March 22, 2013

Košice, Czechoslovakia. June, 1972


I was just reading this morning that Košice in Slovakia (as it is now) has been named the European Capital of Culture for 2013. Really? I smiled when I remembered this sleepy steel town safely behind the Iron Curtain when I visited so many years ago. My friend Robert (striped shirt) and I were both teachers with the summer off, had obtained visas and headed east. In Košice, we stayed with Robert’s cousins (blue polo shirt, also red sweater vest) and were offered tumblers of vodka with our morning coffee. I have a vague memory of a drunken walk through a field late at night on our way to a town dance, of young girls wanting to hear what life in America was like. This is also the town where one of Robert’s cousins (not pictured here) was disbarred from his attorney’s job after running drunk and naked down the main street, not for the first time, either. The European Capital of Culture.

1 comment:

  1. Just think ... that little boy with the Pinocchio hat is pushing 50 now ... which makes him rather considerably older than you are now, Sandy. You welcun!

    ReplyDelete