I have now been in Bratislava for a few months, but thought I’d collect some earlier impressions from my journal. We quarantined upon arrival with basic necessities to keep us going, but after a negative Covid test, we were also able to wander into the city centre every now and again.

I don’t get the sense that Slovakia went into any sort of ‘lockdown’ for that long. Out and about, people seem very good at masking up for shopping and public transport, but are otherwise completely relaxed. Then again, with 28 recorded deaths from the virus (up to 39 at the time of writing, two months later), I can’t imagine it would have imprinted itself onto the national consciousness nearly as much as in the UK. That’s 39 in the entire country, by the way.

Returning to first impressions, the railway station at which we arrived gave me a slightly lukewarm feeling, truth be told. But there’s a fairly good reason for the cracked, vaulting concrete columns and sheer expanse of tracks between platforms. Petržalka station sits in the heart of residential Bratislava, but in one direction goes to Vienna, and in the other serves only some industrial docks. The line goes behind the flats opposite us, so in the evenings with the windows open, we can hear the echoes of cargo trains rattling past. In other words, it’s not really designed for tourists – and that’s essentially what we are, until we’ve settled in.

This lukewarm feeling might’ve extended to Petržalka too, but quickly abated. As the main image hopefully indicates, it’s basically one giant housing estate, favouring high-rise tower blocks over semi-detached suburbia. It’s been called a concrete jungle, and not without good reason. It took us a while to figure out that pedestrian routes and vehicular routes don’t necessarily intersect, which can give the impression of incredibly poor city-planning (“who forgets a pavement by the main road?!”). Only it turns out that the footpath goes the other way around the block, to save you inhaling exhaust fumes on the way to the shops.

The majority, however, is extremely comparable to what I’m used to. The pavement is cracking in places but it does the job, and I see fewer potholes than can often be found on British roads. Trees and green-spaces abound, and the supermarkets are interspersed with corner-shops and random businesses (a Spanish bakery neighbours a hot-tub store on our block, a few units down from a pram shop). The blocks haven’t got anything on Edinburgh tenements, but all that really tells you is that I’ve been spoilt by Edinburgh tenements. The buildings themselves are plain, and not modern, but at least the concrete has been painted in fading hues of colour to ease – not accentuate – their appearance.

Still, there was at first the unshakeable feeling that in the high-rise of Petržalka I was somehow seeing the ghost of Ulaanbaatar, or the residential areas of Chinese cities, especially in Xinjiang. It took a while, and I may still be wrong, but I think it’s in the dainty cracks along tarmac roads that divides them into ginormous sheets that have been mashed together. That, and the uneven kerbsides which probably lay flat when first placed (no longer); or the musty yellow bricks, shaped like flattened dumbbells, which neatly tesselate a section of path. And the bike-lines – not lanes – of pavement tiles (always red pastel), with ridges like those on a griddle-pan, that run along the length of a pavement maybe one or two tiles deep. I think they’re for bikes (or grip, during Winter?), and while I’ve definitely seen equivalents in Edinburgh (George Square, by the library, for example), these ones take me straight back to Karamay.

I see thin-paned windows on balcony-conversions, which always seem to be used as laundry rooms, and immediately think back to my own in China, or the Kuitun flat where Becca stayed. The congruence of instances like these was overwhelming at first, and my initial answer was ‘Communism’ (been and gone) – but I have no idea if this is at all close to the mark. The random similarities suggest that they’re not unique to either region (Slovakia or Xinjiang), but these two happen to be the subset of areas which I happen to have visited so far. In any case, I think it actually helped me feel at home more quickly, not less.

I’d almost got used to this vaguely-recalled Chinese residency when we made our first trip into the city centre, and hoo boy, it could not be more different. Suddenly we were unmistakably in continental Europe. No question. Pale painted plaster crumbled beneath peeling white window-frames and ornate façades from whichever previous century. Any quiet desire to have stopped our journey in Vienna, or perhaps Brussels, melted away. We wandered aimlessly into the side streets and, when we found ourselves on an incline, kept on going.

We lingered in a graveyard (more German tombstones than I’d expected), letting the city sounds fade into the rustle of leaves and watching the midges dance in the dappled sunlight. And then we pressed play again, and stepped out of the cool, and the quiet, and into the humid midday bustle. Up and up, until mansions surrounded us – strangely modern mansions, with extravagant feats of architecture underpinning their design. Rich people, we thought, and then looked again. Embassies! Their flags were not so unnoticeable, now that we looked for them. Coming round a corner, we came face-to-face with a scaled-down replica White House. Honestly. My favourite was Kazakhstan, with no fewer than three shaded terraces from which to survey the city.

The incline increased up to a war monument visible from Petržalka (when not behind a tower-block which, to be fair, isn’t very often). We strolled around its grounds (a man in one neighbouring embassy squinted at us, and we carried on past) and then made our way back home.

I think I’ll conclude this rambling collage-of-a-post. There’s only so much that I’ve actually seen so far (see: the pandemic), and exploring outside of the city has been extremely limited too. I may use extensive comparison to describe Bratislava, but this is just to put it in terms with which I am already familiar – Slovakia comes with its own unique ambience. I look forward to getting to know it better, and leave you with one final ‘impression’: Slovak bread is excellent. Thank goodness I’m not fussy about carbs.

—TJC