On the bright side:

-uncorrupted. I mean, the people, not the government. There’s an innocence about people here that Dutch people or people in Western-Europe no longer have.

-cheerful. Outside of work, that is. Outside of work Slovaks are very sweet, they have a certain appetite for the simple things in life that is just not real in the West, in the West people seem to force themselves to enjoy the little things in life but they can’t hide the fact that it’s not enough for them. Over here people are genuinely happy with little things. Maybe this is still a trend in the aftermath of communism. People don’t take abundance of material goods for granted. Yet.

-gender roles are clear. Feminists will scream, but over here a man is a man and a woman is a woman. There’s a bigger barrier between the sexes somehow, but it’s also more clear what’s expected of you. Also, as a forgeigner you have an advantage over the local men. Women around here are so not used to a guy who actually remembers what they say or even wants to listen to women. Men here talk a lot without needing any sort of meaningful response, they just drift off in monologues. There is a verb for it ‘mudrovat”, something like self-indulgently spitting ‘wisdom’, mudrost means wisdom, quite a lot of verbs end in -ovat’

-Modest. They don’t brag. They may want to show off their car, but other than that they are modest. They also have a kind of self-effacing humor.

-Formal. At first I was annoyed by this, but they still have quite a few rules to behave in public life. Like they have an obsession with using the correct title for people, if you hold a master’s degree or not, or when you should use to polite form (vykanie) or the informal way of speaking to people (tykanie). It’s silly and annoying every time a person makes an effort to switch from vykanie to tykanie with you. I wish they’d just do away with vykanie, would be a lot simpler. Slovaks are distant enough already.

-harder to become close to, but once you are close with them, they are more willing to maintain a friendship than in the west, they are more loyal

-they like rituals and traditions, which makes life a little less chaotic

-Hard workers

-Most Slovaks do not bother anyone. They judge, yes, but they live and let live

-Outdoorsy, and seem to like exercise a lot, like hiking in the mountains

On the dark side:

-not open-minded. They are easily shocked. And they will judge, they will categorize you.

-conflict avoiders. If they don’t like something, or if they are prejudiced towards you, they won’t come to you and find out if they are right about you or not, they will just ignore you and put you in their box of damnation.

-no alcohol, no conversation. This is true for the men.

-some of the women are obsessed with the way they look, obsessed to such a degree that it’s hard to find a western equivalent. A woman like that is referred to as a ‘pipinka’, apparently or a ‘zlatokopka’, a gold digger.

-complaining and critizing without taking any initiative to change anything. That could be a human trait in general.

– shockingly uninterested in their own culture and literature, but to be fair, Slovak novels aren’t exactly suspenseful page turners, they are usually rather plotless stylistic exercises, weak copies of Scandinavian thrillers or melodramatic chicklit.

– nobody will criticize Slovaks and Slovakia in harsher terms than Slovaks themselves, but when a foreigner does it, they get very touchy-feeling and defensive

– it’s an unremarkable country and Slovaks seem to only ever mention they have beautiful nature here, as if that’s not true for any other country on this planet, there is beautiful nature all over the world, but perhaps because there’s nothing else to offer, Slovaks will mention their nature, especially the mountains, as if it’s something unique. They are unprepared for people not liking mountains.

– I suppose the mountains here and the lack of the access to the wide open sea, plus the centuries long culture of cattle herding and subsistance farming and the constant threat of outsiders treating the region as a fiefdom, plus the influence of the most stifling kind of catholicism, have produced a people that is very awkward when it comes to communication and building connections, you will often find that if you do become friends with Slovaks they will tend to keep their other friends separate, this is very much a country of small bubbles in which people move. This also explains their politics which is very tribal and sick with nepotism and I scratch your back you scratch my back shenanigans without much interest in what is good for the nation as a whole

– huge gap between those with a lot of money and those who live paycheck to paycheck

– Bratislava, the capital village, is very different from the rest of Slovakia, it’s almost like some kind of small universe that functions a little differently from the villages in the rest of the country

– to live here could easily suck very much, but you can run into exceptional people here, if you run into someone who despite all the pressure here to be a superficial car loving mountain hiking socially handicapped reactionary cocooner you run into a true gem of a person. You have to dig the pearls out of the stinky mud around here. In many other countries it’s much easier to meet vibrant, outgoing people

These are generalizations of course, you have fantastic people around here and awful people too, just like in any other country.