made aware that things were a littler pricier than back at the ranch, and we had to think Euros not Slovak Crowns. (Slovakia is now part of the EU and scheduled for conversion to Euros in 2008.) We also thought Krems included a wine tasting featuring the stars of the famous valley vineyards. In fact, it featured a restaurant stop where you could buy anything, including a glass of wine.

Back at the flat, don't watch much TV, never have, but turned it on recently and got sucked into Zlate Vajce (Golden Eggs) where exceptionally unattractive contestants appeared to be involved in a game show based purely on luck. First you picked a very large, grey plastic hen from one of ten roosting on a fence. (See, who WOULDN'T get sucked in to that?!) Then you opened up its hatch and either screamed because you became a finalist or pretended to be happy with some sort of consolation prize. The last man who walked out used a cane and had a very prominent lumpy mole on his forehead; sadly he was destined to be one of the pretenders. The host did the exact same, lame small talk as any host anywhere - universal schmaltz - yet I continued to watch. At this point it was still tourist season around here with some very upscale visitors walking around the Old Town. I was beginning to think BA was full of Beautiful People...until I got a look at Alena, Ladislav, Anna, Stefan, Victor and Marek in their quest for the Zlate Vajce.

Have been to the mall a few times, usually in search of something specific. Was struck by such name-brand stores like Esprit, Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Pierre Cardin, Lacoste, and of course McDonald's which serves expresso and cappuccino here. Didn't know what to make of the womens clothing store called, GAS - KEEP IT SIMPLE (?) The closest mall is Aupark and here you can go to the cinema, bowl, play roulette, grocery shop and use the post office. Elsewhere in BA there is also an IKEA where it appears everyone goes to retrofit their gutted commie flats.

Took in a number of museums when I first arrived and decided that there is a great career to be had in doing English translations in such places. How about this curator's explanation posted in the Clock Museum? "Nice is a collection of small alarm clocks with rich decoration and a group of watches, manifold in their forms and decorative motifs. Great popularity at that time enjoyed clocks with going and striking trains on their dials." Manifold?! Who talks like that? There I was, alone on the third floor amusing myself, as the 80 year-old docent scowled at me, positive I was going to run off with one of the manifolds!

Our Hrad (castle) had a number of exhibits when I visited, and the one I enjoyed the most showcased Slovakia's Tinkers. Tinkers were the original fix-it men who started out repairing pottery with pieces of wire. This trade expanded greatly to mending anything and everything, and then morphed into wire creations, the folk art that most people recognize around here. The tinker trade was passed on father to son, so the birth of a baby boy was cause for fanfare and a very wierd custom. The baby (and future tinker) would be placed on a wooden spade and stuck out and in a window three times while saying, "To the world, my dear, to the world." The photograph featuring this oddity was dated 1985, although I suspect the Slovak version of DCFS frowns upon this practice nowadays. And we thought Michael Jackson was nuts!

If you want to at least sound like you're making an effort with Slovak language, just throw out a few good words: ano, dobre, prosim being three of the best. Any conversation overheard is lousy with "ano" (means yes, but almost pronounced and meant as I KNOW), "dobre" (good, as in dobre den - good morning), but many folks shorten the greeting to just plain "dobre". And don't forget "prosim" which is please, or you're welcome, excuse me, pardon. Finally there is Next Apache, obviously not Slovak, and in fact the name of the Canadian-owned bookstore we adjourn to every Sunday following mass. There is a another multiple-use phrase here that is "Nech sa paci" which can mean, here you go, here you are, can I help you, please enter, after you. The story of the name of the bookstore involves its owner, who, when he first arrived here couldn't understand why everyone was saying "next Apache" because that's exactly what nech sa paci sounds like. So when this Canuck opened his store, it became Next Apache Bookstore.

We Fulbrighters convened in Nitra last month, about four weeks post-orientation. We were missing a few individuals due to travel conflicts but most were able to make it. Mark, who teaches at the University there, and wife Betsy organized the get-together and we Bratislavans made the hour bus trip there on a Saturday. Mark and Betsy have a terrific flat right on the ped zone, the pedestrian-only streets found in most city centrums.

Nitra is Slovakia's fourth largest city, but at 90,000 that ain't so big. Sitting on a bend in the River Nitra the city is the center of Slovak Catholicism, ancient and modern, and also the agricultural capitol of the nation. It was a beautiful fall day, so we decided to take a walking tour of Upper Town featuring Nitra's churches with a guide who was a Belky look-alike from the old sitcom Perfect Strangers. Belky was a Hungarian architecture student with a good sense of humor and provided us with an excellent introduction to the role of the catholic Church in Slovakia.

Oddly enough, it was Prince Pribina, an atheist, who founded the first church in Czech and Slovak Republics. Go figure. This was 833 and for hundreds of years Nitra was a princely seat and bishopric. The city took a pounding by the Turks and the Church almost ran the feudal place into the ground in the 17th century. The plague also took its toll on the population; thank God the townspeople were able to parade through the streets with saints' relics to stave off disease (or so they believed).

We saw a collection of buildings up the hill including a monastery, seminary and library. See Library houses Slovakia's largest collection of rare medieval books, but due to a recent theft, the place was off-limits to regular tourists like us. There were bishop's crowns above the lintels of most facades, and holding up one corner of a building was an atlas-like figure named Corgon (also the name and label of a local beer). Legend has it that you rub his toe for good luck and so we all did. I don't know about the rest of our group, but I think when it was my turn mighty Corgon was on holiday (probably at the spa getting some relief from holding up the damn building), as that was the same week-end my home in Chicago was broken into! (No one home, no one hurt, and I now have a security system that rivals that of the old Stateville. I don't mean to sound flip; it was a terrible experience for me and Sona. My Chicago Fulbright support team plus colleagues, estate agents, contractors, family, and friends worked overtime to set things straight.)

Back to Nitra, there were statues of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, bishops stationed here and credited with codifying the the slavic language. As a former Lemonster, I always thought they were Polish priests, but they were around long before Poland and WAY before Polish jokes (which as far as I know don't exist here).

Completing our tour meant hiking up to the Castle, but really it's more of a walled-in fortress with churches within. It was a strange experience to walk through the churches, which are all connected, on different levels and a hodge-podge of styles. You enter at the side moving through a late-Gothic church, go up some stairs where the other Church has gone baroque. It's walls are all red marble where there aren't painted murals, and more frescoes covering every inch of the ceiling. Instead of a choir loft was the bishop's area, high and regal, more like a throne just in case you forgot who was running the show. There was also a grilled window where the Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Thersa could attend Mass without mixing with the riff-raff. The final church, also added on, was the oldest dating from the 11th century. It was a small Romanesque rotunda with one feature I found fascinating. As you entered, on either side of the down stairway, were alcoves set within walls. They were just large enough so that an individual (one monk) could stand within. Each of the eight plastered chambers afforded an accoustical stage where the group could make a beautiful sound. Susan entertained us with an Episcopal hymn, and while it was no Gregorian chant, the sound was remarkable. This whole collective church structure is called St, Emeram Cathedral. So that about rounded out our tour, polished off with the gift shop where I bought a wooden hand-made rosary and a (but of course) Sts, C & M mug.

Afterward, Janeil treated us to a tea tasting where we were educated on the process (ike wine tasting), and sampled four types of pure (aged) teas. Later we had dinner followed by a concert at the Moorish-style synogue, a recently renovated space now dedicated to exhibits and concerts due to its excellent accoustics.. The concert was the last night of the Nitra music festival and featured an Italian duo who played concertina and guitar. It was an amazing concert, and finished up with SIX encores, raffle prizes, presenting of framed art and thanking everyone (even me I think) for making this all possible. We were trapped there, victims of incessant thank yous, and missed our bus as a result. Yes, we did get another bus, but it was a looong night.

Here's an observation that has some of stumped. What's up with the red hair in Slovakia? That's exactly what I asked Zuzka, and she said, "What are you talking about?" Women dye their hair this hideous RED shade of RED - young but mostly older women! To my American eyes, it's not a good look, but obviously Zuzka doesn't even notice it. Many of these same women also get on the tram at 7:00 AM, obviously work-bound, but dressed like they are ladies-of-the-night, or at least wedding-bound in a really bad dress. I see flimsy, see-through, low cut, dresses, textured hose, REALLY pointy stilettos and "matching" purses that are usually about 4 shades off but who cares? You feel like you're on the NOT tram, having missed the HOT version, as the fashion mags tell it.

Finally, you know you've been here awhile when you go see a ballet a SECOND time. Yep, I'm a junkie, and hooked up with the ticket lady who is honest enough to not sell me a bad seat, and tells me to come 1/2 hour early to get a seat for sold-out shows.. So there I sit, sizing up the performance, like is the prima ballerina cast well, did the male lead complete his triple pirouette, and what were they thinking with those new costumes? Good thing Richard Christianson retired as the Trib dance critic - I am so ready!

Cabbage Festival

Got your attention, right?

I love autumn. I love the mostly crisp, dry weather, the orange, red and gold that announce the change of season, the almost frosty morning that is just slightly cooler than the one before. Fall is the start of school, a new beginning I've been making almost every year since I was four years old. It's football season and another try for Da Bears, because you never know, this could be the year. So now I get to experience fall in Slovakia...

We continue to enjoy Indian Summer, babie leto, where the temperature has climbed into the low 70's by most afternoons for the past three weeks. The explanation of babie leto concerns old women and spiders, and I'm still not sure if I understand it. When spiders weave webs, the threads are thought to resemble strands of grey hair, as seen in old women. So babie leto really means "old women summer". I don't get it either.

Around here, fall brings on the wine festival (in even-numbered years) at Modra, a typical ribbon-village with really good wine. The star of the show is burciak, the new unfermented wine that almost resembles grape soda, but not that sweet. Because I had traveled to Austria the week-end of the festival, I missed sampling the young wine. But not to worry, Kathy's hair stylist clued her in to yet another harvest celebration, the Cabbage Festival. A local recommendation by a Bratislavan? Kathy, Janeil and I were all over this, and hopped the bus to Stupava to catch the action.

We met at the main bus station, with not one but two buses leaving at the same time for the same destination. We got seats, which later on would become precious, as we continued to make many stops along the way. (As is very common here, Janeil had given up her seat to an older person. Thankfully, no one has done this for me - yet!) For about the last six stops, I thought no way is one more person getting on. But board they did, and the bus was packed. Janeil told us later, it was quite ripe in her part of the bus.

As we traveled north of Bratislava, the terrain became hillier and more rural. We saw some mammoth-size pumpkins along the way, but not one sign announcing the big deal Cabbage Festival. In fact, when we finally stopped and most of the people exited the bus, we deduced that we were probably in Stupava. There was not one sign referencing the festival, and not even a posting that, indeed, this was the town. "Stupava?", we questioned the driver. Yah, big nod (you knuckleheads, he's thinking), Stupava. We get off the bus not really knowing which way to go, and in good old Fulbright tradition, walk the wrong direction. Ah, but we're scholars, and quickly figure it out. Honestly, there was not one sign, not one picture of a cabbage - nothing. (For you SW suburbanites, Bengston's this was not!)

So we follow the crowds to...a flea market? It seems you have to walk through the riff-raff to get to the actual festival, and yes, I am going to talk about food. We all agreed that we would like to sample any and all things that looked interesting, usually just sharing a little taste. Kathy bought the first sweet, a pastry baked on its own dedicated metal cylinder, then slid off the rolling pin-size baker, and rolled in sugar and cinnamon. It was oppressively sweet, but somehow we finished it.

We continue walking, but are also thinking where the heck is the cabbage? Are we not at the Cabbage Festival? Not long thereafter, we find a booth where two brothers are operating a family food stand featuring the famous vegetable. We chat them up and they tell us their wives and mothers have been cooking at home for weeks and sleeping little in order to get ready for this week-end. They have prepared a number of treats, and we sample two. Are we worried that this has been prepared in someone's non-FDA-approved kitchen? Are you crazy?! We knosh on a small cheese delicacy and a pastry-stuffed cabbage, both remarkable, and probably involving lard, I'm thinking.

Janeil found a whole grains booth and we all purchased a variety of of breads. At this point we determined it was time for a beer break to counter all that test tasting. While seated at picnic tables we got a feel for where we really were - a few blocks off the main drag in an intersection that had been closed off to set up shop. This was an anniversay year festival, the mayor had visited, and there were said to be an especially large number of booths and more entertainment than usual.

Walking on, we finally came upon the festival center, a large open air barn housing a wide variety of plants, fruits and vegetables. We received our free slaw (paper cup, no fork) and washed it down with a thimble-size sample of wine from someone wearing a sash and tiara. Are you the Cabbage Queen? we wanted to know. Yes, she proudly replied, filling our thimbles to the brim. She was quite attractive - with babie leto grey hair and about 65 years old!

In the rear of the shelter, people were filing past an amazing display of gourd artistry. I saw a dinosour, a turtle, houses and much more created by children using all organic materials. No glitter, markers or paint for these creations that I could have lingered over much longer had something else not caught my eye. Across the stall with its owner, could it be...a Bouvier? No, its coat looked less dense compared to Sampson's, it had bigger ears and a long, uncropped tail. (In Bratislava, most dogs weigh less than 10 pounds, and some get toted around in bags. We were in the country, however, so this was really exciting for me to see a large dog.) Of course I had to approach the owner and ask, "Bouvier?" Yes, he nodded and proudly introduced me to Ariella, who even had a surname but I didn't catch it.

(Traditionally, almost all female names end in ova with accent on the a. This means that husband and wife have different names as well as brother/sister. We've been trying it with our American names. As you can imagine, it rarely works and often sounds downright stupid. Vande Veldova? I don't think so!)

Back to our Bouv. After some rubs and pets, Ariella was soon nudging and doing "the lean", a sure sign that she was a Bouvier. I even got to see Ariella's eyes, as she had a silly red bow tying up her hair in a topknot. She was decked out and on her best behavior; after all, this WAS the Cabbage Festival. I explained that I had a Bouvier in Chicago and could I take her picture. No, he said, as he gave me her lead, he would take our picture. So I got my canine fix that day, as well as my fill of kraut and slaw.

We spent a little time in the beer garden, having lunch and enjoying the action up on center stage. One after another, singing groups wearing matching polyester outfits performed up on the bandstand. There was swaying and lots of yip-yipping on stage, as well as great people-watching down below. We saw one man at a neighboring table eat a pork sandwich, followed by a klabasa, washed down by half a chicken! Ran into Peter and Katka, two teachers from my school, and at the time I thought it odd that the first thing she said was, "What did you have to eat?" I get it now. They also had burciak so I was able to try it. It wasn't bad but Kathy said it tasted much different (better) than that in Modra.

Although we were mostly consumers of food, we did buy some wool sox from a Turkish vendor. No one could decide on the sizing and Janeil advised us to buy smaller. I wasn't convinced and bought one size larger than she suggested, and good thing, too, because whose sox would now fit a CABBAGE PATCH DOLL, Janeil?