Bratislava - Something Old, Something New
It's back to "Primi" along the Danube for some food. I first visited this place in August 2011, in the height of summer, when most of the diners sat outside enjoying their dinner and drinks al fresco. Two things remain a constant: diners gaily smoking in abandon inside the restaurant, the time it took to grill a fish and some vegetables. Despite the small flurry of snow flakes today, the conservatory part of the restaurant was exceedingly warm, so it was time for some lemonade, which was refreshing and delicious.
For the entire time I was in the restaurant, the barman was serving liquor in the standard 50ml shot glass, non stop. But of course, I am in a country where drinking is very much a part of the Slovak culture! Fortunately, the locals mostly hold their liquor well and I have never seen a local being visibly drunk. It's a different matter for the English though; young men descend upon Bratislava for their stag parties, and can be seen inebriated in their ridiculous Superman costume. A young girl in the office once asked me if these young men behave in the same way back in the UK. And what can I say, young men and women alike getting stone drunk on a Saturday night, staging fights on the streets and becoming a burden on the emergency services in the hospital.
The 2012 Marathon continued. At the Eurovea square outside the SND, the crowd gathered to watch the runners on the wide screen, and listened to some animated commentary the content of which escaped me, as it was in Slovakian. In the hotel foyer, there were hordes of runners in their track suits; an unusual sight was a small group of runners from Africa - I hardly ever see Africans in Bratislava!
Yesterday was Earth Day 2012. To mark the occasion, the hotel switched off all the lights in the foyer from 20:30 for an hour, and urged the hotel guests to power off as many devices as possible. In the foyer, tea lights were used to form the two digits of 60, but no one was in sight. As a campaign to raise awareness, it went down like a damp squib.
When I started this blog in 2009, it is designed to be a travelogue. But I want to make an exception this time: the joy of discovering how to send SMS in Chinese. This is made possible by the international keyboard on my iPhone 4S. I tried pin-yin, which I struggled with, as pin-yin requires the user to speak pudonghua. Imagine the delight when I found I can write the characters in free hand and then choose the right character that shows up on the screen! The next challenge is to re-learn writing Chinese, a skill that I have lost due to a long period of neglect. My sister was utterly surprised to get an SMS from me in Chinese characters....
It's back to "Primi" along the Danube for some food. I first visited this place in August 2011, in the height of summer, when most of the diners sat outside enjoying their dinner and drinks al fresco. Two things remain a constant: diners gaily smoking in abandon inside the restaurant, the time it took to grill a fish and some vegetables. Despite the small flurry of snow flakes today, the conservatory part of the restaurant was exceedingly warm, so it was time for some lemonade, which was refreshing and delicious. 
