Letter from Slovakia

Gruß Gott!

As I write this, our train is just pulling out of a misty, freezing-cold Vienna, the rooftops dusted with snow like alpine gingerbread houses.

A few things weigh on my mind as I start out on this new and unexpected chapter: anxiousness about how I will get on with new colleagues, and a very real concern about actually being able to perform everyday tasks in Slovak.

After all, Slovakia’s native tongue does not belong to the Romance and Germanic language groups which I am at least partly conversant in. It is (according to family linguistics expert, Karen) a Slavic language, so it’s pretty much all news to me! I suppose it will be a bit like learning my first foreign language, although I come to the table equipped with skills and experience from learning French & German, so that should help – I HOPE!!!

Anyway, I should recap events since I last posted. The days since New Year’s Eve have been an utter blur! To celebrate, Karen & I went to a fondue restaurant, ‘The Melting Pot’, in central D.C. We were treated to a cheese fondue starter made at the table (!), a stock fondue main course with raw lobster, beef, chicken, etc. to cook, complemented by a whole array of dipping sauces, and last but by no means least, a chocolate fondue for dessert – mmmm :-)


The following day, we were off to Vienna, which is the closest you can fly to Slovakia from Washington. We were touched to have a lift from John - who has made so much possible for us these last three months - despite the early hour on New Year’s Day. The airport was the quietest I’ve ever seen an airport of any size – I think I’m flying on 1st January more often in future!

Because it was the 1st, there were no direct flights to Vienna, so we had to fly via Toronto in Canada. The two hour flight up was on a bone-rattling, 30-odd-seat propeller plane. It was like being in a massage chair for two hours – by the time we landed it felt like having Parkinson’s! Another quirk was that the flight attendant had the time to go around and make eye contact with each individual passenger in turn during the safety demonstration, so it felt like getting a dressing down at school!

Toronto had a light covering of snow, and that’s about all I can say of my first trip to Canada, because we were only on the ground for about an hour. Boarding the Austrian Airlines flight, I was struck by the awardwinningly-hideous seat colour scheme – green, red & yellow. What a place to spend 10 hours of your life!

After dragging enough luggage for the next two months from the airport, and having barely slept, we crashed for a few hours in our nice and very central hotel. In the days since, we have sampled plenty of Viennese delights, including the delicious Mozartkugel (marzipan balls covered in chocolate), lots of Wurst, hot punch with various spirits, and heady Glühwein!

 
The highlights of our stay would have to be visiting the Schönbrunn Palace, one of the ornate seats of the former Habsburg monarchy, and dinner at a ‘Heuriger’, a traditional Austrian wine tavern with homemade Auslese wine (nahnah Mum & Dad!), good homely food and live music at the table on guitar and accordion.

   So then, back to reality. We’ve crossed the border now and changed trains at Bratislava, where I struggled to even buy a sandwich! I’ll have to show you an example later, but just imagine you don’t recognise a single word – that’s about the size of it. For the meantime, it may as well be Chinese!

The landscape here is pretty, wooded and mountainous, and there seems to be more snow as we head east. We’re not far from our destination of Žilina (phonetically, roughly ‘Zjilinah’). I’ll report on my impressions when I arrive.

Mark