4.24.07

changes afoot. signing on a new apartment on atlantic street day after tomorrow. it will require inventive furniture placement and a paring down of my life. i'm looking forward to it. peeling off everything that doesn't feel right about right now. peeling off the skin of an apple. there's a porch just off the living room. since i'm on the third floor, i'll be able to see the bay even when the leaves are out in the summer.

...

bratislava, first night

sitting on the floor in niki's apartment, leaning against the cool wood of a shelving unit and thinking that the rug (mauve and taupe, squares) wouldn't be half bad to sleep on. feeling rooted to the floor with the gravity of twenty four sleepless hours. after hazy, comfortable talking, i showered in a bathroom so tiny only nicole would fit in it comfortably.

went outside for the first time. it was drizzling. we walked around the grey pond near her building, a grey and yellow post-communist tower erupting out of the bunker-like buildings around it. the billa nearby, it's sign more yellow on grey. walking along cracked cement sidewalks, nervous in anticipation of foreign public transit. she attempted to explain how it worked on the ride downtown. half honor system and half heavy enforcement, it seemed appropriately central european once i got the drift of it. no one made any noise on the tram. no talking, no phones, barely even any movement. we whispered our conversation.

dinner at no. 1 slovak pub, bryndzove haluski and the only dark beer on the menu. going on 27 hours with no sleep and buzzed, navigating my way the hidden restrooms with the same sense of impending mistake i get in any restaurant. this time, though, i honestly couldn't tell which word meant "men" and which meant "women." i guessed. i still don't know if i was right or not. we ate beer, potato dumplings, sheep's cheese, and chunks of crispy pork fat, leaning into the behemoth wooden tabletops with eager conversation. discussions of life and cares and birth control.

full and a tiny bit drunk, tramping down the scarred wooden stairs of the pub to the wet street, night again. we needed groceries; so, to slovak tesco.

i wasn't prepared for slovak tesco. it was several storeys high and, nonsensically, felt like an open-air market. wares were being hawked (it seemed) by disapproving, hardened women in blue tesco vests. every horizontal surface was covered with something you could buy. fake plants, real plants, costume jewelry so plastic you could see the seams. it looked like a bomb went off near the office supplies.

note: slovakia doesn't do 3-hole punchers. instead, everything goes in plastic slipcovers. the basement of tesco was filled with bins of slipcovers, stacks of chocolate, and pyramids of alcohols distilled from an astonishing array of fruits and plants (pears, pine needles).

in our final twenty minutes in the store, niki was hit on by a culture-shocked kuwaiti and i had a mulleted twenty-something edge closer and closer to me in the haphazard line, pressing his incongruous, basketball-like beer gut into my side. i edged forward until i unnerved the well-dressed, professional-looking man in front of me. we couldn't figure out if the store could accept our means of payment or if we had to pay for the grocery bag. our cashier, every inch the slovak-woman-who-lived-through-communism, glowered at us. truly glowered; emphasis on the low sounds in the word.

we stood at the main tram junction, groceries in hand and ripped flyers wavering around us in the strangely warm breeze. we waited and talked, cradled under the upside-down Ls that made the tram shelters. before we got off, a goth girl moved over to sit by us, shyly asking where we were from. she couldn't comprehend why we would possibly want to be in bratislava. we had no explanations.

all three of us smiled, sparkling eyes and simple english, and then, finally, i slept.