nunoncastors

I fully intended to post this shortly after returning to the UK but, what with one thing and another, I’ve been too busy. I realise this is a rather weak excuse but the real world does forever intrude upon my more enjoyable activities and tends to render pastimes chores, hobbies untenable and – well, you know how it can be.

It bothers me that for most of the time I’d much rather be somewhere else, doing something else, as opposed to working, moving house, going shopping etc. I just don’t think I’m particularly cut out for reality and, were it not for my imagination; I think I’d go completely barmy. That isn’t to say though, that my imagination isn’t partly responsible for my being a little barmy anyway.

So, Bratislava. Slovakia. Wizards. These are just some of the rewards you can reap if you give a mate a hand renovating his house for a few weeks instead of going out, having fun or even enjoying yourself. Not that stripping wallpaper and chasing out channels in plaster and brick isn’t fun, I mean it isn’t, but it could be worse.

Still, it was a nice gesture and one that Ian, Stephen and I appreciated immensely because, as you may have guessed, we were the ones to benefit. Who did benefit, who would bene… fuck it. Anyway, so it was that the four of us booked two days off work and convened in the Bell Inn on Market Square, along with Gareth, so that we might have a beer or two before boarding the metal snake that would take us to the place where the skycars dwell.

I won’t go on at length about airports, security or any of the other paranoid bollocks that are a result of America’s overarching reach, suffice to say that it irritates me. I will mention, however, that Duncan managed to upset an army veteran on the bus with a diatribe about Armistice Poppies becoming a fashion statement. He’ll claim it was a discussion on the nature of caring and that it was an honourable draw, but it wasn’t and he was wrong.

Indeed, never have so many people felt so uncomfortable in such a small place as during that exchange on the bus. Well, provided you don’t include the sensation of being on an aeroplane. I’ve no idea who works out how much space each passenger is allowed, but I know one thing, they’ve never ever seen anyone over five foot eight or, if they have, have assumed that they’re a one-in-a-million freak of nature. For me, sitting on a plane, train, or any form of transport that isn’t either my car or a deliberately commodious yacht, is an exercise in sitting bolt upright with my knees wedged in the person in front’s back. Something that we both enjoy, I’m sure.

I don’t recall much about the flight, I think I slept, or read, or something. It was dark so I couldn’t photograph the clouds, the horizon and all the usual things I enjoy doing on flights. The dream of airhostesses excluded of course. The airport is different however; I remember that because we had our own ‘man in Slovakia’ in the shape of Milan, a genial chap who drove us to our apartment and, sadly, didn’t resemble an ex-KGB assassin or drive as though evading a murderous pursuit by separatists.

Still, I’ll say this for Bratislava; the architecture is stunning in a curious sort of way. Baroque buildings, a legacy of the Habsburgs and an echo of a time when the city was at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian empire proliferate in the old town and then bleed away to mix with stark Soviet architecture and contemporary buildings. Personally, I loved it. Our apartment was a grand building with nine floors and a fancy staircase. It had a feeling of modernity to it but I suspect it was older than it appeared. Staying there made me feel as though I belonged in an art house movie where everyone is riddled with angst and only able to express themselves through meaningful looks, beard stroking and dropped spoons.

Stephen, the arse, nabbed the largest room and I ended up on a bunk bed. There would be rewenge! though, oh yes.

So, our first night in a new land and a strange city, where the barriers between us and our fellow man were typically language and culture, what did we do? We went for a nice meal and then we went to the pub.

Well, actually, Ian put his fingers in a child’s mouth and Duncan was slapped by a gipsy, but after that we went for a nice meal and a few drinks. Ok, a lot of drinks. Our first night turned out to be a large one, but there you go. Lads eh?

Now, I really want to recount our conversations and antics but, to be honest, there’s so much swearing and filth I think you deserve a warning. A BIG WARNING. BEWARE!

I can’t recall what the restaurant was called, but I ate chicken stuffed with ham, cheese and, curiously, more chicken. We had beer, we had… something that might have been plum liqueur that dissolved my fillings and learnt how to say ‘thank you’ in Slovak. We also set the tone for the trip by accusing Ian of being a paedophile for the whole ‘fingers in a child’s mouth’ incident. In his defence, he was just bitten while trying to push a gipsy kid out of his way while the child was demanding money from him and being an arse, but facts have never got in the way of merciless teasing in my experience.

What next? Oh yes, a Belgian pub. I’ve no idea why there was a Belgian pub but it was lovely and provided giant flagons of Hoegarden and a fun atmosphere. We ended up talking to some drunk Slovak guys, one of whom claimed to be the interior minister for something-or-other and the other the chief lawyer for the air force. At the time, this made perfect sense, I mean, why would you lie? On reflection, it was bollocks. However they did lead the way to a bar that was still open after three hours of talking rubbish and pointing out how much nicer things tend to be abroad.

It was an Irish bar.

For fuck’s sake.

Still, apparently it’s one of the most popular bars in Bratislava and what I remember of it was fun. Even if we did bump into some other people from Nottingham who were altogether too loud and brash to be anything but an embarrassment. I mean, we were an embarrassment but no one had the chance to realise that as at least we kept it to ourselves and were reasonably quiet and polite to the locals.

Still, good times.

In all honesty, I can’t remember much of that first night beyond it being a heavy one and bitterly cold. We ended up back at the apartment at around 3AM watching porn and complaining at the lack of depth and feeling in the acting performances when Duncan and Stephen decided to go back out drinking. I’m ashamed to say that I went to sleep, which is just as well as Duncan was apparently attacked by a dwarf and chatted up by some sort of prostitute. Me, I was sleeping. Definitely the better deal.

Saturday was cold, Duncan had passed out on the sofa still dressed and all was quiet. Until I opened all the windows in Stephen’s room and he started screaming at me that I was a cunt and should shut them before he died. Rewenge! is sweet.

Thus it was that a second day of piss-taking, arguing a pratting about began.

People may think that women take a long time to get ready in a morning, but that’s nothing compared to two very hunugover men and two mildly drunk ones. It turns out that Stephen’s reaction to being offered hugs when he seems grumpy is to inform the world that we’re all a shower of arseholes and, on one occasion, ‘greasy German rapists.’ Truly our camaraderie knows no bounds in the early morning.

The issue of why Ian was in bed with his brother is really best left unexplored. I mean, I’ve always wanted to see twins in bed together, just not male twins.

Sadly, like the worst kind of tourists, we breakfasted in KFC. Fucking KFC! I’ve never been so ashamed in my life. I don’t even like KFC and agree wholeheartedly with Stephen’s assessment that ‘[it] looks like dogshit’.

Tesco gets everywhere by the way, there’s a massive one slap bang in the middle of Bratislava. Homogenised culture really is anathema. It’s a bit weird too. The Tesco, not homogenised culture though, I suppose it’s a bit weird too.

Anyway, Saturday saw us meeting up with my friend Arien or, to give her her real name, Justina. It’s quite strange when you’re a member of an internet cult and you realise that people have names out there in the real world. Actually, I suppose it’s a bit strange when you start meeting people from your internet cult, I imagine it’s an indicator that things have gone a bit far.

No matter, we met up with Justina who, rather fortuitously, lives in Bratislava and knows everything. How old stuff is, who that statue is of, what that building is, anything you could conceivably want to know. She’s also good fun to be around and surprisingly unfazeable in the face of four weird English guys who think it’s funny to call each other terrible names and inhabit a strange Python-esque world of their own where Ninja’s are so stealthy they can wear your clothes at the same time as you without your knowledge and trying to throw each other from parapets is considered acceptable.

Off we went to the castle.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how little things can bring people together? For example, we climbed the irritatingly steep hill to Bratislava castle, learnt about how it had been burnt down and rebuilt, took in the view from the walls and discussed folklore and statues of women with large bosoms made of bronze, yet still there was a slight air of awkwardness about the group. Mainly, I think, because the lads think my internet cult is actually an internet cult and that, by night, I pretend to be a Wizard and cast spells on people (this was something that Justina did nothing at all to dissuade them about by the way) and as such, everyone I know through said internet cult is going to be some sort of mentalist.

This all changed however, when we found the well in the castle dungeons and spent half an hour throwing things into it. For some reason, this took the edge off and, to my mind at least, everyone relaxed a bit.

We spent the rest of the day pottering about the old town looking at cultural things and eating. I particularly liked the town square and the catacombs of St. Martins Cathedral where we planned to murder Ian and intern him. No one would have known but it turned out to be too much effort as no one had a knife or a club.

Then there was the duck. Ducks seemed to be a recurring theme of the trip. We found a TV channel back at the apartment that only played cartoons. No, that’s not right, we found a channel that played weird hallucinatory cartoons of animals driving cars and piloting space hoppers. Stephen has a video of it I think, I’ll see if I can get it posted. It really is bizarre. Sometimes the duck would drive a car; sometimes he would stare into your soul from the TV screen while soft, supplicating music issued forth from its speakers. What did he want? Who was he? He never said because he never spoke, oh no. The duck is always silent.

Which, for those of you not in the know, is a euphemism for fisting, lovely. It wasn’t one of those trips though, seriously. Yet still you need beware the Silent duck for he is cogent in his argument.

Then we went drinking and nearly ended up in an old nuclear bunker listening to death metal because for some reason I can’t say no on holiday.

“Would like like to drink some acid sir?”
“Why yes, I’m on holiday.”

Fortunately Duncan can and we ended up in a motorcycle bar drinking local beer, vodka and something else that melted my fillings again. All my friends’ worst fears about my internet cult were confirmed by Justina who, I’m assuming, just went along with it for a laugh. I most certainly do not attempt to cast spells or wear a pointy hat.

Some chaps were doing massive lines of coke in the toilets just to prove that decadence is truly universal and in places it was all a bit odd. I can’t, for example, recount much of the conversation because – well, children might read this. Or people I know who think I’m reasonably nice and polite instead of a sordid misanthrope. The Silent Duck reared his head again (metaphorically) and so did death, killing, torture, what to do with chavs, why Slovaks hate Hungarians, extreme-right politicians and their antics, the whole shebang. Then we took pictures of Stephen kicking a bronze man’s arse and I forget what happened next.

Sunday. Sunday happened next! Sunday was definitely low-key because most of us couldn’t function beyond grunting and ambling and also because it snowed! SNOW! LOTS OF SNOW!

It was the one think I didn’t pack for, obviously. So we spent the day trudging about with wet feet listening to Ian bitch and moan about them before becoming a spy.

“In Bratislava, they say x y z” ad nauseum.

Mainly though, SNOWBALL FIGHTS! Oh, and a sculpture in the snow that resembled a – well, yes. Nice work Duncan.

I’ll tell you what though; we had some damn fancy drinks in a UFO perched atop a bridge. You can’t say that about every holiday can you? Even the toilets were exciting, just a plain sheet of glass and a stylised bucket and you, pissing in front of the whole Soviet housing scheme from a great height. Awesome! Though, if I’m honest, I couldn’t’ shake the feeling that the whole city was looking.

I had planned on going to some of the museums, or to Vienna but we ended up in a shopping mall for no discernable reason and because Ian had wet feet and wanted shoes. Turns out that no one in Slovakia has feet as big as his and don’t stock his size as a consequence. I don’t think the boat to Vienna was running anyway.

Sunday evening was strange. We ate… somewhere, and ended up in a bar in a basement filled with skeletons and cobwebs talking about super powers. Most of us went for something sensible, Duncan had precognition, I had the ability to become anything, Justina went for permanent good health, Ian was invincible and Stephen, the great tit, became Custard Man, a man with the ability to summon custard to do his bidding.

We then spent two whole hours discussing who would be the most powerful with Stephen constantly claiming that it was him. Custard, you see, apparently has the power to quench suns, plug black holes and defeat the invincible. His only known nemeses were the Trifle People of Birds and the Hundreds and Thousands (there’s just too many of them). I must have been pissed because I almost conceded that he was indeed, all powerful, and that custard could easily defeat even a man who could turn himself into the matter at the heart of stars or, if the fancy took him, custard itself.

This wouldn’t matter apparently, as it wouldn’t be true custard.

Then there were strawberry daiquiris and a bar with pneumatic seats and accommodating staff who smiled benignly as we ordered ever more ridiculous concoctions.

Monday was comedown day. We packed, we left, we had excellent tapas and some trouble at the airport with a bottle of wine. In all we spent one hundred and fifty quid each, we’d eaten excellent food, considered the impact of communism on society, stalked Stephen through the city like spys, played person chess, watched Ian hurt himself, pointed at things and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

This post probably doesn’t convey the fun that I had or how much I enjoyed spending a weekend with my mates exploring a foreign city and having a few beers. I don’t usually go in for ‘lads’ holidays as I tend more toward museums and vistas when I’m abroad. I tend to get easily embarrassed by my fellow countrymen (and women) acting like pricks and swearing at the locals.

I enjoyed myself though, even if I can’t remember some parts of the trip, even if I did go to bed early some nights and especially as some parts of the trip are unrepeatable in polite company.

You had to be there, you really did.

Pictures!