Bratislava beginnings

The view on the descent into the Vienna airport. Fulbright requires us to fly on American carriers, but there were several choices. The Vienna airport is closer to Bratislava than to Vienna. Bratislava also has an airport with jet service, but I couldn't get connections that worked with my schedule.

My trip to Bratislava is off to a great start. The Delta flights were on time, and the overnight nonstop from Atlanta to Vienna was two-thirds empty, so I could stretch out. The airport shuttle driver met me with a neatly-lettered sign when I walked through customs – and a Mercedes to whisk me to the hotel in Bratislava where I’m staying while I look at apartments with a local real estate agent.

The local Fulbright director urged us in the strongest terms not to make any long-term commitments to housing until we could personally inspect the options. As she said gracefully, “Not all apartments are up to Western standards.” In truth, I would not make a long-term commitment to an apartment in New York or London either without personally inspecting it.

The trip from my home in southern California took 24 hours in real time, and I am adjusting to a nine-hour time change, which will take a few days. But the adjustment to a new city in a part of the world I had never visited is off to a good start.

The previous “class” of Slovak Fulbrighters sent us a helpful letter with their recommendations for everything imaginable for life’s little details – the airport shuttle they used, the real estate agents they liked working with, a dentist for emergencies, etc. Their main criteria: they speak English, take credit cards, use e-mail, and are very nice, reliable people – what more could I want? The local Fulbright Commission director as well as the Washington, DC Fulbright staff also have been sending enormously helpful information all summer. Especially in planning a visit to a country unfamiliar to most Americans, this has been priceless.

My most striking impressions on the trip over include the huge metal windmills I saw everywhere in the farm fields in eastern Austria as we drove from the airport into Slovakia. In the U.S., the debate rages on whether we need these supposed “blights” on our landscape to generate power. But the windmills are no more unsightly than the high-powered electric lines strung across the farm fields, and they are a good reminder of environmental and energy concerns that need serious attention everywhere on the planet.

I’m also struck by the juxtaposition of old and new – quaint colorful housing and ancient stone bridges and towers interspersed with modern gas stations and grocery stores. Homes on the busy two-lane highway from the airport have a vaguely “Alpine” design with red roofs and gorgeous flowers pouring from window boxes.

The border crossing from Austria to Slovakia was downright casual. Dreary buildings look like tired left-overs from another era. My driver handed his passport and mine to an officer in a booth by the road; he seemed to barely glance at them and we were on our way. The passport check at the Vienna airport was equally perfunctory. Not a single question, not even a stamp in my passport to go with my Heathrow stamp from last October, which I earned after answering questions for several minutes about my reason for visiting London. Is this simply a difference in fears of terrorists entering the country or the realities of frequent border crossings in central Europe by an increasingly mobile population?

I was struck in the Atlanta airport by the departure lounge next to mine packed with American soldiers in desert fatigues waiting to board a Lufthansa 747 bound for Frankfurt and a trip back to Iraq – 3rd and even 4th tours for many. This is a modern army – laptops, cell phones, iPods everywhere. In a visit to London last fall, I was struck at the ever-present protesters and signs objecting to our (and the UK’s) presence in Iraq. I wonder if that war, so unpopular now in the U.S., has harmed our standing with Europeans. I wonder how Slovaks feel about the Iraq occupation, and whether they contributed to the so-called “Coalition of the Willing.”

My own mundane travel tip for now: bring a EuroSurge, which I bought from a travel supply catalog (Magellan). It plugs right into the continental plugs and gives me two U.S.-style outlets and a surge-protector for all the electronic equipment we can’t live without (laptop, blackberry, digital camera, etc., etc.). It eliminates the need for those little plug adaptors for everything (although I have a supply of those with me, too). Electrical appliances and power cables all seem to be dual-voltage nowadays, so I don’t need a converter, making things a little simpler.