The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia

There is a very interesting exhibit on display at the Slovak National Gallery called “How Did We Live?”. The exhibit has a collection of photographs from Slovakia in the 20th century and addresses the question of how Slovaks lived in the past 100 years. In addition to photographs and postcards there are more than 2000 items exhibited to help the visitor feel the “soul of the times”. The goal of the presentation is to take the visitor through a fascinating historical journey through Slovakia in the 20th century.

The exhibit is broken up into sections according to political events that shaped the century. Personally, I’m always drawn to pictures and images of the upheaval brought on from World War II. Somehow there is an oddity in the way war, violence, and the ugliest part of humanity is thrust into the common-day lives of ordinary people, and that the ordinariness of life such as tending fields or going to school had to continue despite the disruption.

I also like to see images of Bratislava as the city was 100 years ago. Even though I would say that I know Bratislava pretty well, quite often I don’t recognize the streets or landmarks in the pictures or postcards. It’s amazing that things have changed that much and serves as a reminder that Bratislava has a history that reveals itself in layers, if you are interested enough to take a closer look.

The exhibit goes on until the end of October of 2008. Tickets are 100 Skk for adults, and 50 Skk for students and the exhibit is on display daily from 9am to 6pm.

The gallery has also created a good website with photographs from the exhibit as well as a discussion forum where people discuss various topics inspired by the exhibit. The forum is in Slovak only unfortunately. Still it was interesting for me to peruse through the forum discussions and read many people describing their childhood memories or reminiscing about “the good old days”.

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