Document Central Europe

billboards in bratislava

2008-10-15T00:40:00.000+02:00

... do i need to say something about this?

Tesco Piestany

2008-07-27T22:45:00.003+02:00

When i entered the Tesco store in Piestany, i swore i had been there before. They all look so much alike. But when i came to the toilet i knew I hadn't. I would have definately remembered the undertaker situated by the toilets on the hallway.

Halušky á la Provence

2008-03-30T04:33:00.005+02:00

My friend Mišo Sládek is an architect. This means he likes good food. For a project about the city of Martin, that is in the run to become European Cultural Capital together with a French city, he came with the idea of a Slovak Fusion restaurant.
The decision was easily made: we would make Halušky, the grey gnocci-like mass that traditionally comes with Bryndza cheese and bacon. His task was to grind the potatoes ('ratat'), mix them with egg and flour and then drop them by small pieces in the boiling water, using the special technique of 'haluškovat'. My task was to add the 'a la Provence'. I slowly fried little Roma tomatoes with garlic so they became soft and sweet. A little bit of olive oil in the pan, and shortly fried a hand full of rosemary in it. Since turning this meal into something vegetarian was already a tricky business, we decided to keep the Bryndza.

And most important. We finished our plates.

Easter

2007-10-15T20:33:00.002+02:00

Easter in Slovakia needs some explanation. From dawn to afternoon the men go around to the houses of the women they know carrying a willow whip called korbač and water. They can wet them and whip them and in return the little boys receive money or candies, the elder men a drink. The amount of colored ribbons on their korbač tells how many women they have had. Don't bother asking for explanation, because you will get vague stories about that this would make women beautiful for the rest of the year and such. It is a tradition, period.

On this easter morning Radana and I went with the car around the city and surrounding villages to do the exact opposite of all the other women in this country: we went hunting for men. Armored with our cameras we found this group of young boys, whom were definitely still in the age that they are more interested in candies than in nice girls..... and i had nothing to fear from them. But as soon as we hunted down some experienced men, i stood no chance. They took my camera from me and started to hit me while one photographed it. A solid piece of undercover journalism i would say. Thank god they didn't have water with them!

Creative Croatians on Black Saturday

2007-07-30T14:37:00.001+02:00

This is a special post for those who believe "Black saturday" is a pure Western/French matter. Saturday 28th of July we drove from Split (croatia) to Bratislava (slovakia) with an average speed of 48 km/h with an average temperature of 34 degrees celcius. An unfinished tunnel between Split and Zagreb cost us 2,5 hours (same story as last year, why is this tunnel still not fixed?), bad traffic management before the border near Maribor another 2 hours with cars standing still. These Croatian black Mercedes drivers found a very creative solution to the traffic jam. They spend 15 minutes detaching the grid between the highways and then simply turned around....
As for us? thanks to a magnificent broadcasting of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk live in Carnegie Hall on the Austrian OE1 radio between 02.00h and 03.00 we made it home safely.

White

2007-05-15T20:58:00.000+02:00

Anja, Kolochava

There is something about them. They make you follow them not only with your eyes, but make you turn your head. Shiny, high-heeled, elegant, proud, cheap. White shoes.

Wearing white shoes is ignoring the whole in the ground that is your toilet, ignoring the cobble stones, ignoring the fact that you wash your clothes in the river like all the other women in the village.

Wika, Mukacheve

Maria, Kolochava

Svietka, Chop

border of Europe

2007-05-15T17:45:00.002+02:00

Chop is the smaller border town between Ukrajina and Slovakia, filled with women uniform and men who will change your dollars, euro's or Slovak crowns on the street. The border of Ukrajina has a political high profile, after the planned entrance of Slovakia to Shengen, this will be the very last time you passport will be checked in Europe. It takes you 20 minutes to enter Ukrajina, but more than two hours to get back. Besides European money, the Canadian governement recently donated 4,5 million US dollars to improve the border security as part of the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction (Krakow Post, 10-5-07)
Both Chop and Uzhorod are crowded with gambling houses, small places
with blinded windows in regular houses, which makes you wonder about the effectiveness of the border against smuggling -of cigarettes, cheap vodka and people.

Danka, Chop

Slobo on a bottle

2006-10-27T17:59:00.000+02:00

Slobodan, Novi Sad, oct 2006

A morning at the trainstation of Novi Sad. Three men are sitting at a white plastic table, eating chunks of porkmeat and drinking serbian Rakija. As many people in Serbia, they are trying to sell handmade stuff on the street. These men sell prints on selfmade bottles the of archangel Gabriël, Maria and... Mladic, Karadgic and former president Slobodan Milosevic. Hiding my Dutch nationality behind my poor Slovak language skills, I tried to avoid the subject of the Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague. For these simple men the killers of the Balkan, now on trial or already dead, are still their freedomfighters.

Petržalka§s urban culture

2006-09-20T12:32:00.001+02:00

Politicians and Papacy

2006-09-20T11:40:00.000+02:00

In the rest of the world politicians and papal leaders of the Catholic church have to be careful about what they say about the Islam. But here in Slovakia other things matter. The new nationalistic governement cries out that they want to send tanks to Hungary and chase all of the Hungarian minority out of the country. And here, in Marianka, a place where pilgrims from over the world come to be healed by the holy water, thousands of people are gathered together in what feels like a mysterious open-air church. When the mass is over, the speach is said, the holy father walks through the crowd to bless the people. He shakes hands and smiles, and blesses the children. No security guard necessary.

Heaven

2006-09-20T11:36:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I heard the old drunk whom I photographed lying on the street, died four weeks ago. I hope his wife will recognise him in heaven.

tourism

2006-08-03T15:07:00.000+02:00

Beograd, july 2006

Poor rich Saudi's

2006-08-03T15:06:00.001+02:00

Spa in Piestany, august 2006

The muslim population in Slovakia is less than one percent, and seeing a veiled woman on the streets of Bratislava is a rare thing. This makes visiting the spa town of Piestany a unique experience in Slovakia. The friendly and clean streets of the touristic centre are dominated with fountains (celebrating the natural healing water of the wells in Piestany) and arabic looking people. On the terraces elderly men in djellaba's play chess in the shade and fat ladies wearing coulourfull headsarfs push their babycarriages past the shopwindows. "Poor rich Saudi's!" Suzka, a university teacher in the nearby Trnava, cries out. "They live in this terrible hot country and from the aircondition they all suffer from reuma. So they come here to heal, because it is cheap here for them." Like most Slovak women she has a great figure from working in her own garden and growing her own vegetables. She has never visited the spa.

The coincidence that changed the world

2006-08-03T15:06:00.000+02:00

Latin Brigde in Sarajevo, 2006

"The political consequences of this deed are being heavily exaggerated " writes a journalist of Die Neue Freie Presse on july 2nd 1914. He couldn't be more wrong about anything. A month later the world was at war because of an assasination that almost didn't happen. Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen year old romantic nationalist, planned with his friends to attack the Habsburger Archduke when he paraded through Sarajevo. But when his friends messed up their plans, he turned around and went to the café to drink a coffee. Later, when he walked out of the café, the open car with the Duke coincidently came by on the way back, just where he was standing. Princip drew his gun and shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie instantly and changed the world forever.

They were shot right at the place were the white figure in this photograph is walking. Since then the bridge has suffed from many wars, but has been recently renovated.

Concrete

2006-07-15T00:07:00.000+02:00

The summer has come to Bratislava, dragging along tourincars with tourist, mainly british stagparties looking for beautiful women and cheep beer. But there are also the unavoidable Japanese with their camera's, running throug the city to get the right picture of the old Austrian-Hungarian grandeur, mixed with the grey concrete communist aesthetics. This is most visible standing on Bratislavsky Hrad, the castle by the Danube, and looking over the river towards Petrzalka. This Petrzalka, built in the seventies to house the new workers for the Slovnaft gas company, is not only physically seperated from the old town. It has its own mayer. When he was elected last june, he handed out coupons for DVD players to everyone who voted for him, and he won. So much for Democracy.

Končita

2006-07-04T11:45:00.000+02:00

The village with the beautiful name Končita in the green but poor region Orava consists of five wooden houses. The only way to get there is through the pastures, the road stops at the foot of the hill. When we arrive, the place is deserted so we can scoop around without the crazy man trying to chase us away. The crazy man of the village is one of the two brothers who are not talking with each other. Nobody knows exactly why, but they even took turns in taking care of their old father to make sure they did not have to meet each other. When their old father died, they refused to sell the house. They didn't want the other brother to get half of the money.

They carried out the stiff body of their father and closed the door one year ago. When we entered the house, we found it exactly as they left it: shoes next to the bed, wood by the fireplace, toothbrush in a cup by the sink. Because they refused to cooperate to fix the roof before the winter, the roof collapsed under two meters of snow and the house is covered with a blanket of grey mudd. So are his is grey shirts, neatly hanging in the cupboard, and his hat still waiting for him, hanging by the door.

(pictures follow)

Bells for Suzanna

2006-06-07T12:32:00.000+02:00

The funeral of Susana in Zazriva, Orava, june 2006

The day the bells rang for Suzanna, the the black flag hung from the churchtower. The sky was grey and the church was packed. Filled with old women with firm black shoes under their black dresses and young mothers with dyed blond hair folding their hands quietly on their laps. The altar boys looked so serious, bringing the coffin to the grave, wearing nike air max under their white dresses.

strange cabbage

2006-06-07T11:59:00.000+02:00

At ten in the morning we were warmly welcomed by a sweet couple on their farm. While pouring us glasses of extremely strong Borovicka, the young mother of five children complained that with 15 children in the village it was sometimes difficult to see which ones were hers. She laughed much at her own stories, especially the one of when her husband tried to make pictures of their children one day, but forgot to put in the film. The husband, quietly leaning against their house, was occupied with another story, that puzzled him. A year ago this Dutch company bought some land in the rainy, cold aerea of Orava. Now they were growing something strange there. A green, big leafed vegetable, somewhat like cabbage.... I was so surprised to realise that the biggest lovers of white cabbage (the Slovaks eat it with every meal, as a salad, with christmas, as a soup, the leftovers as breakfast, they simply love it!), had no idea that this strange cabbage they were talking about was nothing less than: Boerenkool. The popular Dutch green farmers cabbage we like to mix with potatoes.

ritual

2006-06-07T11:39:00.000+02:00

Twenty years ago, this man lost his wife. Since then his life has been the same everyday, everyday repeating the same ritual. In the morning he goes to the pub, drinks Borovicka untill he can't walk straight anymore, tries to crawl up the hill to his house singing the same song every day, eats his rolls and bacon and falls asleep. In the afternoon he starts all over again. I found him at 10.30 in the morning on the main road of U Stredie, not able to stand up anymore, dragging his breadrolls through the mudd.

Down Town

2006-06-07T11:00:00.000+02:00

On a normal friday afternoon in the centre of Zázrivá life is full of everyday small-town life. Dogs bark, people move from their house to the shop and later the bar. The unemployed pay their weekly duty to clean up the cemetery. Suddenly the loudspeakers attached to the streetlights everywhere in the town start to produce the static sound of classical music. Followed by the announcement that 83 year old Susana changed her earthly life for the eternal. Tomorrow at two o'clock the funeral will take place. The concrete pillars by the side of the road wear posters of the upcoming national elections in far away Bratislava. Ironically enough this place is known as U Stredie, meaning something like 'in the middle', referring to politics in communist times.

a Man's world...

2006-06-07T10:28:00.000+02:00

In the villages around Zazriva in Orava, the men have little to live for. No woman to marry, no education to go to the city, just the work that can be done on the land and the Borovicka that has to be drunk. (a kind of jenever) The more Borovicka, the less work they do. Why work more, if you can live on a piece of bread and bacon a Borovicka in the morning and a few at night?

Middle of Europe

2006-05-01T12:34:00.000+02:00

Close to Kremnica, a former mining town, is a monument at the place the Slovaks call "Middle of Europe" (Stred Europy). Interesting fact is that Slovenia as well as Hungary have something similar to this monument and all claim to be the centre of Europe as well. While everybody in the western part of Europe considers these countries the 'far east' of our civilisation, it shows that thinking about what Europe is still in movement. This is also visible in the Lonely Planet guide we have on this region. The old one is called Eastern Europe, the brand new one they changed into Central Europe.

Schoolbus Osciadnica

2006-05-01T12:13:00.000+02:00

In the schoolbus from Osciadnica, in the Kysuce mountain aerea of Slovakia life takes place like in every safe place on this planet. The old women sits with the driver in the front, suspiciously keeping an eye on the cool kids who are playing card on the last row. The shy ones try to be invisible by staring out of the window.

dizzy

2006-04-04T18:25:00.000+02:00

Old man and the dizzy cat, Osciadnica 2006

Strong heart

2006-04-04T17:49:00.000+02:00

Widow in the tree, Ziar nad Hranom, 2006

I was sitting in a pizzeria in Ziar nad Hranom, a small city without a centre, when I saw this woman in the tree. At first she refused to be in the picture. "Why are you interested in an old woman who has to use her old week muscles to do such hard work because her husband died? "She asked me. Because you must have a strong heart to do so, I answered.

In countries like Slovakia many elderly still have to work or keep vegetable gardens to feed themselves, since their pensions are worth close to nothing in modern times. Especially in the smaller cities or villages you will find old women and men fixing roofs or shovelling the snow off the streets.

Lock them up.... and throw away the key

2006-01-24T16:58:00.000+01:00

The Kiss, Olichov, 2005

By the side of the road near the village of Olichov is a big red fence. When we stop our car, the people of the Sanatorium are already waiting for us, waving, clinging on to the bars of the fence in their blue uniforms or simple dresses. They are the unwanted people of Slovakia, locked up behind bars.

Their clothes have their personal numbers on it, they are fed with all the calming-drugs and food that can be provided, but it would be too easy to condemn this all. The sun is shining, the people are laughing, touching our cheeks, holding our hands like we are their long lost sons and daughters. Or the children they could never have because they are sterilised.

I take my time to make a picture of this man, he is drawling out of his black-teethed mouth, his blue uniform tells me he is number 663. While he is playing hide and seek with me, trying to avoid the camera while his smile getting bigger and bigger, I wonder how number 663 got his tattoo. Later, the nurse tells me he was married, had two little children and a house. When the lightning struck him and his brain was damaged his wife dropped him off at the sanatorium. They never saw her again.

Later on the people stroll off, lie down on the grass to take a nap. Others go to the field to harvest the apples they grew, or sit on benches in the shade to listen to some music, hold hands, steel a kiss.