The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia

If you spend time with Slovaks, sooner or later you will gain first-hand experience with tvrdý alkohol – hard alcohol. Typically, it could be connected with a toast on a special occasion, or some type of home-made schnapps could be on hand as a drink of choice of people you are spending time with.

Alcohol can be an uncomfortable subject for some. Additionally, if you consider the fact that customs and traditions are tied to alcohol in Slovakia, some might feel a bit awkward or anxious about just what is expected when you are asked to participate in a toast with hard alcohol.

There are a few things I have learned about how to handle situations that involve drinking, particularly hard alcohol. For example, if your host wants to make a toast and is pouring you a shot, you’d better have a darn good reason why you can’t drink it, or you may be insulting your host by refusing. If you will not be doing yourself physical harm by drinking the single shot, you’ll avoid a lot of hassle if you just drink it, even if you don’t want to. I know, that sounds terrible, but there you have it in a nut shell. After you have accepted the one shot, you will probably be offered another (or even poured another when you are not quick enough to put a hand over your glass). But you are under absolutely no obligation to drink the second offer. Don’t feel guilty because you think it will go to waste if you don’t drink it. Juice is more expensive than home made hard alcohol. You have done the bare minimum by drinking the first.

Something else important to know: if you say no the first time, you are likely going to be asked SEVERAL times again to drink. At first this used to make me angry. I used to think to myself, “Didn’t he understand the first time? I said ‘no’, didn’t I?” With my own family and friends, if you say ‘no’ once you aren’t pressured into changing your mind. This is not the case in Slovak society. It is customary, particularly with the older generations, to decline the first or second offer and accept by the third. That’s important to remember if your frustration is mounting when people won’t take no for an answer. Also, a host will feel that duty has been met if you have accepted at least the customary “welcome” drink. Though I can’t guarantee that you’ll be left alone after that, at least the pressure is off of you to drink more.

When I came to Slovakia at age 25, I had little to no experience with hard alcohol. After a while I even learned to like some of it. I learned that a single shot of borovička – distilled from juniper berries (image, right), can be quite enjoyable before a meal, and that I cannot stand the taste of slivovica – distilled from plums. Once I remember being pressured (by my grandmother-in-law, no less) into drinking a shot of Becherovka – a hard alcohol made with herbs, originally from Czechia, before a big meal where we were celebrating some special event. I had never believed in the “medicinal qualities” of alcohol that so many Slovaks spoke of. But after I finished that huge meal that would typically have left me feeling too full, I realized that I never felt better and the Becherovka in all fairness helped.

I can’t decide if this is a sad fact or not, but hard alcohol plays a role in Slovak culture. I’ll never forget when I attended an out-door folk festival with some Slovak friends. After the first day, we slept on the floor in a school close to the festival grounds that had to be opened to accommodate attendees because it had stormed at night and people couldn’t sleep outside. Several folk groups and ensembles slept at the school too, and in the morning the young people started dancing and singing, and the musicians began playing. We were treated to an impromptu mini-concert, much to our delight. I was sitting on the floor with so many other spectators when I saw a bottle being passed down the row. The liquid was clear—a dead give away that it’s something that will burn a hole in your gut. I knew I had become accepting of norms regarding alcohol when I didn’t even pause before having a taste myself. I couldn’t shake the guilt though, that I was skating close to depravation, even from just one swig. I looked at my watch and it was only a little after 9:00am. Goodness gracious!

The bottom line with alcohol for me is, if you are not doing yourself physical harm, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”.

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