I spent three months in Bratislava, Slovakia in the frozen European winter at the end of the millenium. Here are some of the friends that I met: Lubo, whats-his-name, me, Raymond, Ivana, and Marek.
Marek Cernansky and I grew the closest as friends while we were there.
Handsome isn't he?
This is Martin, our systems and network specialist and Delphi
programmer.
This is the building that I stayed in. It's a soviet-era style apartment block.
Often we would eat in the cafeteria. This was quite an interesting exercise. You had to acquire these tickets to eat in the cafeteria first. And you had to get the tickets at least one day before you wanted to eat. Then you would examine the posted schedule for what they were serving the next day. Then you would stamp your ticket IN DUPLICATE with the appropriate stamps. If you wanted dishes 1, 2, or 3 there was one stamp you used for each. If you wanted dishes O or Z then there were two different stamps you had to use for each so you ended up stamping your tickets four times. Then you divided you're ticket in half (making sure there were the same stamps on each piece) and put one piece of the ticket in a tin box. You'd keep the other half of the ticket to the next day when you'd take a tray and wait at a low pass-through:
Then in a supplicating position you would pass your half of the ticket through the pass-through and get your meal.
The native Slovakian's would then respectfully sit at the little tables and quietly eat their meal.
Everyone stared at me when I was disruptive enough to speak in my normal "having lunch" voice. Everyone else was talking in hushed tones like they were in church!
One day there were six of us eating lunch at the same time. So I moved two of the small tables together so we could all sit at the same table. The native Slovakian's stared at me like I was writing grafitti on the wall with spray-paint!
But we all sat down and started our meal.
Minutes later one of the cafeteria staff came barreling out of the kitchen and berated me (in Slovak) for moving the tables together! How presumptuous of me!
W