Sightseeing in the sun

At last, the rain stopped and the sun came out Saturday morning, and with it came hordes of visitors to Old Town (Stare Mesto). Some are soccer (football) fans from Ireland for a match tonight with Slovakia. Many others seem to be part of organized tour groups, some with leaders speaking in English, others in German.

These are statues at a square in honor of the Slovak National Uprising (Nam. SNP). This was the site of a rebellion in 1944 against the Nazi puppet state and in 1989 of peaceful demonstrations against the Communists in the Velvet Revolution. The statues have a Soviet realist feel. The fresh bouquets of flowers suggest that these historic rebellions against two repressive regimes have not been forgotten.

500+ years of history: I shot this standing on Kapucinska Street, which crosses over the Communist-built expressway that cuts a swath through Old Town. Over 200 historic buildings, including most of the old Jewish community, were leveled to build the expressway. From left to right: stone remnants of the medieval walled city; a billboard for Suzuki cars (Kia just built a plant in Slovakia); at the far end of the expressway, a high-rise building under construction on the other side of the Danube; the so-called UFO tower, built by the Communists on the new bridge (Novy Most) with a restaurant at the top; restored homes overlooking the expressway more typical of the architecture in Old Town.

The U.S. Embassy is surrounded by ominous gray metal fencing and pop-up barriers in the ground, presumably to block determined truck bombers. This kind of security is familiar nowadays in Washington, D.C., but this is the only site I’ve discovered here with such high-powered security.

Even the British Consulate has nothing comparable, at least not visibly. It's the white building on the far left on Panska Street in the Pedestrian Zone, so perhaps that makes truck bombing more difficult (although I often see delivery trucks allowed into the zone).

You see construction sites on almost every block in Old Town – a restored building next to a crumbling building waiting for its renewal. I’m told the restoration began in earnest just a few years ago, and I wonder if the entire area looked like the crumbling buildings before then. The yellow building on the right is nicely restored at the top of the walkway by St. Michael’s gate. The building in the middle needs s

ome work.

The main post office in Bratislava, across from Nam. SNP, is gorgeous inside and out. I tried to rent a post office box, but couldn’t solve the language barrier, so that will have to wait for another day.

The Ministry of Culture, also across from Nam. SNP. In the mid-1960s, when the U.S. Congress was establishing the National Endowment for the Arts, a major concern was avoiding a European-style Ministry of Culture in the decision-making mechanisms. But their focus was the French ministry, not the Soviet bloc, which they must have presumed was far too totalitarian for American priorities in the arts. I want to explore the role the current Ministry plays in culture in Slovakia, whether and how it distributes funding, and how much free speech is permitted to artists within those funding constraints.

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