nightride

People sometime ask me where do I feel at home. And I guess I'm always hesitating a bit before I answer. 'Cos there ain't an easy one. I just don't know. The same if they ask me where I'm from. So where am I from? Born in Nitra, lived in Kosice, Bratislava, Sydney, Prague, and now Sydney again. And I cannot guess where I'd be in half a year.

Home is about confidence and memories. And probably family, too. So sometimes it's quite hard to call Sydney a home, though it is a city where I spent most time during last five years.

So would it be Nitra? Just short of hundred thousand people, I have a feeling it's a bit sleepy, laid-back place. I enjoy enormously sitting on a bench in main square watching the most beautiful Slovak chicks with the shortest of skirts that you still don't dare to call "belt", though sometimes you have that dirty feeling that it must have been a belt some twenty years ago.

But, sadly, I only watch these teenage beauties and don't know a single one of them. Never spent time there, that's an obvious reason. Don't have friends there. A large part of a family still resides in Nitra and around but I hardly know anybody. My grandma and auntie, and that's about it.

Thanks god for imagination!

Kosice might be a better aim. I moved in when I was about five. I still remember old gypsy city centre where I used to roar with my primary school mates and my mother's distress when I came to see her to work fifteen minutes later than agreed.

And then: it must be all about love. About friendship. I believe I can still recall a place where I kissed a girl for the very first time. I'd find that spot today. I probably recall most movies I've seen with girls I dated and also how I felt those nights. I can recall weather.

Kosice, an industrial city of quarter million people in eastern Slovakia, is a super-proud community. We, the Cassovians, stand up in the crowd. The rest of Slovakia is probably whispering something about fucking weirdoes, idiots without manners and brainless cocksuckers, but they never spent time fighting for a place on a nightride bus no. 101, never been to ice hockey match there or had a smoke in the good old deafening & overcrowded (and now for ages extinct) Excenter pub.

I'll probably have to buy a place there some day. In the old city, just off main street, centre of the universe and the vibe.

Yeah, that is where I belong.