You wake up at 6 am, half an hour later than on a week day.
Your deeply Catholic wife, carnal deviancies of a wide variety included, does not push you to go to church.
For once she even agrees that the Sunday sermon offers no solution whatsoever to the problems the world faces today, such as sickening income inequality. She even agrees that churchy people are the least likely to give to beggars. The same is true for communists. The more you preach goodness and love for all humankind the less you seem to display of it in practice.
The best antidote to christianity is a five minute talk with a self-labelled christian, the same is true for communism. And if you want to become allergic to representative democracy, go have a talk with the average voter.
I’m extremely blessed to have a wife and a family in law who read Yalom, who think critically of society, and although they genuinely believe God made the woman out of Adam’s rib (a mistake in the translation, she comes from his pubic bone), they are some of the most intelligent, open-minded people I know.
So breakfast in Banska Bystrica means talking about how communism failed, how today’s system is working, but it’s only value is: consume, consume, consume, and talks about making money. We have to survive in today’s system, so we talk about money far more than we even realize.
At about 7.30 am I finish reading a book on the Confederate command system and why it failed. Having no other book with me I scavenge (yes, that’s a verb) my wife’s book shelves and pull out a German book on Sophie Scholl.
That girl who got beheaded by the nazis for spreading anti-regime leaflets.
Today’s heroes are ‘entrepreneurs’, but back in 1943 the people who meant something were engaged in resistance activities. Today mostly replaced by tweeting about stuff that the mainstream media denies.
Or if you are today’s Sophie Scholl, they don’t behead you, you end up locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy like Julian Assange.
In the meanwhile you do exactly that, you tweet in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom in the face of the Israeli Apartheid regime. As if it could ever accomplish anything, but it’s quite a bit easier and more comfortable than smuggling yourself into Gaza and go and actively support the protesters at the prison gate between Palestine and Palestinian lands stolen by the entity that is know as Israel.
My ex-employers, the Belgian stalinists, would describe what am doing here as ‘gauchism’, a term I don’t expect you to know, because you are a happy person. Happy persons tend not to be preoccupied by terms like gauchism.
About one third of my growing number of students here in Slovakia are what I would call of the complete nitwit variety. The kind that has some trouble locating their own elbows. When you’re habitually forced to accept that the person you are talking to DOES NOT CARE AT ALL what goes on in the world, you kinda get used to people not caring about expanding their vocabulary. My wife says I musn’t be condescending, but quite a few people are condescending towards me because I can’t tell you the latest model BMW is producing. The reason is that I don’t give a rancid rat’s ass about cars. I don’t have a monstercock but I somehow figured out that no car whatsoever will compensate for that.
We have lunch, and Slovak food can’t compete with Belgian food, but it’s decent. It fills. We pray before we eat by the way. My communist friends will find this ridiculous. My communist friends only respect Islam, because muslims are holy to leftists. Yes, in modern day communism the hammer and sickle are only ever used to ritually slaughter a sheep.
Am sorry for digressing.
I fall asleep after lunch and I have a nightmare. If I fall asleep during the night I always have a nightmare. This one exposes my deep rooted fear of being inadequate. For some reason I find myself working for the Spanish embassy and I let down the ambassador. Or the ambassador feels let down. And I wake up with a racing hard, looking for my wife. My wife excels at talking me out of my paranoia and rather frequent panic attacks.
In the evening we take a bus back to Bratislava. A two hour and fifteen minute ride. A journey I would never undertake in Belgium as I have a different experience of distances in Belgium. The same distance would take me from the Belgian coast almost to the Ardennes.
I keep reading the German book on Sophie Scholl, the beheaded girl, who tried what she could to not be counted among the guilty, the ones who helped prolong the death machine. It cost her her head. But hey, more than 70 years later some Belgian guy in Slovakia is still reading about her.
I suppose I’m reading about her because I and everyone I meet are cowards who certainly don’t do anything to better the world in such a way that it could ever cost them their head.
I specifically avoided mentioning that Slovakia has beautiful nature. It doesn’t. It has trees and mountains and those look the same everywhere else. I don’t give a shit about nature. And am tired of hearing Slovakia used as a synonym for beautiful nature. I honestly feel as though Slovaks hide behind their nature. We have beautiful nature. Mission accomplished, we don’t have to prove anything else.
Somebody did die around here, recently. A Fillipino guy who was trying to prevent two women from being harassed by one of the local cavemen in combat boots.
The caveman in combat boots kicked the Fillipino guy to death. Yes, to death. And then he took a selfie of his actions.
This is a very church going country where loooove loooove loooove is alll you need is preached. With no effect. Nice Fillipino guys get the piss kicked out of them anyway.
Interesting is that the one third of my students who spent the weekend at war with their liver, put a spin on the story: the Slovak neo-Viking without the cool long hair, had actually prevented the zipperhead from harming the Arian/Slavic ladies…
On the very bright side:
- I was overladen with affection by my family
- I had a wonderful conversation yesterday with a top notch Slovak lady yesterday afternoon
- Two thirds of my students are witty, fairly interested in the world, although their work and hobbies take precedence, and fun people to be around, although you can’t expect them to pull out a bag of coke all of sudden, nor a copy of Peter Joseph’s New Human Rights movement, they are interesting people
- I don’t deserve my wife and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary she keeps saying I have a good heart
My mental health blog. A public diary trying to make sense of the world 
Incidentally, yesterday I travelled all the way from Spis to Bratislava, going through the center of Slovakia (we drove around B. Bystrica as well), and I must admit that, even though I am a local, I was impressed by some of the landscapes and views. I fully agree we should not hide our shortcomings or low ambitions behind beautiful nature, but still, there is something about it. I wonder whether the nature has impact on the nation’s mentality. I saw, for example, two small villages separated by high hills covered with thick forest. Maybe such landscapes also helped to shape mentality of Slovak people, which tends to be conservative with a strange inability to cooperate beyond a small group (see politics).
I must admit that I too find most of the sermons uninspiring. But I believe that many people go to church to take part in the ritual itself, since the rituals have strong symbolic and social importance.
It is true though that even when people go to church regularly and call themselves religious, it does not necessarily mean they are emphatic, tolerant or even simply kind. To strengthen these characteristics in a society, I believe that nothing beats high-quality humanistic education and a quality time with one’s family and community.
The misplaced tolerance of machoman agressiveness and xenophobia in Slovak society are one of the horrible things that finally need to be dealt with. It is a terrible tragedy that yet another innocent and beautiful young person had to pay with his life for it…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m very grateful for this comment, thank you. I think you’ve hit upon a couple profound things to come to a fuller understanding of Slovak society
LikeLike
Here you go: https://projectauthenticity.org/2018/06/11/how-did-mountains-influence-the-mentality-of-slovaks/
LikeLike
Veronika, you do raise very nice points with a seemingly intelligent point of view. I would like to bring your attention back to the aforementioned word; “ritual” in anything which is only that; a symbol to represent something no longer active. We all do this to pay homage to traditions and customs.
I have attended quite a few Sunday”uninspiring” sermons here. Please allow me to write freely of my experiences, if you would. The sermons or the message themselves-the words were inspiring. The delivery was unenthusiastic and the reception of it even more bleak as if the person delivering the sermon didn’t even believe the words. Beautiful, unsmiling faces from women and old, unfriendly, stoic stone-faces on the men.
I have felt more joy in churches here at weddings than a Sunday service.
So, I can relate to your comment on that.
I was a bit bothered by the reference to, Henry John Serafica Acorda as if he was just another, dark person that sort of got what was coming to him. I took it as an afterthought of sorts.
I always read and hear the most educated and eloquent defenses for the intolerable behavior here paralleled with a splash of passive-aggression and down right justification as, that’s who we are.
This is not an attack on you, in any way. But you write with an empathetic tone and your response was so atypically Slovak that I feel compelled to ask you some direct questions to shed more light upon the culture, which I’ve resided in for many years. I somehow feel that you’d be that intelligent woman on a public forum on CNN or DW, who’d be more than qualified to be that question and answer person. We are anonymous. I will not judge you or your answers. You see, I don’t like to waste time thinking superficially. I am curious about these questions and I respectfully ask your consideration in answering the following contemplations:
1. May I ask what you mean by,”high quality humanistic education”?
2. Do you think that people in Slovakia are fear-driven but also fear-mongers?( meaning people know that fear is rampant here and they know how to instill it and exercise it within people here)
3. Is judgement of others so deep that it is not recognized as a self-crippling burden but revered as some kind of Slovak pride of strength?
4. Is one’s image more about looking like a role played and blending in so as not to stand out or be targeted in a negative way?
5. What might you think contributes to the stony hearts and souls?
Tyler
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent questions, looking forward to Veronika’s answers!
LikeLike