This is slightly off-topic, but only a bit so hope i'll be forgiven.
The hilarious Irish writer Marian Keyes has a monthly newsletter where she catches her subscribers up with her doings - in hilarious tones too. Last month she went to Slovakia where the Irish team were playing football. I replicate it below, and after you've read it you can decide if you think you want to include Slovakia on your itinerary.
Marian's article:
Okay, Slovakia. Well, we went there thinking a) the Irish football team would beat the living daylights out of the Slovak team b) that the Slovaks were lovely people. Neither of these things transpired to be true.
We set off from Prague on the Saturday morning, full of good cheer. We arrived at the SAS Radisson in the centre of Bratislava to discover that only one of our 3 rooms was ready (even though it was later than 3 o’clock.) We could hardly hear the conversation with the surly, surly, oh very surly desk person because of the singing of The Fields of Athenry from the bars across the street. Undeterred, we went to the one room and my brother Tadhg leaned out the window, looking at the hordes of Irish fans out there and said, “There it is! I’ve seen my first green inflatable hammer!” And so festivities were declared open.
Out we went. Irish fans everywhere full of niceness. Slovak police also everywhere. Not full of niceness. Making people take down Irish flags. Telling people to shut up the singing. Slovak bar staff. Not full of niceness. Back to the hotel to see if the rooms were ready. Revelation from (different other) surly desk person. The hotel was overbooked. There was no room for my brother Niall. The whole town was full. But they had secured him some rude lodgings outside the town, halfway to Budapest. All of us very distressed. He’s our brother, we exclaimed! We don’t see him that often! Don’t send him halfway to Budapest! But nothing doing.
Duff
We went for something to eat. And my God, the frozen, unsmiling hostility of it all. You’d swear it was illegal to smile in Slovakia. Indeed, maybe it is! Certainly, enough police around to enforce it too. Frankly we were astonished by the unpleasantness of the staff. I mean, I admit that Irish people can sometimes be a bit wearing, with their constant chat and bonhomie and desperate desire for the craic, but come on!
Then we went to the ground where the warm Slovak welcome continued. There were only 2 gates for the Irish fans and 279 for the (13) Slovak fans. Tumbleweed was blowing through the Slovak turnstiles but they still wouldn’t let us come in. They directed us (curtly, nay brutally) to the Irish gates which looked like Red Cross Feeding Stations in a famine zone. It was really – genuinely – scary. Although everyone (by which I mean the Irish people, not the granite-faced Slovaks) were really good-humoured, we were so crushed that my feet were lifting off the ground. By the time we got in the National Anthems were playing and there were still loads of Irish people stuck outside in the throng so they would have missed the start of the game. However, the less said about the game the better. All that you need to know is that it looked like we were going to win then we let in a stinky Slovak goal in injury time. And it felt like fecking déjà vu! It was Tel Aviv all over again! We were gutted, gutted, gutted! And to enhance our happiness, the Slovaks sent in a load of riot police who were so obviously itching for a fight. I’ve never been so insulted in my life! I’ve been to Irish games in lots of counties and never, ever, ever have we been treated like this. Irish fans are nice! Everyone knows that! (Like I say, yes, we can at times be wearing with the anecdotes and the good-humour but coshing people over the head with batons just to shut them up surely isn’t the way to go.) Then – the final salt in the wound – the Irish fans were locked in – yes, locked in – for 15 minutes at the end of the match, to let the 6 Slovak fans home safely (yes, I had originally thought there were 13 Slovak fans but 7 of them were Irish who had had to buy Slovak tickets because all the Irish ones were sold.)
Bhuel, a chairde! (Irish for Well, mes amies), it was a bad business. I know many of you will write to me (or maybe not) and say that some of your best friends are Slovakian and they spend their days from dawn till dusk laughing their heads off and a nicer, warmer, more fun-loving nation you couldn’t hope to meet. And that may well be the case. I am not judging the entire Slovakian nation, only the 417 Slovaks I met. Maybe they were having a bad day. All of them.
In fairness, no wonder it was such a peaceful business when they decided to break away from the Czechs and make their own country. The Czechs must have been delighted! ‘Work away lads, good luck with it all, no, no, no need to feel guilty, we’ll be grand. We’ll miss you of course, your little smiling Slovak faces, but we respect that you must do what you must do.’
And of course, out of suffering, great art sometimes comes. So much so that I’ve been inspired to write a pome about my time there. It goes as follows.
Slovakia. Oh Slovakia!
I won’t be going back to ya.
