Concrete

The summer has come to Bratislava, dragging along tourincars with tourist, mainly british stagparties looking for beautiful women and cheep beer. But there are also the unavoidable Japanese with their camera's, running throug the city to get the right picture of the old Austrian-Hungarian grandeur, mixed with the grey concrete communist aesthetics. This is most visible standing on Bratislavsky Hrad, the castle by the Danube, and looking over the river towards Petrzalka. This Petrzalka, built in the seventies to house the new workers for the Slovnaft gas company, is not only physically seperated from the old town. It has its own mayer. When he was elected last june, he handed out coupons for DVD players to everyone who voted for him, and he won. So much for Democracy.