Vagabonding times: Learning from the locals

From Olomouc I moved on to Slovakia, and there my first stop was Bratislava. With no further plans for the evening of my day of arrival, I strolled through the city centre when I noticed this flyer for a concert – and decided to check it out.

Unfortunately, the hostel staff were not familiar with with the concert venue, “Garage under Pristavnym bridge”, but they got me on a bus heading the right direction. When I got off the bus I was lucky enough to run into Mattie, a local, who also wanted to go to this concert. But even though he was a local lad, it was not until an hour and several phone calls to his friend later before we found the place. And it all made sense then: there was this big garage complex where people lock up their cars, and one of these garages was used to host a Czech and a local punk band that night. The whole event felt as much underground as it can get and I understood why the girls from the hostel reception had not heard about that place before – and I also understood that night what the word “garage band” is all about!

Later that night, after everything had been cleaned up, Mattie and I met up with some of his friends at a bar downtown. With all of them being locals I was interested in their views on the separation of Czechoslovakia and their experiences with the Euro currency that was introduced in Slovakia this year. And whilst listening to their stories I felt happy that I had spotted that concert flyer. It is difficult to get into this kind of intimate contact with locals (ok, I still have not used couchsurfing.com yet, but I am on it) and at hostels you usually only find travelers from other countries than the one you are visiting. So, in future, I will keep looking out for these flyers...

Some impressions from Bratislava...