The Hlavna Stanice

I take a rattling old tram to the station, past the curious inverted pyramid of the Technical College, and buy a ticket for Gyor in Hungary. Smoking is prohibited in the trams, of course, and a penalty of 1,400sk applies to those who fail to punch their ticket the moment they board. My ticket is checked twice on the 10 minute journey. I sit next to a young man with a notebook open on his knee, it's covers missing, pages dogearred. I glance down, thinking he is doodling, or perhaps writing something. I am amazed. On the page, in black ballpoint, is an exquisite line drawing of one of the 17th century buildings I may have walked past yesterday. I contemplate asking for a page of his drawings, but he looks troubled, his hand at his forehead: a future genius sitting next to me, or perhaps a lost soul approaching the last open page. Would I give him a page from my notebook in exchange?

I sit at the Mc Ertls booth outside Bratislava Hlavna Stanice and drink coffee. The beer is flowing already, and a pan of pork and onions cook slowly inside the open hatch, an inch deep in oil, slops and scraps dropped into it by the dough faced woman serving.

There is a cast bronze Winged Wheel balanced on the roof of the station. It is the symbol of Soviet Railways, a vast empire that once stretched from East Germany to the Barings Sea, from the Arctic Circle to the Adriatic. Much of this complex web remains, much unchanged: it would be impossible to eradicate it all, like trying to discover and rewrite the entire genetic code of some huge, extinct organism. And this is why it's attraction is so strong; a vast industrial and political archeological field waiting to be discovered.

The woman shovels in more onions into the pan, and a piece of meat-gristle leaps onto the counter: she picks it up with in her dirty fingers and throws it back into the pan, splashing melted pig fat onto the opaque widows. Breakfast, anyone?

I want to go onto the station to photograph a class 240 electric locomotive. They were built by Skoda, and have wrap around windscreens, sweeping bodies, portholes in the cab doors, and flashy colour schemes. They look like they are from the set of a 1950's sci-fi movie. Flash Gordon: The Skoda Years. They are as unexpected and pleasing as the goggle-eyed diesels in Brno. Another example of the Czech design philosophy: form, function, and flair.
I dare not risk the penalty, though. Instead, I sit and drink coffee with the drunks outside Mc Ertls, while the meat slowly darkens and hardens.

I board Fast Train 943 to Gyor. It travels around the outskirts of Bratislava and then back into the city, a twenty minute journey to within a mile of where it started: the Danube rail bridge is in a far Eastern suburb, the train's destination to the West. At Rajka, the train crosses the border into Hungary, and the Slovakian locomotive is swapped, a Hungarian V43 electric taking over. The border guard are relaxed and friendly, the passport check cursory.
A woman boards the train at the last possible moment, the locomotive already drawing up the slack of the train, movement imminent. She leaves the carriage door open. Nobody closes it as we depart, nor on the journey to Gyor; it is wide open as the train charges through the countryside and villages at 100kph. There is nothing to stop me stepping out into rushing air and instant eternity.

Koniky, Erika, and the Vietnamese Market

I wake in the City Hostel Pension, and turn on the television. The girl in the Tourist Informance was next to useless: it was a huge effort for her to pick up the phone and call the pensions I selected from the printed list she reluctantly found for me. After the fifth one, she put her head on her folded arms on the desk, exhausted, the task impossible; I cajoled her into trying one last time, and she charged me 50 Korun for making the booking: I had made her earn it, it would seem.
I watch CNN for a while, then turn to a children's fire safety program, hosted by a clown called Koniky: two children light a piece of newspaper in a clearing in a wood. Cut to a Petrochemical plant, railway marshalling yard, and housing estate engulfed in flames: quite how the children managed to cause this inferno from their clearing in the wood is not made clear, but it gives Koniky the clown the opportunity to join the fire brigade for the day. I am enthralled and soon in hysterics. He wears an absurd, baggy, multi-coloured jumpsuit, and has a square red box for a nose. He slides up and down the fireman's pole, abseils down buildings, and struggles with the high-pressure firehose. It is hilarious. He is completely incompetent at all of these; he would do well at the Tourist Informace.
The receptionist's name is Erika. I tell her mine is Koniky, and she laughs. She gives my name it's German pronunciation: Paul becomes "Powell". We chat while I look at my email at the terminal near her desk. We are at ease with each other, and get along well. She is my age, divorced, her boyfriend at work in Germany. She tells me about the city, it's monuments and history; she is witty, charming, and speaks Russian and German fluently. She tells me stories about life under communism, and a visit to East Berlin as a girl; how the Slovakians hated the Nazi occupation, and had little time for their Russian liberators. And about how difficult it is to live in Slovakia today. Her stories are fascinating. She gives me a map, and some advice; I go out to explore the smallest capital city in Central Europe.

It is warm and sunny. I take a tram around town and then wander around the cobbled streets of the old centre; there are alleyways and cafes, classic 17th century buildings shoulder to shoulder with slab sided cold war blocks, and a statue poking out of a manhole cover. I walk up Stefanikova, past the Presidential Palace, and climb the hill to the monument overlooking the city. It commemorates the liberation of the city in 1945; the graves of more than 6,000 Russian soldiers lie here. It is a public holiday to commemorate this change of invaders. In the square is a memorial to the Partisans who undermined the Nazi occupation, and a cermony is taking place. There is a military band and a small gathering of onlookers; a few of the Dress Gaurd smoke cigarettes behind the regimental bus while the dignitaries speak and lay wreaths. If there is a final resting place in the city for the Partisans, I can find no trace of it: perhaps they turned their attention to the new order.

I wander through the alleys where the Vietnamese traders make their precarious living. I pass tiny, open air cafes with the delicious smell of fresh lemongrass and ginger hanging in the air; past a stall with rows of female lower torsos and legs modelling skirts and low cut denims, their upper bodies, chopped at the waist, on shelves above wearing bright red bras and striped vests. All of this under corrugated plastic roofing, which, like the woks and the half-mannequins, will be taken away at night, only the market's metal skeleton left for the moon to gaze at.

I eat at a little bar called Zlata Fantazia. I order a Topvar Pivo beer and some Slovak pasties while the locals dance to an accorian player; the bar is dark and smokey, with an almost conspirtorial atmosphere: Bratislava on the eve of war. The Spenatove Pirohy arrives: seven small wholemeal pasties stuffed with spinach and chicken, covered in sour cream. It looks disappointingly small. The pasties are as thick and heavy as stones, so filling I can barely finish them. I am as solid and immobile as any of the city's statues after my meal, and struggle to leave my seat, as weighted as a deep-sea diver. I leave the bar and change some money at a shady looking office with chicken wire over the shattered window. I am charged a 250 Korun fee for the exchange: more than the bill for my dinner and drinks, an outrage. I am asked to provide my name and passport number. I make up a number and sign the photocopied form with a flourishing, but legible "Koniky".
I collect my key from Erika, and ask if I could buy a drink from the cooler in reception. I choose the Kozel Pilsner. It is 5% proof, the Slovakian alternative is twelve. "That is for children" she jokes," and clowns".

Domestic Bliss

The Pension Orange is the restored, converted second floor of a disused warehouse. Reception is manned at various times by a skate-punk, a crazy-but-friendly old man, and a matronly old woman who doesn't understand a word I say, but mothers me nonetheless. They've printed up some leaflets in correctable English which clearly state breakfast is included in the rate: there is even a picture of the "cafe", and guests having breakfast. I can't find it. I search the entire floor, but there is no "cafe". Its made up. Its completely fictitious. I ask my surrogate mother, but she just throws up her hands. I give up and walk down the street until I find a real cafe. Its closed, but I hammer on the door until they let me in, and insist they make me coffee. I drink it at a table where I can watch the empty, early morning trams crawl by, as the staff vacuum around my feet and look at me sideways. Theres an almost audible sigh of relief when I pay and leave: "Who the hell was that?"

I go to the station and buy a ticket to Bratislava. As I wait for EC279 I see this:

A commuter service arrives with a grey and white diesel at it's head. I look into the cab and see a Kozel Pilsner sticker on the bulkhead with a pine framed mirror next to it, and a rug on the floor beneath the driver's seat. Its spotlessly clean inside and out, cared for and loved. I see another engine with a medieval tapestry draped above it's windscreen as a makeshift sunvisor, a cast Brno crest above it's numberplate, amidships. Then theres an old Russian freight engine with a full set of net curtains, neatly held in place with tiebacks, bottles of condiments lined up inside the windowsill, like a mobile domestic kitchen.
There is a foot crossing between the tracks, and a small clapboard shed with blue framed windows on Nastupiste 2; two middle-aged men sit on a bench outside drinking cups of beer. The commuter train is ready to leave again, and toots it's chime whistle ( the airhorns are too loud to be used in a station ). The men place their drinks on the bench, position themselves at either side of the crossing, and perform the only duty demanded by their tenancy: they ask people to wait as the train pulls out, then go back to their shed and beers, where they'll wait until its time for another train. Then wait some more.
The whole scene is redolent of the way British Railways was run in the 1950s, and cannot possibly last. There is a hoarding outside the station telling travellers of the EU funded modernisation projects taking place, a model of standardisation that will eventually stretch from Gdansk to Girona. The mirror will be removed, the tapestry stripped, and the curtains will come down forever. But what of the two men whos job is to wait?

I take the same seat in the Speisewagen as before; the Slovakian coach is shabby, the chairs falling apart, and the waiter removes my ashtray when we arrive at the customs post at Breclav: "It is prohibited in Slovak Republic". The police and border gaurd check my passport three times on on the way to Bratislava, the train heaving and rolling, the track badly maintained. I stand on the platform at my destination and light a cigarette. In an instant, two stone faced, aggressive policemen are demanding my passport. One of them copies my details onto a scrap of paper, mispelling my name and knocking 20 days from my date of birth, while the other dead-eyes me. Then he slips my passport into his shirtpocket.
"It is prohibited to smoke on the platfrom". Oh yes, I think: that one again. I apologise.
"1000sk penalty". What? I shake my head and say I have no  Slovakian Korun, although my wallet bulges with notes I changed in Brno.
"Exchange office in station. Follow, please". They walk off with my passport as I trail behind with my heavy bag. Bastards. They bully me into the queue at the exchange, impatient to hunt for their next victim, and I'm immediately bitten by a mosquito. The rate is robbery, but I can't suddenly remember that, oh yes, I do have 1000sk. I'm furious. I push the note at the officer and whip my passport from his fingers.
"Give me a reciept" I demand in a tone that suggests they're a pair of crooks. He hands me a wad of raffle tickets with 100sk printed on them, and I throw them straight in the bin next to me. There is nothing they can do. They stare at me for a moment, then slowly saunter off into the station, one of them saying a derisory "Goodbye".
Welcome to the Slovak Republic. Perhaps I should have listened to that waiter.

The Colour Of Brno

I take the 9.06 train to Praha: it isn't busy, and the ticket inspector, a contented old man who's in no hurry seems delighted by my ticket to Brno. The girl opposite me is fast asleep, and he tickles her under the chin to wake her for her ticket. Through Karljensen in a deep river valley, the cliffs rising to an enormous castle overlooking the town, the train carefully tiptoeing around the tight bends dictated by the river's course that the line hugs. I change in Praha for EuroCity107, on it's long journey to Budapest, foregoing the madness of the station booking hall for the sanity of a seat in the Speisewagen - restaurant car - to wait while the clock approaches departure time. I find a freestanding armchair at table in the smoking area, a chrome and glass lamp on the linen tablecloth, a little condiment and toothpick holder next to my espresso and notebook. The waiter is waistcoated and polite. The romance of rail has been modernised by the network of red and white EC trains that link the capitals and major cities of Europe, but not lost; worth every penny and minute more than a low cost airline: the fine art of travel.
There is a framed advert for Budjejevicky Pilsner on one wall, and strangely, an ethnic print of an African mother breastfeeding her baby on the other. I cannot make any connection, if there is one. The landscape to the East of Praha is flat, sparsely lined and dotted with distant trees; it reminds me of Flanders, and a haunting visit to Ypres I made the previous year.
Through the serving hatch of the bar, I look into the galley as the chef expertly tosses an omelette in a cast iron pan once, twice, then out onto a plate: we are rattling over a junction at 160kph, and I doubt I could even stand up straight let alone manage such a feat with such casual ease.
I change trains at Trevoba for a local service to Brno. It's slow, dirty and hot, and the paint is flaking from the nose of the class 242 electric locomotive, rust poking through the welds around it's windscreen.

I walk off the platform at Brno into the subterranean shopping complex below the tram station and am immediately lost. Vietnamese vendors sit on stools outside their "Textil" and spice stalls, sullenly eating bowls of rice or noodles as the heaving crowd rolls by without seeming to even register their presence; the stale air is laden with the reek of fried food, sweat, and cheap perfume. I find the "Informance" office hidden on the street above, and ask about a Pension. The woman seems helpful, but completely misleading. I point to a place in a brochure she studies: "Hmmm, but it will be very expensive". It is not. "But it is not in the centre; you must take tram". It is a three minute walk, right in the centre. I ask her to book it: "Hmmm - I will try, but it might not be possible". I check into the Pension Orange 10 minutes later.
It is very orange: curtains, floortiles, towels, and bed - everything is orange. I feel slightly ill.
I walk to the Nadrazi and have soup and dumplings for dinner. On the platform, I drink a beer at the inevitable booth, surrounded by hardened drinkers, all on the home straight and probably heading for a bed under the nearest viaduct. They are not threatening, or even interested in me. I watch an ancient Russian railcar depart for some unknown suburb, it's diesel engine sitting in a compartment just in front of it's passengers. I walk to an internet cafe. As I finish the last paragraph of a blog post, the internet connection goes down and an hour's work flashes out in an instant. I start again, and by the time I have finished, have to wake the girl behind the counter so I can pay. I resist the temptation to tickle her under the chin.
I walk back to the pension and crawl into my orange bed.

Sunday: Kazac Koruni

Today I walk around town, and take an honest, straight in the eye look at Plzen. Not the architecture, the street cafes, or the pretty park with its burbling fountain: I look through, past, and over these. A crumbling tenament, its windows missing, grey washing strung from balconies, gathering mildew and traffic fumes above the rubbish strewn yard. A baby crying and music blaring; then a small, fluffy ginger kitten perched on a dirty windowsill. Graffitti and litter fill the narrow streets behind the market. A stray dog streaks out of a side street and is sent tumbling into the gutter by a passing tram; it limps off across some wasteland for perhaps the last time. In a subway, a makeshift home: an old sofa cushion and some cardboard matting, a bundle of dirty clothes, fag packets and empty beer cans, the resident nowhere to be seen.
Enough.
What had I expected? Not a paradise, but perhaps the same rose-tinted and obviously romantic view of the city I remembered from my first visit.

I walk to the Nadrazi. I stop for a coffee at one of those street cafes I tried to ignore, and give the last of my cigarettes to an old man begging outside the station. I buy a ticket for Brno tomorrow and Nyrany today, and board the train.

I step back in time, or so it seems.

I imagine this to be how Czechoslovakia - as the countries of the Czech republic and Slovakia were known when they were one - was in the 1980s; whether through reading about the Communist era, or sheer ignorance, this is what I believe it was like. The main street is narrow and treelined, the low concrete buildings washed in browns and institutional greens. Blue bakelite letters - Elektro, Radio, Televize - above the empty showroom window of a shop that sells nothing. An old Avia truck gasps under its load of timber, a tail of Ladas, Skoda 105s, and Trabants following its exhaust fumes. The squat, ugly government building, fenced into its Fir tree shaded compound, windows barred and blinded. I order a drink at the Hotel Sokolovna. It's a busy lunchtime, and two startlingly attractive girls serve the happy, chatting locals with food and drinks; the customers don't seem to notice how attractive the waitresses are, as if here, it is commonplace. Above my table is an old, plastic, Art Deco styled clock; it is made by Kienzle, and it stopped at precisely 6.30: in which, perhaps less democratic year, is anyone's guess. It is incongruous among the farm implements and bundles of wheat decorating the walls and giving the restaurance a homely feel. Is it a reminder to all, perhaps, of less wholesome times?
I order an Esspresso, and miss my train back to Plzen. There'll be another train, but there may not be another moment like this.

Back in Plzen, I join the jostling queue at one of the booths between Nastupiste 2 and 3. I pay 16kc for a beer and another 2kc for the plastic cup it is served in. Behind me, on the wide platform is a bungalow that would look at home on a 1960s English housing estate: offices for the station manager. Above the booth rise the upper stories of the station buildings, their faces pocked and faded by time and weather, huge swathes of plaster crumbled away to reveal the brick skeleton beneath. There is a huge variety and quantity of booze behind the booths counter, and there's food too: a partially dismembered cooked chicken buzzes on a platter of flies; shoddily made salami rolls sweat in their clingfilm shrouds; a plate of Brambrot decays in a shaft of sunlight. The Parek V Rohliku - hotdog - looks particularly unappetising, like a penis wrapped in dough, only the glans protruding.
I stand at one of the nearby tables and light a cigarette, flicking my ash into the Grand Extra dog food tin that is the ahtray, three Labrador puppies fading like a memory from the once red label. I note the dog food contains more protein and less fat than the Spam that is the ashtray on the table near Nastupiste 2; lower too in salt than the sardines at Trafika, a less popular booth on platform 4, possibly because of the nest of high-tension cables that threaten to slide from their resting place on the roof, or the array of obscene magazines that leer and thrust from the yellowing windows.
A young man in a chenile jumper and huge plaid shorts sidles up and asks for a light. The timeless introduction for hookers, hustlers, and hangers-on the world over.
"Where are you from?". Fairly good English. I tell him, and he gushes like hes stumbled across a fellow countryman in an impossibly distant country.
"I go before to England! Kentmargate!"
"Margate? Kent?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" Highly unlikely. I ask if he had visited the coal mining museum, or had taken the long trip to the seaside. "Yes, yes, all the time!"
After a few minutes of my pointed silence, he asks: "You sleep with girls at hotel?"
"Where? In Kent Margate?"
"No, no, no!" he forces some hysterical laughter. "Here, Plzen. I know. I show you. They fuck all the time, non-stop."
"They must be very tired. Thanks, anyway". But he won't be deterred.
"You smoke? Hashish? Everyone smoke it in England: I know, I go there. Kentmargate, everyone smoke hashish"
"I don't think thats entirely true", I venture, then stop. Behind him, two policemen have appeared. They are sinister in their tucked-in-boots black combats, baseball caps and bulging tee-shirts. They frisk him, question him, and throw him off the station. Then they come back for me.
They demand something in Czech, and I pathetically try to explain I don't understand. Memories of the ill-fated trip to Bratislava: one day, two countries, no passport, and being thrown out of Slovakia, and almost Hungary, too - as a disaster, personal best.
"Your passport please". Its in the hotel safe. I try to explain, and desperately search my bag for some form of identification: I hand them my Yorkshire Bank cash card. They pass it between them, turning it over to inspect the signature strip. "You are American?" one of them asks. I feel like telling him to take some geography lessons: how long has Yorkshire been an American state? Instead I give him a worthless tear-off strip from an old doctor's prescription. They are perplexed, but eventually nod to each other. As they turn to go, the younger of the two points at my cigarette.
"Kazac Korouni", he instructs. "It is not possible to smoke on the platform" he says in all seriousness. I hastily stub it out in the overflowing dog food tin, and leave in a hurry.

I walk back to the hotel and pack my bag for Brno. I go out into a light evening rain and eat at a Vietnamese bistro, ordering my food by pointing at the out-of-focus, over-exposed photographs on the menu. It is almost inedible, and looks nothing like the pictures. The crab salad is mechanically retrieved fish protein in a Thousand Island dressing customised with bitter spices. A searing dish of stringy chicken in a thick, gelatinous sauce is shoved in front of me before I can even try to finish the starter. I throw 100kc on the table and leave, trying not to think of the thin, grey, abrasive toilet paper that may be the final cost of my meal.

To Brno, then, and hopefully not via the restrooms of Central Europe.......

One Way Ticket

10 hours; cars, planes, buses, trams, and trains - with a fair bit of hiking - takes me from Leicester to Plzen in the Czech Republic. I check into the echoing, high cielinged hotel, drink some beer and eat some stew and rice at a little Restaurance, then sleep the deepest, most refreshing sleep in the last two miserable weeks.

Monday morning: I could be at work in Leicester, organising the logistics of delivering hundreds of packages. Instead, I choose the 11.40 local train from Plzen to Domazlice, pulled by an old white, yellow, and blue diesel. 91ckz ( Czech Koruni ) buys me a 118km ride through the lovely rural countryside, past fields of nodding sunflowers, and rippling barley behind the goggle faced gaze of the smoky museum piece. It actually does look like it's wearing a pair of glasses: but the strange quirky design is not unattractive, and fits perfectly in this bittersweet country. I sit on the patched vinyl seat, my notebook on my knee, gazing out of the window, writing and thinking.

Almost 12 years working for the same company but not seeming to get anywhere; a few precious weeks snatched here and there, riding around Europe on trains. Luxembourg and the Blankenberge Express, Germany and the Ruhrtalbahn; Hungary, and an ill-fated trip to Bratislava.

I arrive at Domazlice and wander around the little farming town for a while. The harvest is being taken in, and the rhythm of the place has quickened since I last visited.
I'm drawn back to the Nadrazi ( station ); I sit at a formica table in the Restaurance and order a cold Gambrinus beer. My notebook and foreign clothes are objects of study for the local workers lunching in the canteen: I am probably English, and possibly eccentric. I couldn't argue either point.
The canteen is a classic Soviet era model of stark functionality; some modern touches, like a microwave oven and an electronic till have been added, but it seems largely unchanged by independence, and EU ascension. Witness the chrome and plastic hat stand in the corner, the huge radiators that march around the walls, their communal hot water pipes dropping from the high ceiling. Large windows filter dim sunlight through faded net curtains and provide the only light until evening, when the harsh fluorescent strips will finally be turned on. There is beer and vodka, and steaming basins of stews, soup, dumpling and cabbage. The cream plaster walls are punctuated with awful 60's tiles, and the worst of cheap Eastern Bloc wall hangings; a strip of gold tinsel is draped across one wall, in celebration of something unknown.
"Haben Sie Toilette, Bitte" I ask as another beer trickles into my glass.
"Ya: Auf dem Gleise, Zwei Links" She hands me a small key on a huge Gaoler's ring.
"Danke Vielmals". The exchange gives me an immense amount of pleasure; it incorporates almost all the German I know, but works perfectly.

One Friday in late July, a new tenant moved into the flat above mine, and a party started that was still going 19 days when I slammed the front door, and dropped the keys into an overflowing wheelie bin at the bottom of the grim street. Friends stored the few items of value I had removed; I left everything else there, and made my way to the airport with my one-way ticket to Central Europe. I didn't look back.

I decide to have dinner in the hotel's huge, echoing dining room. The hotel opened in 1893, and is a sprawling architectural delight built, full of huge mirrors, carvings, and statues. It is only partially restored and utterly charming for this: if history could not find a room at the famous Hotel Continental, you would find it here.
The only other guests in the hotel are a party of deaf German tourists; they are having dinner, too. The whole experience is strange. The usual sounds of the restaurance are there: chinking glasses, the rattle of cuttlery on crockery; the odd cough, and the rustle of a napkin. But there are no vocal sounds whatsoever. Its like watching a film with that part of the sountrack edited out. I order my meal, the waiter and I needlessly whispering and I feel ashamed for our behavior. The group's guide is standing at the head of their table. Hes explaining tomorrow's iteniery, or perhaps reviewing their day: I can't tell, as he speaks in sign language, and lipreads questions from the party. Others in the party get up occasionally, and take their turn addressing their friends, and are followed by an appreciative round of applause. They are happy, relaxed, and enjoying each others company. I sit at my solitary table and feel utterly humbled, and utterly isolated.