Elves and Poker and Assorted Slovakian Things

This is a post I started two weeks ago in Bratislava, but finally got around to finishing. I'm in Zagreb, Croatia at the moment, but I'll let you know what I've been doing since this post was written:

I'm sitting in an Elvish Bar in Bratislava right now. What, you may ask, is an "Elvish Bar"? You know, Elvish: relating to Elves, the effeminate, pointy-eared guys from "Lord of the Rings." Their bar.

Before you start thinking that I'm on some weird Slovakian drug, let me assure you I'm not, and I haven't had any absinth in almost a week. This is an actual place, the "Storm Game Club and Elveon Elvish Bar," where the geeks and nerds of Bratislava come to socialize [sic] and play "Command and Conquer" next to each other. I imagine they may even get drunk together upstairs. Maybe they even talk to each other.

I ask the guy at the front desk of my hostel where an internet cafe is, and this is where he sends me.

What's surprising is how many girls are here. Sure, there are plenty of pimply-faced, weedy-looking guys getting worked up over "World of Warcraft," but there are plenty of members of the fairer sex as well. And even more surprising is how hot most of them are. In Slovakia, almost all of the women are attractive, even the gamer geeks. (More about the pulchritude of Slovakians, and Czechs, later.) The bar upstairs is a legit bar, fully stocked, with a lounge and plenty of ladies sitting around. I don't know what the hell I'd talk to them about besides "Lord of the Rings," but damned if it doesn't make me want to try. (Possible opening line: "So...you're an Elf?")

Anyway I've been in Bratislava for a few days after spending a week in Prague, and already I like this city and the people more. It isn't as beautiful as Prague -- less developed, obviously less prosperous, and much smaller -- but for all its roughness around the edges it feels more vital, as though the people are living their lives rather than posing for tourists. Not that I got the feeling that Prague was fake, but Slovakians simply seem more open than Czechs, more friendly, less concerned with trying to keep up the image of the place as a tourist destination, and that shows through in the atmosphere of the whole city.

Take my first night in Bratislava. I checked into the Downtown Backpacker's Hostel in early evening -- great place, by the way -- had dinner and a few drinks at the bar attached to the hostel, then went out to explore. I stopped by a bar called the KGB, which was wasn't the best experience. It was a nice enough place, I suppose, sort of dead on a Tuesday night, but the staff wasn't especially friendly, and for some reason all the damned bar seats in Eastern Europe are "reserved."

I don't know if it was just my American prejudices, or the way the place usually is, but going to anything called the "KBG" is probably not a good idea in general. It's cool I guess if you like visages of Lenin grimacing down at you, but I prefer to get my buzz on without thinking about gulags and mass murder and such. After a drink and a bit of writing in my journal, I popped back out to find a place on my map called the "Sub Club," which looked to be located at the foot of Bratislava Castle, off a freeway.

After wandering down a few dark streets and realizing that I would have to walk down a highway with no sidewalks to get to the place as it was shown on my map, I decided to find a bar and just drink more. Unfortunately it was almost 1am, and most places seemed closed. I did find a bar open till 4, which was tiny and looked to be all locals engaged in their own conversations, but I had a drink there anyway since I didn't want to go back to my hostel just yet. Eventually the large group at the table next to me left, and I was motioned over by the sole remaining member of the group. I sat down and he offered me a cigarette, which I accepted. (I mean, I didn't, Mom; I've never smoked a cigarette.)

Although he spoke almost no English, he was very friendly. We tried to talk, and wound up comparing passports; eventually I gathered that his name was Vasily, and we was a Slovakian citizen from the Ukraine who had served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan. Twenty years ago were at war with this guy; now I was sitting at a table in a capitalist democracy, sharing cigarettes and whiskey with him. Ain't the world funny.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and a man said something to me in what I guess was Slovakian. He looked like Salman Rushdie -- excuse the literary reference -- right down to the small circular glasses, the little beard, and the funny haircut.

"English," I said, smiling and shaking my head to indicate that I didn't understand.

"Ah, English!" he said. "We would like to play poker at this table" -- he pointed around to show that all the other tables were full -- "Would you like to join us?"

The buy-in was 300 Slovakian crowns, which is about 15 bucks, so I said yes. I didn't know if these guys were poker sharks or what, and I didn't care; I was more interested in the experience. So Vasily and I wound up playing Texas hold 'em past 5 o'clock in the morning, drinking and smoking and laughing with these five Slovakian guys. I held my own for awhile, eventually lost my chips, bought back in and lost again. It didn't matter; it was only money. We were having a great time, talking about Slovakia and America, politics and literature, debating whether Alexander Pushkin or W.H. Auden was the better poet. The woman who ran the bar eventually sat down to watch us play, since we were the only ones left, and kept the place open an extra hour-and-a-half for us.

The Rushdie look-alike -- whose name was Edward -- asked me if I had ever read Mikhail Bulgakov. I said that I'd never even heard of him, which shocked him, and he said I had to read The Master and Margarita. On a side note, I picked it up in a bookstore in Budapest last week, and he was right: it's excellent.

Eventually the proprietess very politely kicked us out, so we packed up the cards and chips and headed out into the cool night. I said good-bye to Vasily and Edward and all the rest, and walked -- somewhat drunkenly -- back to my hostel. There aren't any great quotes to come from that night, or funny stories, and it may not blog particularly well, but it was one of the best nights I've had in Europe. It wasn't the most drunken, or the most fun, and there were no girls involved, but it is one of the experiences that will leave an impression on me for a very long time.