Nauseatingly positive articles on Bratislava’s coffee culture…. Do we really need more of those?

I flip through one of Belgium’s so called high brow magazines, and yes, there it is.

An article on how wonderful Bratislava’s trendy coffee bars are.

Yes, Bratislava is full of coffee places. Sure, some of them are nicely decorated, I suppose.

So what?

Is there any European city that is not sprinkled with ‘trendy’ waystations for coffee junkies?

The article is several pages long and bores the hell out of me with its mentioning of hipster bars and little markets. The kind of places for people with too much money and too much time. Should we really be praising this poseur culture? Is there nothing else worth mentioning?

The typical article on Bratislava goes like this:

  1. It’s between Vienna and Budapest, but wait, Bratislava is also getting interesting
  2. Young people with degrees obtained at foreign universities are giving the ciry a trendy new look
  3. It’s a mix of those trendy hubs and communist architecture. Such a fascinatin contrast!
  4. There are markets. Imagine! A city with markets! And you can buy sheep cheese there! Sheep cheese! Book your flight ticket!

Is this what people should know about Bratislava?

What about this?

  1. Bratislava is insanely expensive. It’s booming and prices are soaring. People from the east of Slovakia, but also the jobless from all over Europe and beyond are flocking to this city. Slovakia is booming and it’s getting crowded.
  2. The old city center is easy to travel around in, but once outside of the center the city planning is plain weird. The best way is to orient yourself based on the locations of the huge shopping malls. That these shopping malls are so hard to ignore says a lot about the spirit of this location.
  3. These huge shopping malls are the real pulse of this city. Lots of people with badly paid jobs who tried to entice hordes of mostly young consumer to spend money. I’m writing this in Aupark, one of those consumer temples, and it’s quite a disgusting sight. Bright lights, big city, empty heads, empty wallets.
  4. It’s still the ideal place for sharks. You have a fairly skilled working force whom you can hire to run any kind of business. May I suggest a trendy coffee bar? There never seem to be enough of them. You need some good location and a super modern looking interior and you can hire hot looking waitresses who will be happy to work for you for 4 euro per hour. Yeah, four euro per hour.

If you just want to come to Bratislava and mindlessly sip coffee, please ignore the above article.

If you believe articles about foreign lands and foreign cities should be about far more than the local coffee places, please share this article.