Назар Валеев – A Long Autumn, a Short Winter: A Journey Through Slovakia (страница 1)
Назар Валеев
A Long Autumn, a Short Winter: A Journey Through Slovakia
From Vienna to Nitra
«Over here! Over here!»
An unexpected, insistent call from a customs officer who, for some reason, chose to pick us from the crowd before our turn suddenly jolted three exhausted travelers out of a dreamlike haze, where plans for the days ahead blurred with anxious thoughts about their luggage. «Will it arrive, or won’t it?» – the kind of lottery every traveler dreads… And really, what else was there to do in that endlessly long, half-asleep line, creeping forward like a freight train, each carriage responding with a delay to the movement of the one ahead.
The officer greeted us with a friendly smile and bore a curious resemblance to Jesus from
What worried us was that our passports held Schengen visas not issued by Austria, even though we had to cross the border here. In the past this was quite normal, but times had changed. The officer, however, didn’t seem the least bit concerned. He tossed out a few jokes about our accent, quickly stamped the pages, and handed our documents back with a smile, wishing us a pleasant stay.
Expecting an interrogation with shades of psychological drama, we were pleasantly surprised by the officer’s composure, since the most recent posts on traveler forums, written by people who had lately crossed borders with «the wrong» visa, had painted a very different picture.
The officer seemed to take our genuine bewilderment for nothing more than a brief stupor, brought on by fatigue and unfamiliar surroundings. He even half-rose from his chair and, still smiling, pointed us in the right direction. Outwardly we may have looked sluggish, but our minds were firing at full capacity: the route had already been mapped out, and his gesture was simply the last signal that sent us sprinting toward the baggage claim.
After about ten minutes of winding our way through passageways and corridors, we finally reached the part of the airport where life was in full swing, pulsing with movement, and the faint smell of aviation fuel hung in the air – a peculiar, unchanging marker of adventures about to begin. It felt like an invisible line, separating everyday routine from the start of something new and exciting.
And then, to our surprise, the unexpected happened: both of our suitcases, heavy and dependable, rolled onto the carousel almost at the same time, among the very first. Anyone who has ever endured those long, weary minutes at baggage claim, watching everyone else’s luggage circle lazily past while their own seems lost to some parallel reality, will know just how rare and incredible such luck is. It felt as if life itself, for once, had decided we’d had enough trials – at least for today.
There’s a special kind of relief when fears that have chased you so stubbornly, and with every appearance of reason, suddenly don’t come true. But the awareness of this never comes right away. It’s as if fear itself needs time to pack up, tidy itself, and make a dignified exit from the place it had already claimed, settled into, and perhaps even started plotting how to turn to its advantage had things actually gone wrong.
Still, the sense of relief kept growing – slowly, almost without notice. It didn’t burst in with fireworks or blare with triumphant fanfares; it simply drifted in, like warm air after a long, relentless draft. Everything was back in place, we were together again, and ready to move on.
Right before leaving the airport, a shared impulse – perhaps some ancient family instinct – steered us toward a café. The decision was wordless and unanimous: grab a quick cappuccino to go. Tradition demanded it. So did the weary but proud heart of a traveler who has reached the end of the journey and longs to mark it properly, even if only with a paper cup in hand.
The prices, as usual, felt like the value of platinum during an intergalactic fever: for one cup of coffee they charged as if it were not meant for drinking but for analysis in a laboratory spectrometer, under the watch of serious scientists. It seemed less like ordering a drink than exchanging oxygen on Venus. And still, the hand reached out almost automatically – for the aroma, for the habit, for the warmth that comes not only from the drink itself but from the comfort of a familiar ritual. Such small details are what give an event its true ending. Coffee on the way out is the final point at the end of a sentence – without it, even the most beautiful text feels unfinished.
We found the parking lot almost at once. Our reserved car was already there – small, as planned, but perfectly fit for the road ahead. Leaning on the hood was a young man, an employee of Barkro. From the look on his face, it was obvious that too much idle time had already worn thin. He had come from Bratislava, where the company’s main office was, and apparently the wait had dragged on. Punctuality was never our strongest suit, and we knew it, so we kept it simple: we apologized and offered him a ride back to the office. It worked – the slight awkwardness that had lingered since our arrival vanished at once. Half an hour later, after cruising the highway together and swapping stories, we parted like old friends – with smiles, thanks, and a pleasant sense that things had worked out exactly as they should.
The drive from Vienna to Nitra took just over an hour and a half. An experienced driver, familiar with the route, could have done it much faster. But for us, fatigue and a few missed exits had their say.
To be fair, the navigation mishaps weren’t due to carelessness so much as a mild cognitive dissonance: what we saw on the screen didn’t always match what we heard from the languid female voice – flawless English, suddenly broken by Slovak place names that sounded like incantations from an old atlas. Luckily, our collective intuition came through – whether family instinct or a sharpened sense of geographic self-preservation. After a couple of missed loops and a few spirited debates over turns, we finally headed in the right direction.
The scenery outside the window slipped by like pages from a glossy magazine: green fields, rolling hills, little houses with tiled roofs. It all looked so peaceful that it felt as if we had entered not just another country, but an entirely different pace of life.
Nitra welcomed us with quiet warmth, resting snugly at the foot of mountains that looked straight out of a fairy tale like a city drawn on an old map, where every turn begins a story. We had arrived. And we knew it not from the signs on the road, but from the sense of calm that finally caught up with us, as if it had been following the car all along.
The apartment’s owner, Jan, showed up just minutes after our call. He was stocky, well-groomed, and looked every bit a man in excellent shape and in full harmony with himself. Dressed elegantly in a crisply pressed shirt, formal trousers, and shoes polished to a mirror finish, he spoke fluent English and radiated such warmth that it felt as if we’d known him not for five minutes, but for a good dozen years.
He gave us a thorough tour of the apartment, enthusiastically alternating between pointing out household details and asking about us – who we were, where we came from, and why we were here and then just as readily told us about himself: his family, his work, and his plans for at least the next ten years. His story was lively and engaging, filled with that touching sincerity which, in a foreign country, can instantly turn a stranger into almost one of your own.
After thanking Jan for his hospitality and calling him a true example of Slovak warmth, we had, as it turned out, made a small mistake. Jan scratched his head thoughtfully and, with delicate frankness, informed us that he was, in fact, Hungarian, although he had lived in Slovakia since early childhood.
Our rather tired, road-worn, and already somewhat overheated collective consciousness did not at once cope with processing this information. For several seconds we remained silent, trying to figure out how best to respond so as not to offend the man or say something foolish.
Jan, however, interpreting the pause in his own way, cautiously inquired whether we happened to have had any unfavorable experience connected with Hungarians or with Hungary in general. We quickly gathered ourselves and assured him that, strictly speaking, he was the first Hungarian we had not only spoken with but even met in person. The same, however, was true of Slovaks and, to tell the truth, meeting such a «double example» already felt almost like a trophy.