slovakia

so now that we’ve been here for a week, I guess we can tell you a bit about what it’s like here and what’s different from home…

we’ll start with the drivers. the drivers here are CRAZY, it’s like nobody looks out for anybody or anything when they get behind the wheel of a car, or anywhere with a lot of people for that matter, we were in the mall today, and were standing in front of the elevator with a stroller, and people would just walk in front of us to get on the elevator until it was so full that we had to wait for the next one. the drivers are the same way, I’ve seen three almost accidents already from people being stupid and not looking when backing up, or pulling into traffic, or turning, or whatever…   people are just very aggressive when it comes to getting where they are going.

the doors are different, too. you wouldn’t think they would be, but they are. they don’t go in the door frame, but more like next to it, and cover the door frame. and the locks here are serious. you can’t open a door from the outside without a key, even if it’s unlocked. there isn’t even a handle, just a pull knob so you can close the door. and there are bolts on the opposite side from the latch that go into the door frame, and some of them lock the door in when you lock the door. the keys are fairly normal, but the keys to the bathroom (and every other door in the house) are like old school skeleton keys.

the plugs here are gigantic, power strips with 6-7 plugs on it are like 2 feet long.

you can smoke everywhere, which is kind of annoying. there were dogs in the mall, some of which almost got into a fight.

there is a whole aisle in the grocery store devoted to only chocolate (awesome), and a whole other aisle devoted to only other candies (american style chocolate chip cookies, etc.)

there is a whole section of the store devoted to cheese, another for meats (sausages mostly), another for breads, and another for wines and liquor.

they don’t have peanut butter, but they have bacon flavored chips. there is no mayonnaise on the cole slaw. they have some other foods that are the same, but taste different. we have some honey nut cheerios, and they taste almost the same, but somehow wrong. they also have Coke, snickers, and other candy bars, but they all taste different, and sometimes actually better, because they don’t use high fructose corn syrup here, but real sugar. hey have a version of cola here called kofola, that tastes like coke with licorice in it, and it’s not that good, mostly because I don’t like licorice.

the light switches are about 2-3 inches square and are the slap kind, where you push the top in for on, etc.

in some places the windows have metal screens on the outside that you control with a puller on the inside. I actually love these things, you can close them part way, and there will be space in between the slats to allow a bit of light through, while still blocking all eyes from outside, or you can close them fully, and pretty much black out any room in the house, even in full daylight.

the buses here are dirty and old (most of them, at least, some are new and nice), but the transit system is widely used, and pretty cheap, too. you purchase tickets based on how long your trip is going to be. for instance you can buy a 15 minute ride for 50 cents.

the numbering system is a bit weird, they use periods as commas, and commas as periods.   so a large number like 4,127,345.38 would be written as 4.127.345,38. this seriously messes with my head. I’ll see a number like 7,28 and think they forgot a number on the end.

the money here is pretty cool. they are using the Euro starting this year, and it’s pretty neat, although they have some strange denominations. for the euro coins, there is a penny that looks like a toy, it’s so small. a 2 cent piece with a groove around the rim, a 5 cent piece, about the size of a nickel, but still copper, after the 10 cent piece, the coins turn a gold color instead of copper, but they have 10 cent, 20 cent (no quarters), a 50 cent, then a 1 euro piece that is gold around the rim, and silver in the middle, and a 2 euro piece that is silver around the rim, and gold in the middle. the coins are the only part that differs from country to country, but they are all basically the same, on one side they are all the same, and on the other side, they all get to put their own touches on them, kinda like the state quarters.

the euro bills are super colorful, but all the same, all the time, no country specific stuff on them, and they have some pretty cool anti-counterfeiting measures on them, like holographic strips, a denomination marker that you can’t see all of except through the bill (a portion of it is printed on one side, and the rest on the other, so when you look through the bill, you see the whole thing).  one annoying thing about the bills, is that all the denominations are different sizes. the 5 is really small, the 10 is a bit bigger, the 20 bigger still, the 50 even bigger, and the 100 is fairly large. they are all a different color as well. the different sizes just makes it very hard to fold the bills in your pocket neatly.

I’m a little bummed I haven’t seen any crowns though (the original slovak currency).  although most places have both crowns and euros listed on the price, and I always look at the crowns price first (which is 30 SK = 1 Euro), and the price will be outrageous, and I’ll be like “15 bucks for a soda!?!  oh, wait…  never mind”

they don’t have forced air heating here, all the houses have radiators.

they don’t have clothes dryers here either, everybody has heated racks or foldable drying lines.

they also don’t have garbage disposals, apparently you flush your old food down the toilet.

the toilets flush funny, there is no hole in the bottom to push your poo into the drain, it just drops a deluge of water on it, and you just have to hope it all goes down.

there’s a lot more stuff that’s different, and I’m certainly not an expert yet, but these are the things that I’ve noticed so far that either weird me out, or annoy the crap out of me.