Bratislava Billy: October 2011

Last week I began life in Bratislava, moving into my 2 bedroom apartment, about 10 minutes walk to the office. The experience has been different; however, I have enjoyed my first week here. I first wanted to share my initial observations and experiences:

My journey began on the plane ride over. My movie options were “9/11” or “Bridesmaids”. Being that I am not a big fan of watching “Shark Week” when I am off to snorkel in the Galapagos Islands, or “When Animals Attack” while getting ready to camp in Samburu National Park in Kenya, as unmanly as it sounds, Bridesmaids won. Unless I had a beautiful woman with me, I never thought I would watch that movie in my lifetime, furthermore, I was alone, in public on fully booked flight, but anything is possible.

My furnished apartment comes with most of the standard amenities, including a balcony with a great view of the Bratislava Castle. However, the view comes with a price, which my apartment is on the top floor of a 6 floor complex. To get to my apartment, I must first ride in a 1-person (two is possible but tight) elevator which looks like it belongs in coal mine museum. Not only must I manually open the gym cage like safety door, then the wooden French doors to enter, but the elevator floor drops 1-2 inches once you step foot inside regardless of which floor the elevator is on. And given the small size, I am looking forward to carrying my bike up 5 flights of stairs in the summer time heat. But it is safe, and most of these older building have similar set-ups. It was inspected by someone and that inspection paper was notarized.

Which brings me to my next observation; I have never had to get so many documents notarized! Only once in 31 years did I notarize a document, and even then, the currency exchange that I had it processed at put very little effort into the process. Here, every document must be notarized, whether it is to the government or even the company we hire for shipping and taxes. Worse, some of the notaries had to be Slovak notaries. For those, I had someone on my team write a letter in Slovak about want I needed, then upon finding a notary here, handled that with my passport, and a thumb’s up. But it worked, and I managed to get my items shipped to Slovakia, now they are just waiting in customs.

Back to my apartment, I mentioned I have most of the standard amenities, but I am missing a dryer, which is not common to have here. And being that Slovakia has all four seasons similar to the northern US, and it is winter here, I have a nice indoor rack which I hang laundry on to dry. My laundry cycle time has gone from 1.5 hours to 1 whole day and I will have to find a new use for my dryer sheets. And I hope I used the washer correctly as the instructions, which were in English, only provided me with energy efficient ideas and how to clean the machine every 4 months. I think I correctly ran the machine, however, time will tell if people at the office start to distance themselves from me.

My frequent experiences at the grocery store will get a separate blog, but cooking has also been an adventure. One of my employees laughed at my print out today of a Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion table from -99 C/-146 F to 362 C/683 F. But there was no way I thought 200 was going to cook a frozen pizza. And if it was not for the pizza box having picture of what to set the oven on, I would have never guess which of the 10 options should have been used along with the temperate gauge. Even with that, I still burnt the pizza. And undercooked a potato because the microwave is not set by time, but kilograms. Damn, I knew leaving my scale back in Chicago as a paper weight would come back to haunt me.

My television consists of 50+ satellite channels, of which, only CNN and BBC are in English. And if you have ever seen CNN and BBC while in another country, after about 2 hours, the shows start to repeat themselves. There is one other channel that plays tricks on me and is sometimes in English, and other times in Slovak. And last night, I did watch Shawshank Redemption in Slovak; even without understanding the words, it is still an awesome movie.

Finally some observations outside my apartment. While this is not specifically Bratislava, but all of Europe, I do not understand why when I order a bottle of pop (or soda for the east US, coke for south US), the waitress/waiter brings it out with a glass, and only fills the glass half full, and leave the bottle half empty. Why not fill up the whole glass? That one baffles me, and I hope over these next two+ years, I can find the answer.

Be careful of any drink that ends with ….ica. They are strong, and for some reason, they keep multiplying and never seem to end. Furthermore, Absinthe is awful, and it does not help that the drink is on fire when you are trying it for the first time.

Garlic and toast, is garlic and toast. I ordered an appetizer from one restaurant thinking I would be getting garlic bread, however, when I came out as toast and three cloves of garlic, I really was not sure what to think of it. Rather than gnaw on a clove, I thought it was better to pass and not make an ass of myself the first week. I guess you should rub the garlic clove on the bread, so now I know for next time.

Finally, number 10. Smoking is common here in Europe. Even downstairs at the office, while you technically cannot smoke in buildings, if coffee is served, smoking is allowed inside within a designated area. Over a course of three weeks for business trips here earlier this year, I inhaled more smoke that I have in 2 years. However, I see why smoking is common, at 3.20 Euro ($4.25 US) a pack, being a finance major, I know a deal when I see one (Just kidding, smoking is an addictive and serious health problem that must be addressed).

While this is just the beginning of my time experiencing different cultures and traditions of the European lifestyle while living here in Slovakia, I am really looking forward to this opportunity and welcome the change. Who knows where this journey will take me, but I am looking forward to the rollercoaster ride, and hopefully you will enjoy following my adventures.