To Blava, to Blava I Went

This past weekend, the American teachers in Tisovec decided to travel to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. By European standards Bratislava (or Blava, for short) is not a big city, but for those of us in Tisovec where the population is less than 5,000 people, Bratislava is a happening place.

There is a contingent of six American teachers in Bratislava. They are serving at a bilingual Lutheran high school called the Lyceum (pronounced: leets-eum). These American teachers are all in their twenties or early thirties --- except for an older couple from Kentucky. The Schmidts are grandparents who have just recently retired, and they are serving for a year as teachers in Slovakia. How cool is that?

Bratislava is about an hour train or bus ride from Vienna. It is at the far western point of Slovakia. To get to Kosice, Slovakia's second largest city, is about a four and a half hour train ride. Tisovec is in the middle of Slovakia. Sadly, to get from Tisovec to Bratislava is a SIX hour bus or train ride. Tisovec is a small town and there are no direct connections ANYWHERE from Tisovec. Lucky for us, Fridays are always half days at school. The last class of the day ends at 11:20, so we usually have enough time to catch the noon bus whenever we want to go anywhere. Last Friday that is just what we did!

By noon on Friday, we were lining up at the bus stop with some of our students who were also heading home for the weekend. (Remember that my school is a week-long boarding school. All of our students go home each weekend --- this is why Friday is always a half day.) The noon buses are always super crowded. It was a looong bus ride to Blava. We were not on an air conditioned bus, and the road was windy most of the way.

When we got to Bratislava, we took a city bus from the bus station and went to one of the teachers' flats. We went out for pizza (pizza is BIG in Slovakia) and drinks and then headed home to hang out.

On Saturday, we traveled to Raca - a small town just outside of Bratislava - for a "New Wine" Festival. You see, Slovaks are good drinkers. In fact, Slovaks are VERY good drinkers. In Tisovec, it is not uncommon to walk past the nursing home on my street and see the residents taking SHOTS of Slivovica at three in the afternoon. (Slivovica is often called fire water. It is very strong alochol.) Needless to say, a lot of people were at the New Wine Festival. The new wine is called burcak in Slovak. It has not been aged for long. It's typically sweet and very potent. We spent the day walking around the festival and sipping from red and white burcak and eating good Slovak food.

It is Slovak tradition to toast before you drink anything - a shot, a beer, a glass of wine etc. You toast before each round of drinks. Here's how it works: everyone in the group raises his or her glass and says "na zdravie." This means "to your health" and it sounds kind of like you're saying "nice driveway." You are supposed to make eye contact and say na zdravie to everyone you are sharing a drink with. A couple of weeks ago, I was a little uncomfortable with this ritual. It felt weird to make eye contact with everyone around the circle. Now, I like it. It's fun to connect in that way with people around you. Like good Slovaks, we toasted "na zdravie" before each glass of new wine. We had a great time! At the end of the day, a Slovak told us that you never toast "na zdravie" before good wine because the wine is not done yet. Who knew?

These are my new friends:

From left to right --- Mark (Tisovec), Heidi (Tisovec), Me, Stephanie (Liptovsky Mikulas),

Eric (Tisovec), Maika (Bratislava), Carsten (Bratislava), and Becky (Tisovec) and

Jon (Bratislava --- he's the one taking the picture)

This is Heidi and I on the city bus: