Pohodatrocity 2009

The small tent was getting thrashed around consistently by the vicious gusts. I was coming up on an hour, trying desperately the entire time to deal with the lake that was forming in the bottom of my polyester shelter. Sirens blared for longer than any normal circumstances could justify. My phone flashed "Low Battery" twice before turning itself off. I sat for a few minutes longer, soaking wet and freezing cold feeling particularly unconnected. I overheard some friends in an adjacent tent. "A structure collapsed, people are dead, this thing is over." It was time to formulate an exit strategy.

If you had asked me July 17, 2008 what I would be doing a year from now, my wildest guess wouldn't have proved anywhere near accurate. The reality: speeding down highways towards the East of Slovakia without any ID, in an uninsured car, filled with liquor and an illegal American immigrant proved well beyond the imagination during my most distracted daydreams. Work had just finished for the week and two days ripe with beer, music, girls and debaucheries lay directly ahead. The drive was especially scenic as we weaved past bright sunflower fields, imposing castles and cars packed full of gypsies. We arrived at the abandoned Trencin airfield. A decrepit looking control tower and soviet era AA guns stood watch as the long cue of cars snaked in. Forest covered mountains framed the scene; Trencin castle perched on a particularly jagged jut of rock to the East providing a beautiful contrast to the rancid portable toilets and hordes of people seeking asylum from sobriety.

The sheer size of the event would remain unfathomable to me for a little while still. I started to get an idea after trying to meet up with some friends, not to mention the 35 minute walk from car to tent. Estimates put the number of party-goes just shy of 40,000. Despite the huge volume of people I managed to rendezvous with some friends from Montreal who had came to B-Slav a few days earlier. We poured contraband vodka into 2 liter plastic bottles and spent the next hours swigging vociferously as The Ting-Tings rocked out not far in front of us. As the first show of the festival came to an end so did our ethanol supply. We headed excitedly, something between speed-walking and dancing, to the nearest beer tap where we promptly punished plastic cups of beer with impunity. Half an hour after midnight we found ourselves in the front-row of the O2 tent. It was the largest sheltered area of the festival and the place where MSTRKRFT, the Canadian DJs would be performing. We managed to get their attention as they set-up. They seemed perplexed at the presence of Canadians in Eastern Slovakia and even tossed us a few tall cans. To say the show was one of the most incredible I've ever been to would be an understatement.

I staggered back to the tent, grabbing aKofola on the way. You see, by this point, I was in serious need of electrolytes. My flip-flops ravaged the skin separating my first two toes. The grass appeared more appealing than the tent and so I passed out under the stars outside the small triangular prism I was meant to share with Sarp. My concept of time at this point became unimaginably skewed and the night was punctuated by the comings and goings of various people in various states of mind. Around 5am, music was still coming from a few stages; the first rays of sunshine shot up at the Easterly sky. My buddies from Montreal, minus one, arrived back at the tent and collapsed on the ground. Butch stumbled back a few hours later. He had had some trouble trying to find one tent in an ocean of canvas domes.

I rolled around my sleeping bag and watched cumulous clouds idle in the bright blue sky as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I thought about life as a hippie before I re-inserted my earplugs and escaped chatter in foreign language and a bright-blue pick up truck filled with hornists pumping out conspicuous tunes on their twisted pieces of shining silver. Crickets jumped from my arm to my back. I began to sweat as 8 am and 25 degrees celsius bore down on me. The thing about airports is, there are no trees, and therefore no shade. I felt bad, but not too bad -knowing that all around me there were literally thousands of people who shared my woes, provided much comfort. The wind offered a reprieve and allowed me to sleep until we decided to head into town.

Without too much trouble we found an outdoor swimming pool. It was like any other community pool except everyone had a beer or seven and the lifeguard chairs were empty. I tried to make myself feel better with corn on the cob and liquor in my Kofola. We swam and slept in the sun for a few hours. I noticed that most of the people who were fast asleep on the pool deck were also toting Pahoda wristbands. As the forecast predicted, heavy, menacing clouds began to accumulate in the sky. I copped a ride back to the festival with my boss ahead of Sarp and the others who remained a little longer at the pool.

The wind was relentless, coming from every direction. A mountainous perimeter encircling the festival grounds provoked the low lying clouds, as they rolled in, to release their contents on the valley floor. As seems to be the norm, I was too hungover to properly pack for this trip and found myself in shorts and a wife-beater facing increasingly dire meteorological conditions. We returned to find thousands of people scrambling. My friend joked that Slovak's were half-gremlin, half-sugar, naturally they needed to get out of the pending rainstorm. By the time we ate a quick bowl of curry the rain began falling in heaps. Instead of heading to the O2 tent with my boss and co. I decided to check on my own tent, and wrap myself in a sleeping bag for awhile. This turned out to be one of the best decision I ever made.

I walked briskly towards the tent, silently cursing the ubiquitous yellow and blue ponchos that mocked me. Our tent was in bad shape. I re-secured it to the ground before diving inside and into my sleeping bag. Water dripped in from all sides. The thin material was saturated with cold moisture and stuck to me whenever I accidently brushed against it. No amount of packing would have protected me from the elements this time but my particularly poor clothing situation kept me prisoner in my sleeping bag. I wanted to go seek shelter with my coworkers in the O2 tent, and get too drunk to worry about weather patterns. The unfortunate thing is that that is exactly what a huge amount of festival goers did. A homegrown hip-hop act was spitting rhymes to a packed house when it all went awry [watch the video at the bottom].

LOCAL SLUG POPULATION DECIMATED!

The beautiful May weather was contrasted by the wettest June since the records started, as evidenced by the flooding Danube, or Dunaj, as my Slovak neighbours call it. July has been witness to frequent bursts of intense rain as well.

They don't have earth worms here. Not that I have seen anyways. Just snails and slugs, which on average seem to be about 3 inches long. They drag themselves across the sidewalks at an excruciatingly slow pace leaving a trail of "slug goo" likened to contrails in the sky. It makes for exceptionally nasty sidewalks as the locals don't seem to have much regard for the friendly, albeit gross looking Gastropods. I do my best to avoid crushing them but mainly for the sake of my shoes. Nevertheless most damp mornings a veritable slug genocide occurs.

On an equally atrocious note, the drainage and sewer systems in this city are "Communist as hell" if you know what I mean. All too often I am strolling to a bus stop, or the local gas station dodging the remains of half squished slugs, when I am punched in the olfactory glands by the pungent odor of fermenting sewage. I feel a little obtuse, for the number of times I've seen construction workers taking long slow pulls form vodka bottles should have better alerted me that the manual labour here is bereft of any real quality control standards.

At least I don't live in Toronto.

A Note on Subtlety

Today, while making my way to the office, I got off the tram a stop earlier than usual. I'm quite tired you see, with Marc-Andre visiting and all. I decided for a quick Tesco detour to get some nourishment since my fridge is emptier than a gypsies stomach. Ergo the preemptive tram debarkacation.

On my stroll through the Tesco parking lot, I glanced to the left and saw a man with only a few millimeters of hair capping the head that looked too small for the body which had undoubtedly been injected with copious anabolic substances. He stood in a black under-armour shirt and black pants. I can only assume a hefty gold chain draped around his neck. He stood beside his matching black Merc-Jeep and swigged from a 1.5L bottle of water. On his left forearm was a "HITMAN" tattoo.

Fake it 'til You Make it.

I'm watching clips of the boiler room, in an an attempt to get in a better head-space for work. A future post will discuss what I have found to be intricacies of the term head-space

You know the fall mornings, when the bright, clear, cloudless blue sky beckons you outside. The dry leaves crackle and dance in the wind; a pleasant change from the wet and dreary overcast that all too often predominates the Kingston forecast. The dry air cuts your nose, and what had just seemed like a pleasant breeze suddenly negates any comfort your cardigan offered, seconds ago. It's a lot colder than it looked out.

It was on one such a morning that I learned an important lesson.

Like most Saturday mornings I dragged myself to Starbucks, and then my local campus library, despite my crippling hangover. I patrolled the first floor, looking for a spot at a table that looked "just-right." Or maybe that was just part of the ritual procrastination that punctuates such tedious visits. On my meander in search of the perfect place to put down my books I ran into Greg.

A sense of kindred warmth befell me when I saw him donning sunglasses, and a tuque, probably hiding a mat of hair. His right hand held an over-sized cup of coffee, mirroring my own. He cracked a huge smile and I asked him how he was. I don't remember his exact reply but it was way too positive for the parameters to realistically permit. I felt like an even bigger heap of trash when he told me how much time he had already logged. I immediately thought of my keener classmates working hard to push back my spot on the bell curve. I felt a call to action.

We turned to walk to the extra spot he had egregiously been taking up in the event someone like me might show up. He looked at me and said "I feel like shit."
"Really??" I replied, feeling much better about myself while simultaneously losing all my motivation.
"Fake it 'til you make it man."

We spent the rest of the day drinking coffee and eating bagels struggling to do menial work. Whatever, we graduated.

Soon Enough...

City Juxtaposition

I finally made it to Vienna the other day. Despite the geographic proximity (50km), the differences between Bratislava and Vienna are night and day.

Slovakia is the first European country I've been in. Before I arrived, I didn't postulate too much about what life would be like here. The result of which, I think has been good and allowed me a lot of fun while minimizing disappointment. I think it also paved the way for the astounding impression the other European capital imparted upon me. Come to think of it, I was also a lot less exhausted and scared when I got to Vienna, maybe that swayed my perspective as well. Regardless, keep in mind throughout my descriptions that my exposure to European cities is limited but that it will continue to grow.

In fact, next weekend I'm spending my weekend in a town in the middle of Slovakia where the the Romans first made their presence known in 179AD. Ok, mostly I'll just be getting drunk in a field.

As soon as we got out of the train station two things struck me with similar degrees of bemusement. There were Turkish people everywhere, as evidenced by Sarp's smile and the lingering scent of kebab, the architecture was astounding and filled me with a pining desire to voraciously consume as many relevant Wikipedia articles as possible.

I found a Starbucks. I had no problem dropping 5 Euro on a Venti black coffee. It almost felt good to be cheated so badly. It felt even better to know that the extortion was not a result of my accent. It felt the best when my heart was circulating a potent dose of caffeine 20 minutes after I finished it. Most things, kebabs exempt, were about twice as costly as in Bratislava.

We explored some churches, parks and generally gawked at the amazing array of statues and astounding architectural accomplishments. Not so much at the girls. It was however, cool to see a city so full of people.

For an hour I watched windmills and fields of sunflowers fly by, before returning to a station erected around rusted Hitler-era tracks. I still can't believe how nice it felt to be back.


UPDATE: Yesterday night I watched, on three occasions, a mosquito landing on one of my various exposed appendages before taking off again. I must wreak to them or something.

Reshuffling Priorities

First, some weekend reading:

America lives on lawsuits

That's a messy death.

Organization is getting easier.

If only this city didn't run on instant coffee. The french press is my fave, I'm going to buy one this week.

For the Ears. Those of you listening to the audio-coke that is the new DMB album: I hope you have all the songs.

I went to send a text message yesterday. I scrolled through my address book. A process that took a little longer than I have been used to. I guess the rolodex is slowly growing, I'm finally making some friends!

For whatever reason, 6 hours of sleep feels like more than enough today. Maybe it has something to do with the sunshine cutting through the slits in my blinds, or because I spent half of yesterday in a prone position. Regardless, I have noticed a few trends in my life that are starting to develop. I think I can distill some insight by objectively pondering about them a little more.

I have been going to Slovak lessons twice a week. Until this past week I just sort of went through the motions of gawking at my supermodel teacher, taking notes and then immediately forgetting everything. I now find myself developing an active interest and insatiable curiosity in learning this especially challenging language. I think it stems from two contributing factors.

If I was born 5 years later but followed the same path I now find myself on, I would probably discover that the girls speak English relatively well. Unfortunately, the Slovak females in my current age cohort seem to sparse amounts. It's limiting, and made worse by the fact that they remain skeptical of foreigners because of the inundation of English Stag parties. As travel and tourism continue to expand here English is becoming more and more prevalent. The youngsters working at McDonald's and hotels speak the best and with the most confidence.

The second, less hedonistic reason for my desire to dabble more seriously in Slavonic dialect is because of what I dare say is acclimatization to this crazy place, and my need to be more autonomous. I think that to increase my ability to get by, and thusly my quality of life, learning to converse with the locals is the next big step. I confidently ride the bus and buy groceries. I'm still not great with menus or ordering food. It's extremely limiting to not be able to get what you want.

Most critically though, is that I think I am getting the hang of work. In a few weeks time that hypothesis should definitively prove to be true. Once I am banking serious coin on the regular I will have more free time to work on my communication skills, which again, I believe will be critical to really getting the most out of this experience. Until this time I haven't cared about learning, aside from the very basics, because I have had too much other stuff to worry about.

My number one priority is always being able to do what I want, which translates to getting money and getting girls. I think I'm going to start seeing some progress on the accumulation of bills which shall bestow upon me, a few extra hours a week to start learning the local slang.

If I keep adjusting like this I might even start exercising again soon!

My nails need to be cut and filed.

My Hangover is Serious

Excuse me if this post lacks clarity, but my current state of affairs would be paralytic to any lesser of a person.

The Turkish representation in the flat has increased 16% leaving me the 2-1 minority. You see, Sarp's cousin is visiting from Turkey before August when he will be conscripted to a one year mandatory military term. The expectations around his arrival were therefore quite grandiose. As I hear military beef with the Kurds isn't such a blast.

The Danube river has been flooding in a big way. The rain has been all kinds of annoying on it's own but has now led to thick clouds of mosquitos consuming the sky, as soon as the sun starts it's slow amble below the horizon. Lucky for me, I have never really been bothered by mosquitos. Maybe my blood is gross? I also find some sick, twisted pleasure in watching other people suffer. I only begin feeling bad when friends are so obviously overcome by paranoia, left imagining bites and slapping at nothing. I think it might be another reason I miss camp.

Last night we did a little pre-funking with some of my coworkers before heading to Harley Bar. The caliber of those who frequent it keeps me coming back, and I don't mean the Skin-Head bouncers. One of the bouncers had a huge SS-Swastika tattoo. It's disturbing. On the note of neo-nazis, I almost got into my first serious altercation with one. Allow me to elaborate.

I had just waded up to the bar with Sarp's cousin, to freshen my drink of course. A man in his late twenties with a freshly shaven head and steroid infused pipes was directly to my right. Towering over me. Maybe I stepped on his toe, or accidently elbowed him, but I'm pretty sure it was premeditated only by my inability to communicate in Slovak and the increasingly Jew-esque appearance of my hair. I fear cutting it will result in disaster. Having just caught the bartenders eye I was about to place my order for another pivo (beer) when the veritable goliath exploded with ire, making me the unjust recipient of a verbal lashing, of which I could not comprehend a word. Not one to look for conflict on the best of days, and given my blood alcohol content and the number of like-minded sympathizers this behemoth probably had, I did my best to apologize and convey to him that I didn't speak much in the way of Slovak. It didn't do anything to diffuse the situation although he eventually got his point across by repeatedly yelling "This Harley Bar, Slovak!! No English!!" Realizing by his crescendoing voice that my apologies and broken Slovak were only fanning the flames I promptly ordered 6 tequila shots. I lined them up in two rows of threes, looked him in the eye and said "Som, Kanadsy. Na zdravie!" (I'm Canadian, cheers), before handing him his first glass. He only took half the second shot and declined the third. I shook my head, called him a bitch and walked away.

In retrospect I was quite lucky. Tequila is generally not my potable of choice but deliciously enough they serve it here with cinnamon and orange slices instead of the classic salt, lemon combination. I spent the rest of the night with friends and beautiful girls so all in all not a bad time.

I can't decide if I should go back to sleep or make a liter of coffee. Probably the latter, I hate sleep.

ASIDE: This is a neat idea.

ASIDE II: If anyone is looking to bank some serious coin I suggest they contact me about opening a Starbucks in Bratislava. There's isn't one here yet but based on my observations so far I have great reason to believe people would drink that stuff up in a big way, I'm telling you. Seriously, I need a business partner with some seed money, call me.