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.
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.
posted by Paul O'Halloran at 7:04 AM
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