Charm of a Czech City

I dimly remember being jolted out of a deep sleep early one morning by a tremendous clanking and shouting outside my door.

Several hours later, after I had managed to stumble out of bed and wage a losing battle with the aged plumbing in the shower at the Interhotel Carlton, I discovered what had caused all the commotion.

Surveying the damage in the hallway, where buckets had been placed on the water-soaked carpeting beneath a washbasin, I concluded that the problem was probably a broken pipe.

Similar water stains up and down the frayed hallway carpeting indicated that such mishaps probably were quite common and nothing to get disturbed about.

Lying only 44 miles east of the Austrian capital of Vienna, Bratislava offers travelers a rare opportunity to slip behind the Iron Curtain for a couple of days to experience firsthand what life in an Eastern Bloc country is really like.

Although Bratislava strikes you initially as a rather dingy gray place, especially in contrast to vivacious Vienna, the people are warm, the prices for exquisite Bohemian crystal are rock-bottom, the food and wine are excellent and the history is fascinating. One drawback, however, is that the cost of hotel accommodations is generally high.

If you time your visit, as a friend and I did, to coincide with the two-week Bratislava Music Festival in late September and early October each year, you will also be able to enjoy musical performances by noted soloists and orchestras from both sides of the Iron Curtain.

But I had a more personal reason for wanting to see Bratislava. My father’s parents grew up in the city and surrounding countryside.

They never returned to Bratislava before they died, and I have always wondered whether any of our relatives survived World War II and the Communist coup in 1948.

Somehow I almost expected to be able to thumb through a telephone book and come across some far-distant members of the Capos clan. (I never did find any.)

Despite my Czechoslovakian roots, I was not quite prepared when a border guard entered our bus and called out my name in Czech. It sounded something like shop-posh rather than kay-pos , and for a moment I sat rooted to the seat, not knowing what to do.

After he called it again, in a slightly gruffer tone, I stood up and got off the bus to change my $30 U.S. into 292 korunas, the minium amount foreigners are required to exchange each day they stay in Czechoslovakia.

Otherwise, the trip from Vienna to Bratislava was enjoyable and uneventful. We had bought round-trip tickets from the Czechoslovakian travel bureau Cedok (pronounced ched-dock ) and caught the 8 a.m. bus from the Autobus Bahnhof, which lies just beyond Stubenring on the east side of the city.

One-Day Shopping Trips

The last return bus leaves Bratislava at 5:30 p.m. every day, so if you stay overnight you can shop or sightsee all morning and most of the afternoon before you return to Vienna.

The ride to Bratislava through the lush Austrian countryside with its neatly cultivated vineyards takes only an hour, but you can plan on a minimum delay of half an hour at the border while guards check passports and visas, inspect luggage and wait for the money changing.

Our first moments in Bratislava were marked by the inevitable confusion that comes when you plunge suddenly into a foreign country and don’t speak the language.

It took me several minutes at the bus station, for example, to determine which toilet was for women. (I soon figured out that it was the one marked zeny .)

We somehow managed to communicate to a taxi driver that we wanted him to take us to the Cedok office in the center of the city, but it took several tries before we could find someone there who spoke enough English to advise us about sightseeing, hotel accommodations, restaurants and concert tickets.

Our first meal, which we grabbed in a working-class buffet , was a bowl of unidentifiable lukewarm soup, a few thin slices of cheese and meat, a roll and some sort of pink juice that we ate at a crumb-laden cafeteria table. The price was right, 10 korunas, or roughly $1 U.S., but it was not what you would call a memorable meal.

Time to Explore

Once we were settled at the Interhotel Carlton, after having flashed a $50 American bill to help the desk clerk find us a room with a bath, we found ourselves free to explore Bratislava.

The most impressive panoramic view of the city, which curls along the Danube River, proved to be from the ramparts of Bratislava Castle, high on a hill.

Unfortunately, the castle has not fared as well as the Hapsburgs’ imperial Hofburg and Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna. The residential quarters were gutted by fire during the Napoleonic wars and any vestiges of what were probably handsome royal chambers have been obscured by new walls of plaster during restoration.

From Castle Hill you can wander down Beblaveho Street, a ribbon of cobblestones that ends at the Bratislava Museum. The museum is well worth an hour’s visit if you want to get an idea of what Bratislava has tucked away in its attic, so to speak.

The three floors contain a collection of 17th- and 18th-Century porcelain, elaborate clergy robes embroidered with gold thread, beautifully carved furniture and enlargements of lithoprints from past centuries.

Just a few cobblestones away from the museum is a little coffeehouse where you can enjoy a cup of afternoon kaffee or an aperitif. There you’ll see young couples sipping Cokes, smoking cigarettes and listening to popular tunes.

From the museum it’s just a short walk to Dom Sv. Martina, the Gothic church where 10 Hungarian kings and eight queens were crowned. St. Martina’s has a gold crown on top of its steeple and beautiful stained-glass windows that underscore its historic role as a coronation cathedral.

The stare mesto, or Old Quarter, which forms the heart of Bratislava, stretches from the foot of St. Martina’s and encompasses part of the old city wall as well as several small palaces and half a dozen museums.

The Mestske Museum inside the stately Old Town Hall is the best place to brush up on Bratislava’s history. Although the city is the capital of the Slovak Socialist Republic, it was originally known as Pozsony. The Germans later called it Pressburg.

Judging from the displays of velvet coats and dresses, decorative porcelain and glassware and finely carved religious figurines, Bratislava was once quite a prosperous place.

While we were roaming the Old Quarter we met John, 22, a worker in one of the museums. He volunteered to show us the sights the next day. What we got was a rare glimpse of life in Bratislava.

We dined at the Madarska restaurant, which specializes in Hungarian dishes. Dinner for two was only $12 and included paprika (pepper) salad, sauteed beef steak a la Huntary served with noodles, chicken paprikash and a bottle of excellent Hungarian wine.

We had planned to attend a concert by the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra that evening, but it took us the better part of an hour and several taxi drivers to find the place. Everyone was kind and helpful, however, and the concert (which featured an American soloist, Eugene Indjic, performing a concerto for piano and orchestra by Chopin) was quite enjoyable.

The next morning we met John at the elegant Primatial Palace, famous for its series of six 17th-Century English tapestries depicting the tragic mythological Greek love affair of Hero and Leander. No one knows how the tapestries got to Bratislava, but they surfaced here in 1903.

They were found under the tapestry works in the anteroom of the Hall of Mirrors in the palace where they were probably hidden as a precaution against Napoleon’s soldiers.

According to John, who talked candidly about life in Bratislava, many men and women work 12-hour shifts in a chemical factory and petroleum refinery, where the average monthly salary is 3,000 korunas, about $300 U.S. Few people are allowed to leave Czechoslovakia and travel to capitalist countries. This has presented problems for him, he said, because he recently married a woman who is not a Czechoslovak citizen.

When we commented about the noticeable absence of soldiers with guns, John explained that the government uses more subtle ways to maintain control. He estimated that 10,000 people work as police informants and told us that it is common for the police to bug the rooms of foreign businessmen and tourists like us.

Dissidents, he said, are discouraged by the threat of being fired from their jobs, losing their passports or having their children barred from the university.

“Nobody speaks politics on the bus or tram because they are afraid,” John said. “They only speak of the weather or their children or shopping because the authorities are everywhere.”

Department Store

Our last stop was Tuzek, the government-run duty-free department store. Although capitalism is frowned upon in Czechoslovakia, the cashier at Tuzek readily accepted American dollars, other foreign currencies and travelers checks.

The selection of porcelain, crystal, glassware and other items is much better at Tuzek than at most small shops, which often have half-empty shelves. The prices are so low that the savings you enjoy almost pay for the trip. A crystal decanter that would easily cost $60 in the United States, for example, sold for $21.

After buying all the crystal we could carry and saving just enough korunas to pay for our last taxi ride, we headed for the central bus station. When we handed the bus driver our return tickets, bought in Vienna, we had a shock--he refused to accept them and insisted that we buy new ones.

We had spent all our korunas and it was too late in the day to change money at a bank, so we were confronted with the prospect of being stranded in Bratislava for another night without a penny.

We were saved by a fellow passenger who sided with us and argued forcefully with the bus driver until he grudgingly relented.

Within an hour we--and our precious crystal--were safely across the border.