Pressburg Pionier Oberleutenant Karl Hoper (L)

In this case, Thor led me to a very old memorial tableau from 1909, reminding us of some unfortunate Pionier (in German) who were blown up by a mine. Until I saw the date I couldn’t understand why the Russians or Slovak would write in German, as the Russians also had Pioneers. But no, this was a trace of Hapsburg Pressburg, when Pressberg was probably about the fifteenth city in the Austrian side of Austro-Hungary.

Bratislava Castle Danube boats postcard (L)

While I was there I took a photo of the castle with boats passing. This photo has the feel of old postcards for me. Technically it’s shot on a Leica R 50mm f2 mounted on a Sony NEX-5T. With the NEX-5T you can mount all your amazing old manual lens. Aperture exposure mode works great (unlike on the Canon 5D Mark III and other Canon DSLR). 

But this time my bleary eyes admit,
it’s been seventy years. Three generations
lived and died with just whispers
in the jungles or Balkan piano clatter.
An inconsequential hundred thousand
Arab children may have starved.

Nothing real, nothing like this. Slow heartbeat,
the distant boom of the end, absolute.
Hans’ wife pooh-poohed the menace then
as mine now. Take Gretta with you my love
while you’re out with the dog. Fresh air
will do you all good. She smiles, urgently
rubbing cream into her forehead. A furrow
across her brow, dismisses any other care.

Real men do not fret about
what they cannot change. Children
to be taken to school, cannons to load.
Duties to be discharged equally.
Centuries alter not man’s destiny, woman’s
insouciance. Accept the force. Indispensable
nation. Sieg Heil!

Konigswart NATO Kittsee full

Konigswart Bratislava full

Konigswart Hainburg Braunsberg full

When asked what surprised him most about humanity, the Dalai Lama answered:

Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

Apparently the Dalai Lama never said this. What a pity if he didn’t. This is our life. We lose our time pursuing matters of little consequence, preening before our peers and dreaming of irrelevant wealth. Long term stress-related cancer claimed Steve Jobs as surely as it will claim you or me, if we don’t live better and balance our lives better.

One of my best friends and my long term creative partner died in a car crash on his birthday a week after mine, just before he hit thirty. My life was changed, his was ended. This is mortality.

On the other hand, since we are all in an inevitable rush to the finish line, what does it matter if we labour out our existence and pushing to the top of the ant pile? If we are going to be dead soon we may as well work hard while you have the chance.

Or to pivot one more time. Since we don’t live long, what does it really matter what we think or feel in our nanosecond?

To put some perspective on matters, life on earth is 450 million years old and has been nearly snuffed out three times before our epoch. Those 450 million years are just a short day in the history of our solar system which is approximately 4.5 billions years old and has another 6 billion years to go before the sun extinguishes itself, burning through all the helium.

the core of the Sun will collapse, and the energy output will be much greater than at present. The outer layers of the Sun will expand to roughly up to 260 times its current diameter and the Sun will become a red giant. Because of its vastly increased surface area, the surface of the Sun will be considerably cooler (2600 K at its coolest) than it is on the main sequence.[45] The expanding Sun is expected to vaporize Mercury and Venus and render the Earth uninhabitable, as the habitable zone moves out to the orbit of Mars.

Make the most of your day takes on a heavily ironic tone in the proper context.

Even our concern about nuclear radiation claiming life on earth seems silly. Who really cares – what warms us every day and makes life possible is a giant thermo nuclear plant 150 million kilometers away. Blowing up the entire stock of nuclear weapons in a single go wouldn’t match the radiation generated in our solar system every single day by our sun. Can our solar system, let alone the universe absorb our radiation and move on? Surely.

The consequences of excess radiation will just be rapid evolution of life through much heightened rates of mutation and illness. Eventually nearly radiation proof live will evolve its way through, just as exposure to the same toxins makes cockroaches more resilient. Or microbes more penicillin resistant. Finally millions of years later, the radiation will fade. Another Eden will blossom with more than 5 billion years to go before earth must die with its sun.

galaxy’s largest nuclear plant

Wealth and perspective: I’ve always disliked Mark Zuckerberg. He’s always seemed to me like some kind of geeky liar who liked to spy on women with toilet cameras, the last person on earth with whom I’d trust my address book. Or the kind of guy who would steal from friends and renege on deals. On the other hand, I’m gaining a certain begrudging respect for the grown up Zuckerberg. With all the wealth in the world, a modern Midas at twenty eight years of age, he still goes to work, lives modestly in a reasonable house. With the choice of most of the Maxim Hot 100 available to him, Zuckerberg married his university sweetheart Priscilla Chan whom he began dating before Facebook. The grown up Zuckerberg still goes to work and lives his life as if he were the most junior staff member at Facebook and not the 66th richest man in the world (amazingly enough Steve Ballmer is ten places ahead of Zuckerberg: business software is apparently a better niche than social networking).

Zuckerberg has understood at the end of the day there is only your life’s work and not drugs nor yachts nor Ferraris will really make things any better. Zuckerberg still has his mid-life crisis ahead of him. Perhaps then he will acquire a taste for starlets and fast cars, as the ticking clock of pleasure runs its hour out.

Beautiful women make the world go round.
But never forget Helen whose beauty destroyed Troy

I remember back in Moscow a good friend from university (amusingly enough we competed for Head of Year at Trinity College where I won the election in my first and probably last exposure to democratic politics) was a devoted husband with his university sweetheart. He had nothing of which to complain: his (ex)wife is a beautiful and sporty intellectual herself, even if inevitably imbued with the tedious hardline Canadian feminist “reality” with which we grew up.

I’d never seen a more courteous and gallant husband. “What can I do for you dearest?” was the kind of phrase which just tripped off his tongue naturally.

In Moscow, my friend ran with the top politicians for years. Much later he started to hang with the big brokers, the guys you read in the paper, international junk bond stars and hostile takeover artists. One day he snapped. He started dating six foot tall blond Russian models and dropped his political responsibilities to become an international financier in a drugs and booze fueled orgy of laissez-faire capitalism. Understandably his incredible wife left him in short order.

Perhaps my friend decided to live out the Dalai Lama’s dilemma from the other side. From first year in university, he had not been living but had been following a roadmap laid down in university, enviously watching his friends cavort with the most beautiful women in the world.

Man does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived

The present of luscious red lips, yachts in the Mediterranean and careening with caviar in one hand and coke in the other from one long legged beauty to another loomed too large. A friend “took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, “’if you will bow down and worship me.’ His moment to say yes to hedonism was there and if he passed it by it would never return. He would have remained a stalwart government functionary and diplomat, just a little bit hen-pecked, having made his way to the store windows of Babylon but remaining always outside.

Was it the right choice to abandon trust and security and fidelity for those torrid adventures? In the context of just those 450 million years, the truth is the choice was irrelevant. Yet another suffered, part of the perpetrator had to die inside, our human covenant was broken.

Was the heady musk of those nubile loins worth the sacrifice? Some day, we’ll see one another again and I’ll ask him. My own answer?

Last week, Daniela, Slavo and I walked past the well maintained cemetery in Kittsee. The headstones gleamed under the afternoon sun.

“We’ll all be there very soon,” I ventured cheerily.

“What do you mean?” asked Danka. “We have many years before we arrive here. I hope.” Peculiarly death seems to alarm women far more than men. Estrogen appears to be some kind of would-be immortality hormone.

“Maybe not,” I answered. “I’ve lost close friends to car crashes. The reaper can come suddenly for all of us.”

du bon vin bordelais

“What’s the point of living life with that kind of mentality?” Daniela dreams of marriage, a small house, a couple of children and a small business. What her parents have.

“As long as there are enough beautiful women and the wine has been good, one can say that one has lived well. Oh and some dance and music to go with the above.The rest is just colours passing on a screen.”

“Don’t listen to him Slavo,” she sternly admonished. “What time do we put on the barbecue? With the steak, would it be better to open the Cabernet or the Frankovka?”

TIgre v Meste cast

The main story follows a hotshot young prosecutor in Bratislava, Rudolf Jazvec. This gentleman at the age of thirty has not lost his virginity, much to the amusement of his randy bon vivant zoo keeper friend Hyena who has been boffing Rudolf’s oversexed younger sister and fitness instructor Jane for the last five years. Rudolf is in love with a radio host on Bratislava’s culture channel, Marina Kuznikova.

Kristina Tothova and Diana Morova in an intimate moment,
no it’s not a lesbian love story: Tóthová plays a man

Unknown to anyone except the viewer, Marina’s Russian husband Ivan (the boxing instructor of Jane) has been brought in by Marina’s mafioso brother to eliminate a troublesome state prosecutor. Rudolf.

I’ll stop here before giving away much of the complicated plot, as some people insist on not know anything about a movie’s story before seeing it. Plot really doesn’t matter in Tigers in the City, how it happens is far more important than what happens. There is drunkeness, there are failed hits, there is mistaken identity, there are endless zoo animals, there is a waitress who dreams of being a stewardess, there are water bicycles and speedboats, there are homing pigeons, there is happy gay love. The invention never stops.

But perhaps most extraordinary is that Rudolf is played by a very slight and very young actress, Kristína Tóthová. Her voice is dubbed over with a peculiarly resonant and gruff mail voice (Tomas Mastalir). But when she’s standing around in her undershirt, you can clearly see Tothova’s small but shapely breasts. There is no attempt to bandage wrap them to her chest.

The trailer gives a taste of strangeness of Tigre v Meste

There are a few other anachronisms. Without being a corrupt prosecutor, there is no way Rudolf at thirty years of age would be living in the 120 m2 palatial renovated apartment in the center of Bratislava s/he enjoys in Tigers in the City. On the other hand, even Truffaut and Rohmer gave their petit bourgeous better digs than are likely. Why not give life a bit of glamour?

On the side of realism, we really do get inside the upside down pyramid of Slovak radio and have a good look at the grubby smoke filled offices and endless corridors. I’ve never seen the zoo in Bratislava and am tempted to visit now (do we really have so many white tigers?). It’s quite delightful how filmmaker Juraj Krasnohorsky took the trouble to show us so much of Bratislava. We visit the river, we visit the ponds, we visit the center, we even see the then brand new Eurovea. All of it dynamically shot by French cinemotographer André Bonzel. For those of us who like our little city on the Danube, Bonzel reminds us why.

delightful Ivica Slavikova as tough fitness instructor

Though walking us through a morality play, Krasnohorsky does not neglect any opportunity to delight our eyes and inspire the curiousity of visitors.

The only film with which I can compare Tigers in the City is Jean Piere Jeunet’s Amélie. Both films share the same kind of narration and a quality of not being of this world but in it. Amélie is the superior film but that sophomere director Krasnohorsky can get close is a great achievement anywhere, all the more so in Bratislava’s straitened film circumstances.

I did wonder throughout the film what the point of casting a woman as a man was. That is the point: it keeps you wondering and off-balance, aware that you are watching a construct. I think Krasnohorsky and screenwriter Lucia Siposova wanted to avoid letting people off the hook to sit back and zone out to a crime thriller or a love drama. Watching Tóthová fake being a man constantly reminds you to pay attention and that things are not always what they seem. It’s a very clever cinematic variant on Berthold Brecht’s alienation effect.

The less exciting alternative would be that it’s just a very eighties look at androgyny (David Bowie, Liquid Sky): it’s not your sexual organs that matter but your soul. Actually sorry guys/girls – as those who tried to cross those boundaries back then could tell you – yes the plumbing does matter. Love is about two thirds chemistry and one third soul.

Milan Ondrik Zuzana Sebova as zoo odd couple

Quite a bit of care went into the details. The hit man is played by international Czech star Karel Dobry, which gives Tigers in the City some star quality and probably opened some doors. Dobry puts in a decent effort as the reluctant assassin. None of the other actors offends through incompetence and many impress, from the peculiar Tothová through Diana Mórová who plays the melodramatic radio host. By the end of the film, you are really convinced she is a completely superficial airhead. Lubo Bukovy as the homosexual friend infatuated with his straight celibate friend even manages to come off as more touching than creepy. Milan Ondrik as Hyena lets down the ensemble a bit with occasional clumsy overacting.

Ivica Slavikova probing uncertain sexuality of Lubo Burkovy

Pretty Ivica Slávikova steals her scenes as the tough talking, sex kitten fitness instructor sister. Not only is she first class eye candy, but she has a physical charisma relatively uncommon here, vibrant as an Italian or a Russian film star. This is her first real role. Look out for her next films.

If you would like to see Bratislava from the inside and/or amuse yourself with a delectable modern morality play, Tigers in the City is light, yet filling entertainment. All but the most dour and least imaginative will leave the theater with a smile on the face and questions in the heart.

Love poster Jakub Kroner

Here we have three typical student girls living in the main dormitories at Mlynskina Dolina. They sneak boys in and out of their rooms and dream of having punky guys turn up with pear spirits in their underpants. After drinking the bottle straight, some of them have sex with the said punky guys. The next week Sandra cries that Tomas doesn’t call her anymore. So far so good. The same maudlin story which French étudiantes might live through, albeit with better rooms and better liquor.

Meanwhile one of them Veronika, the cutest, is flunking out of her Management courses (which are supposed to be at the Economics University, target of some well earned and pointed jokes about the empty headed and pretty girls who attend that institution – but then Veronika’s exam turns out to be Comenius University which has no particular problem with its management program). Apparently one of her classmates gets straight A’s by blowing the professor in the afternoon.

All of this is just fine if a little depressing. Not the best image of Slovakia but perhaps something in common with grim reality.

Michal Nemtuda, Jakub Gogal and Samuel Spisak
smoke a bong in vile apartment

Where we go downhill is with the guys. Our twenty two year old protagonists Mato and Tomas are best friends from childhood. When they are not circulating among the city’s brothels or trashing Bratislava’s nightclubs, they have a little hobby nicking cars for Boris. Boris is a great guy. If you don’t bring him the car he orders he drills a hole in your hand. As Mato and Tomas are very good at what they do, they don’t have problems with Boris.

Dusan Cinkota as Boris Love

Our two guys swear and bitch and have contests to see who can steal the most gear from parked cars in a lot. Then they smoke up or drink beer. They never clean their vile apartment.

The problem with Lóve becomes apparent. These empty-headed car thieves without morals are put up on the big screen as almost our only image of youth. The heavy advertising campaign meant that as large a young film public as exists saw Mato, Veronika, Tomas and Sandra as their big screen counterparts. While serial killer Jason Bourne is hardly the ideal image, international espionage beats petty larceny and is at least far enough removed from life as to not be aspirational.

Jakub Kroner, we need better images of ourselves. There’s enough petty toughs and trashy floozies in Bratislava without glamorising them at the center of the few films we have.

While Kroner’s script meanders at points (he could use some tighter script editing), despite the best efforts of cinematographer Mario Ondris and editor Otakar Senovsky, there are some pretty moments, particularly at the top of one of the buildings of Bratislava with Mato and Veronika and even the car chase.

Still it’s not all blackness.

Kristina Svarovska film Love Bratislava

Mato and Veronika fall in love and Mato starts to aspire to something better and cleaner. When Veronika is kicked out of her exam he gets caught out in his lie of working reception at the Sheraton. Mato turns up and pays the real concierge €400 for his jacket. The misunderstandings between Mato, a woman with a lapdog, the manager and the original concierge verge on classic comedy. A pity we didn’t have more of this dark comedy.

Love Jakub Kroner Bratislava car chase in the rain Apollo Bridge

Michal Nemtuda as Mato carries his role quite well. He’s no Vincent Cassel (who ironically enough started in a similar role in La Haine) but avoids most of the melodramatic bearpits the script puts in his path. As Veronika, Kristina Svarinská would be the revelation among the actors: she’s beautiful and compellingly intense. Abandoned by her mother at birth, growing up in an orphanage, somehow it seems unlikely Veronika would come through so unscarred, but if producers can get away with overly glamourous actresses in Hollywood why not Bratislava?

Though Samuel Spisák acts more of a caricature than a character as film’s happy go lucky drug dealer, Spisák does not lack charisma. He might shine in the right title role. Ironically and tragically enough the very talented Dusan Cinkota who shines in the role of tough guy Boris is in real life prison for eight years for drug use (pervitin). Cinkota lost his appeal in December 2012 against the case from 2007.

Still I’m wondering why we couldn’t have seen one of the many successful students whom I know with some progress made in life and without a prison term.

These hard working young people could open a restaurant or start a clothing store or sell cars (and not steal them). I know people with complicated love lives doing all of the above. I hope Jakub Kroner makes some new friends before he makes his next film and gives us something to aspire to, something to admire about ourselves on those rare occasions we get to see ourselves in the cinematic mirror.

PARA – Žena from Martina SLOVAKOVA

Things are happening culturally in Bratislava, a lot of the work is just underground.

In the narrow street of the old town in the video (it’s just south of Michalska Brana and the Oesterreichisches Institute is on that street), last weekend I saw two guys catch another guy drag him down and kick him three times in the head. After the victim ran right past me.

They kicked him once but it took me twenty seconds or so to recruit a group of about three other people to help intervene. From our group somebody found some police, who then called backup. The attackers were spoiled boys with rich fathers in black designer suits. The victim had pierced ears, punky hair and had insulted them, his beating was justified they insisted. Everyone was about twenty years old.

Friends of the brats arrived, girls in black mini dresses with long dark hair and lots of makeup. Friends of the punky guy arrives, slightly alternative girls with no makeup and normal guys. Based on my statement, the police started to arrest the privileged kids who were trying to tell everyone they hadn’t done anything. Then the punky guy head butted one of them sending the BCBG (bon chic bon genre) slamming into the police car and bloodying his nose. Handcuffs and a reversal of the situation.

At this point, the spoiled kids were home free.

After lots of talking to the police, we managed to get the punky kid released and everyone went home with no charges. A lot of trouble for nothing.

Lesson: do not headbutt your assailants in front of the police (or attack them in anyway). You will really weaken your case.

I wonder if the spoiled rich kids learnt anything. The two guys seemed really comfortable chasing people down, kicking them in the head and dealing with the police. Let’s hope this isn’t the future.