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Continuing my tales of Bratislava...

One of the things I very much enjoyed was the food. Although a short visit of only a few days does not give my views much authority, I have to say that both the home cooked meals and restaurant victuals were really rather good. One restaurant in particular was so good that I would have to say it would make my top ten must-eat-at places anywhere I have been... and all modesty aside I am extremely well travelled. This splendid place is called Café Zichy (formerly known by the name 'Harmonia'). The venison in plum sauce with puréed chestnut was sublime. I was also introduced to the splendours of Demänovka, the excellent local firewater. The service at the Zichy was informative and agreeable without being intrusive: the place is a mandatory visit when in Bratislava!

Another thing that caught my eye...

...is that if you pay attention, you can find interesting and idiosyncratic art all over the place. Some of it very modern and some of it very old indeed...

But as I have mentioned before, Bratislava is filled with the sort of distractions that can make a person miss such details...

During my meandering around the cobbled streets, I encountered the first dragon I saw in Bratislava: a rather fine golden dragon which happens to be the mark of a pharmacy...

...and although I did not know it yet, it was the first indication I was about to fall madly in love, but more about that later

Whenever I visit a new city, I always pay attention to the graffiti and political posters as I always believe it is worth seeing what 'the others' are saying. When I was passing though Vienna airport a few days earlier the only graffiti I saw was 'EU NEIN' engraved on the flusher in the men's room...

Compared to Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (the other part of the Slavic world in which I have considerable experience), Bratislava has much less of a problem with graffiti or flyposting. It was mildy interesting therefore that in Slovakia the only political posters I saw were for a rather incoherent group of 'anarchists' and a nameless call (in English) to 'smash the reds'...

Warning sign number one... these 'anarchists' are waving their flags on May Day.

There may have been other political posters but the distractions on the streets of Bratislava are many and varied...

I saw an interesting sign of the transformations going on in Slovakia when I visited a carpet warehouse with my hostess, the mother of my travelling companion. The warehouse was until quite recently the Factory of MDZ (Medzinarodny Den Zien, or International Women's Day)... an old style communist industrial collective. I was much amused to see that under its new capitalist management, it was advertising Astroturf, a quintessentially American product.

During our meanderings, we wandered past a rather typical gated Austro-Hungarian era courtyard and noticed a small sign directing us to something called 'Gallery F7'. Being curious by nature, we went in and found at the far end, an exhibition of the work of an artist called Jozef Borovka... and that is where I well and truly fell in love.

Borovka's work was just fantastic. He is an extremely talented Slovak artist working in wood, stone, oil and pen and I would have happily walked off with almost every item that was on exhibit. As it happened, that day was the last day of the show and so we contacted the artist and arranged to purchase several of his works. The first we acquired was a superb and whimsical bison made of 5 kg (11 lbs) of stone with antlers made from a coat hook, the second was a pen and ink drawing of a rural house in the Slovak countryside, the third was a female torso in mahogany on a large brass base...

...and the last piece was a table... but, oh, what a table! This was the true object of my undying affections: the finest Dragon in Bratislava.

However seeing as we were flying on Air Berlin, which is El Cheapo No Frills Cattle Class Airlines personified, actually getting a honking great cherry wood, mahogany, glass and brass table that was very fragile back to London was rather a major problem. We explored shipping it back via DHL but that proved to be prohibitive on the grounds of price, so we retired to the many and wonderful cafés of Bratislava to ponder what to do and admire the passing parade...

More to follow...