A Room With A view

I catch one of the ancient trams to Miskolc Hlavna Stanica in the morning, and drink a coffee at the booth in the subway beneath the platforms. It is half lit and reeks of urine in the subway, but nothing else is open at this hour. Three untidy looking men are drinking beer from bottles at the next stand up table, then one of them goes to the counter and returns with shots of vodka and a small bottle of liqueur for each of them. They knock these back in quick succession, finish up their beer and head for a local train and presumably a job somewhere. It is nearly 7.30 on an ordinary Tuesday morning in Hungary.
The EuroCity "Cracovia" is half empty and I have a compartment to myself; further along the carriage a group of men are having an early morning party, and I avoid eye contact as they pass by on their way to the toilet. They are thickset, hard-looking, scarred and red-eyed from booze, their gruff shouts reverberating around the coach. We pause at Hidasnemeti for border formalities and a locomotive change. The Slovakian security check my passport three times and the platform and off-side of the train is patrolled by armed guards. I admire their diligence, but cannot think of a less welcoming country in which to seek asylum.
At Kosice I find a map outside the station which shows the Tourista Informacia office - an easy 10 minute walk in the centre of the old town. It seems that all the historic buildings in Kosice have been gathered up and placed in a line along the pedestrianised main street; they are literally shoulder to shoulder, so close that its impossible to get any individual perspective. There is an old tram's driving car converted into a bar near the town hall, but it is the only thing on the rusted tracks that snake through the cobbled street. There is a problem finding a room. The Tourista office call all the options I can afford but everywhere is full; one of them suggests the Hotel Akademia, who have a room at a reduced rate. It is a 10 minute walk they tell me. Its off the map they give me so they extend this in biro, with notations in Slovakian that mean absolutely nothing to me.
After 20 minutes I turn back. I am walking along a crumbling road as wide as a motorway, the massive blocks of a housing complex widely spaced about the wasteland either side of me. I pass by the vacant plinth of some Soviet hero's statue, the hammer and sickle still visible around it's base. Behind this there is a smaller block with a sign: "Hotel Akademia".
I check in reluctantly and find my room - or rather, rooms - on the sixth floor. They are a converted apartment, a bare kitchen alcove, an empty box room, a bedroom, a small bathroom - the basic tower block blueprint. The corridors and stairwells outside my door are painted in pale green, the woodwork an oppressive dark brown; scraps of carpet, odd sticks of old furniture, one or two dying potted plants complete the picture. Then theres the view form my bedroom window. The housing complex is immense. The grim blocks march up the low hills to the West, as far as the eye can see, a view that could not be paralleled in Moscow. It is a monument to social decay on an epic scale; 100,000 people stacked up in a couple of square miles, fighting tooth-and-nail against the grinding poverty that moved in when the Communists moved out. For the first time since I left, I think of packing my bag and catching the next train out of town. I look for a long time then take my camera and a handful of Korun and set off. What is to be gained by walking around the restored monuments of the old town and finding a nice little bar or Etterem when reality is right outside my front door?
I cross over the wide road and the tramlines and walk into the estate. Is it risky? Yes, probably. But its a liberating feeling to leave trepidation behind at the Hotel Akademia and take a walk that is not in the Tourista Informacia's guide to Kosice. The complex was built to house workers at the huge steel plant on the edge of town built by the Soviets - ironically now owned by US Steel - who turned Kosice into an industrial centre surrounded by ore-rich hills. Nobody bothers me as I walk, though people look - sometimes stare openly - and comment to each other. Nobody threatens me or questions me; nothing happens. The ground floor of one block houses a flower shop, a small supermarket, and a bar. I turn around and go inside for a drink. I have to point at the beer tap and hold a finger up so the barmaid can understand me; a local drinker gets up and says something to her, slaps me on the shoulder then goes back to his table. The barmaid smiles in understanding and pours my drink. I nod my thanks to the local and take a table. The people are curious, but I think entertained, too: this stranger with his foreign habits and funny accent walking into our bar in our estate - that doesn't happen every day, does it?
I eat at the hotel this evening, and discover the Akademia is a training hotel run by the Slovensko Ministry of Tourism, or something like that. The students are supervised by four or five middle-aged women who could have been guards at a Gulag in previous times. It is like an episode of Fawlty Towers. The students try hard but food is still delivered to the wrong tables, only to be snatched away by one of the camp guards and swapped with someone else's meal. There are clatters and bangs from the kitchen, and harsh reprimands in the middle of the restaurant. I order a drink from the waitress and after 10 minutes she comes back to tell me they have run out of ice cream and would I like something else instead? I do eventually end up with a drink and most of the meal I order, but I am certain I haven't asked for a side order of toast with it.
I leave a tip for the waitress and climb the wide staircase to the sixth floor, fumbling for the banister in the semi-darkness between floors. The lights of the estate are like a constellation against the dark hills, the shooting star of a police car's flashing light disappears into the night as I turn out the lights and lie down on my hard, narrow bed.