Trnava 24 Sept 2023

Slovakia

It was the ecclesiastical capital for the Hungarians back in the Turkish time (roughly 1541-1686) and now Trnava is like a beautiful old mouth that, here and there, has lost a tooth to a cheap replacement. The house of culture on the south side of the main square is the worst example but, across from that, there’s also a post office block, of which I heard a Dutchman observe online that it had at least got a lick of paint (unlike, he said, in Bulgaria). Furthermore, the St. Nicholas bell towers always remind me of candle snuffers but there’s a lot of scaffolding up that end at the time of writing.

Apart from the Baroque legacy, the Ostsiedlung is still visible in Trnava too. The same story as elsewhere in western Slovakia, the Germans were brought in by a Hungarian king in the wake of the Mongol invasion (1241).

I’m glad I went. It’s just more texturally impressive onsite than online, even underfoot, with the rectangular paving stones, known now to me as setts, and the neat, smooth cobbles. All the notable buildings seemed a bit bigger too.

On the Sunday, Trnava was quiet. On the way back to the station we stopped at a café near the bottom of Hlavná, the main street that leads up to the tower on the square. Neither was impressed by the four euro per modest, if tasty, slice of cake. No Slovak is going to pay that for a couple of mouthfuls of cake but at any rate the cheaper beer and coffee were just as tasty and, overall, this country is inexpensive.

On the train back to Bratislava, the only people making noise in the carriage (with their inane conversation about past jobs abroad) were four young Englishmen dressed like well-fed Americans, in shorts and baseball caps.