zolireds.net » travel

The City of Clouds

Z! — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:00:17 +0000

THE coincidence

Z! — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:09:05 +0000

The first time I went to Bratislava was a year ago to visit my actual girlfriend, who lives there, and with whom we broke up a few hours after my arrival, so there wasn’t a second time until a long time. Then last weekend I travelled to Prague through the Slovak capital where the bus stopped at the main station to take on passengers. That’s where and when I realized that I’m in the middle of a really weird and funny (some might even say scary) coincidence.

The facts: I broke up with my ex on July 12th, 2008 and I took the 12:15 pm bus from Bratislava’s main bus station to my hometown. The bus I took to Prague from Budapest stopped at the same bus station exactly at 12:15 pm on July 12th, 2009. There’s really not much more to add…

… but maybe a picture that was taken right next to the bus station in Bratislava on my way back from Prague. :)

Breakfast of the Kings

Z! — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:11:46 +0000

Breakfast is usually included in the price of a hotel room you book and most of the times you have a good selection of food to choose from, so it’s a nice way to start the day while you’re on a holiday. Belgrade’s own Hotel Royal is a little bit different in this on many counts. First of all, there’s no “Swedish table” to pick your food from but there’s a menu with a somewhat limited selection listed. There’s also a polite warning “choose one please” which rules out drinking coffee and orange juice at the same time. Since the menu (a photocopied piece of paper) wasn’t really informative I took the liberty of asking the waiter about some of the food in detail:

Me: What does “cheese and ham” stand for?
Waiter: That is cheese… and ham.
Me: Alright. And what’s a sandwich?
Waiter: That is a sandwich… and cheese and ham.

Since this latter sounded much more promising than “cheese, ham” we decided to go for it and were pleasantly surprised to see the additional bonus tomato that they came together with. Also one of us ordered a good old hot dog that we didn’t think it was necessary to inquire about. How wrong we were… hot dogs in Hotel Royal are really special. But let the pictures speak for themselves.

After finishing our meal the kind waiter approached us again for a friendly chat:

Waiter: You are from Romania, aren’t you?
Me: No. We’re from Hungary and Russia.
Waiter: Hungary? Hmm… (It sounded like he was trying to place this country on the map in his mind, but as it happened it was only a trick to gain some time to prepare with his next question.)
Waiter: Ponimaesh po-russki? (He sounded very confident of catching the lying Romanians.)
Nina: Da.
Me: A ti? (Guess that was too much for him because he gave up on us and left our table.)

It wasn’t for the quality of the breakfast this time but surely we had a nice start of the day that left a huge round smile on our faces for some time.

Budapest vs. Vienna

Z! — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:07:55 +0000

It’s a mystery to me how foreign people can actually like Budapest… especially those that have also been to Vienna. The two cities are not even in the same league. Surely, Budapest has beautiful architecture but all the buildings are dirty and in very bad shape. Most of them didn’t even get a proper painting for 15 years. The walls of the buildings are full of graffiti, the streets and pavements are full of trash and junkies are all around the city, especially around subways. When I show a visitor around in Budapest I usually feel ashamed about my nationality mostly because of this. Budapest is a capital of a dying nation and that’s exactly how it looks like. Vienna has more or less the same architecture as Budapest but the buildings there are all in good shape (newly painted in bright colours) and you can walk around the city without bumping into beggars and homeless people at every corner or junkies urinating at public building walls. Vienna has many beautiful parks where you can spend hours by just relaxing and looking at the little wonders of nature. In Budapest you can do the same thing only by looking at empty bottles, cardboard boxes and used condoms right at the bench you sit down (in case you find one that isn’t broken). Truly I felt very sad after coming back home from my latest trip from Vienna because the two days I spent there were kind of magical thanks to all the beauty that city has to offer.

Hitting the ground

Z! — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:54:16 +0000

The idea for this photo album goes back to November 2008 when I was browsing through a photo portfolio of Per Olav, a Norwegian friend of mine. I bumped into an upside down picture of a man lying on a pavement that immediately triggered my mind. At that moment I already knew that I want a similar picture and I didn’t waste time presenting the idea to my good friend slash personal photographer, Nina who agreed to do it when there’s a possibility. The first chance of shooting a “pavement picture” – as we called them – came in Budapest on All Fools’ Day in front of a shopping mall. Unfortunately the pavement was dirty (as everything else in Budapest) so the picture didn’t turn out the way we expected. We didn’t give up as we had a weekend trip booked to Vienna where we were hoping to find a better pavement for our picture. Upon arrival, near the hotel we stayed at, we found a pavement with a really nice motif and we decided to make the picture there later in the evening when we’re back from sightseeing. Then we went out to see the city and found many nice pavements along our way, so instead of making one picture we thought of making multiple shots to put together an album if there’s enough material for that. The result was more than promising and we even had to leave out some pictures from the selection. It was nice walking around the city and hitting the ground every now and then to see the surprised faces of the locals and fellow tourists. The funniest moment of the day occurred when we visited Belvedere Castle’s garden where I lied on a steep pedestrian ramp in a very uncomfortable position upside down. While Nina was taking shots there were some people stopping by and staring at us and once I got up from the dust a guy took my place and asked his girlfriend to take a picture of him. That gave both of us a huge round smile and a memory that will probably never be forgotten. (All photos by Nina Voronova)