Breaking it Up: Bratislava

"A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win....but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost."

 --Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Is that artsy enough of a quote for you? It is for me. But this is an artsy blog post. Because I'm writing about Bratislava, and I'm writing about a small town in the South Moravian region of the Czech Republic called Břeclav. But I'm also not really going to write about those things. I have some pictures, but you could probably find them on Google Images if you wanted to.

I had planned this trip as carefully as I could, so I bought a ticket on the Eurolines bus from Prague to Bratislava, Slovakia far in advance. The night before I was leaving Prague I had looked up the route to walk to the bus station, screen-capping streets and directions. I had calculated what time I needed to leave the apartment based on how long it would take me to walk to the bus station. But I hadn't factored in two elements: how the vicious cold of pre-dawn, mid-winter Prague and a solid 20 pounds of wintertime clothes stuffed into my backpack would slow me down. I also decided to deviate from the route I had mapped out, ended up on the train station which was across a highway from the bus station. Five minutes before my bus was leaving. So I made a new plan: bought a train ticket to Bratislava.


Dawn from the Prague train station.

Except then I made the exceptionally stupid decision (which I can only blame on Dayquil, my never-ending cold, and my own idiocy) to exit the train at Břeclav. Except that Břeclav is actually still the Czech Republic. And I walked about thirty minutes into the town before I actually accepted that I was not in Bratislava. Then I had to turn around (still in the freezing cold, still carrying my massive backpack) and return to the train station. Where I found out the next train was not coming for another hour. Except that it was delayed an hour. And then it ended up being an hour and a half delay. So I spent an interesting afternoon hanging out in the Břeclav train station bar, drinking my woes away. And then I finally arrived at Bratislava just as the sun was setting.

So all in all, one of my less successful days of travel. The next morning Cait, Christian and I went out to explore the city for an hour or so before it was time for us to leave for the airport.

Buying excessive amount of American junk food in a store we stumbled upon near our hostel. The people working in the store were kind of bemused by our enthusiasm but seriously, Reeses's and Kraft Mac 'n Cheese in Europe? Goldmine. 

Exploring the Bratislava castle from the outside/courtyard.... not going inside because it's a museum and nobody felt like paying.

And that was more or less it for our winter break, except for the night Cait and I spent in Skopje in a hilariously weird AirBnb where I decided it was probably time for me to leave the Peace Corps. It was a good time and also a bad time, thus my only getting around to actually writing this blog post seven months later. Although let's be honest, I'm not exactly a prompt or timely blog post writer.

Breaking it Up: Praha (Prague)

...Now that my ladder's gone 

I must lie down where all the ladders start 

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

--William Butler Yeats,  "The Circus Animals’ Desertion"



On the third day of the new year, before my friends had woken, I packed away the few things I left out the night before that I would need in the morning, I pulled on my coat and my gloves and my scarf, and I headed out into the still debris-strewn streets of west Berlin. I took the metro to the train station, headphones in, drifting in and out of attention to the world around me once I had gotten myself where I needed to be. I boarded the train and sat in the window seat even though my reservation was for the aisle. We pulled away from the station and I realized I'd be riding backwards. I slouched in my seat until I was comfortable and I slept for a while and when the train's stopping at a station woke me up we were no longer in Berlin or a city and I saw a man looking down at his ticket then at me so I started to rise from my chair but he waved me back and sat beside me. I nodded at him gratefully but didn't speak and he didn't speak and I continued to watch the world pull backwards away from me and I tried not to think about my friends or Kosovo or turning 30 or my guilt or all the thousand little things I chide myself for every day. I tried to empty my mind and let the words of Bob Dylan fill it and watch Germany slip away and feel peace.

I did try.

Prague was frigid and the wind bit through my jeans, through my muscle, seemingly through my very bones, the minute I stepped out of the train station. I followed a group of rolling suitcase-touting tourists to the town center. I couldn't get a good internet connection anywhere so I ducked into a hotel, blinked my eyes sadly and asked for a street map. I checked the street I was on and found the street of my AirBnB and felt a rising surge of triumph when I found the building number of my apartment followed by a swift plummet when I realized I had no way to contact the host. I wandered up and down the street seeking internet or an idea of what to do, whichever could present itself first, before my host stepped out and recognized me, let me in, gave me the key and left me to my solitude.

I have never had an AirBnB meeting/key exchange that was not an exercise in patience and fortitude. But it's still the best way to go, to my mind.

I looked around the little studio that would be my home for a few days and now, not consumed with finding my way through a strange city, the edges of my mind began to refill with all the doubts and anger and sadness I'd been pushing away so I went back out into the street and let the crystalline cold of early January in the Czech Republic freeze me into a human-shaped automaton. I walked around a bit and went to the grocery to store to stock up on supplies (beer, junk food) and returned to my temporary home to thaw and sleep.

I walked through the famous Christmas market, past the famous astrological clock, across the famous bridge and up to the famous castle and I looked on at the famous beauty of this city and I felt mostly nothing.

I stared at this church from an alcove where I was hiding while waiting for a momentary blow-up of snow and wind to pass, and I felt nothing.

The skies cleared and I felt nothing.

I took pictures of things I thought were beautiful and things I thought were strange or interesting, but I felt nothing.

I sought out things I'd read about, I went through the motions of a person on vacation, and I felt nothing.

I looked at the lights and the people and I smelled the meat and the beer and the potatoes and the garlic and I felt nothing and I heard the singing and the deep, bellowing clangor of the city's church-bells and I felt nothing.

I returned to the apartment after my wanderings through the city, because my legs ached below where my coat protected my torso and thighs. I slept then, mostly I slept, for the several days I was there. I slept and I drank and I ate and I thought and then I remembered. I thought about my host family in Topanica and I thought about my host family in Rahovec and I thought about Trump and I thought about the friends I had made and I thought about all of the friends I have said goodbye to, unable to say if I would ever meet them again and I thought about that professor in college who inspired my stupid Peace Corps dreams and I thought about all the reasons why I should stay and do what was right and I thought about all the things it would mean for me to do that and I thought about all the reasons why I should go and I thought about all the things I would feel if I did that and I remembered the moment I was looking on the Peace Corps website at the list of countries who were taking TEFL volunteers and I remembered choosing Kosovo and I remembered riding my bike through the excruciating heat of mid-day summer in Hanoi to get my documents mailed in time and I remembered the agony of waiting, of people asking about my application and having no answer, and the ecstasy when I read my invitation while sitting in a cabana on a beach in Thailand with Zach and I remembered the first night of my stay in Georgia when I was bewildered and freezing and I remembered the feeling that my life was moving forward somehow and I remembered leaving Chile and thinking I'd never teach or travel abroad again and I remembered the panic attack I'd had walking down the street of New York with my mom a few days before I flew to Prishtina and I hated myself more strongly, more acutely and more venomously than I had ever hated anyone or anything before in my entire life.

And then I slept and I tried to forget.

I did try.