Sentimental

I studied somewhat erratically. Ended up with three stints at various universities and only one degree but that's besides the point.

In, erm, 2003, I enrolled for art history at the Bratislava university. For the heck of it. I spent only a year there because while the lectures were cool, the exam system was just awful and I decided that the pain in the arse of memorizing hundreds and hundreds of works of art, dates of creations and their authors and then guessing from bad black and white reproductions at the actual exams is not worth it and went elsewhere.
I liked Bratislava, it's not too big for me (I'm a small city girl, not big city girl) and it's just pretty. Interestingly, it was the only time and place where I had something like student life. Hanging out with people and doing that social life stuff, I mean. I lived at the dorms of the traditional sort which included mice, cockroaches and mean receptionists/chaperones/wtf, frequented a selection of cafés, ate at exhibition openings... it was good.
I had been planning to see the Dream x Reality exhibition and as it goes, I kept postponing it until it was almost too late. Meantime, the catalogue sold out, which pissed me because I have a thing for propaganda and the WWII bit of Slovak history is quite interesting for various reasons.

The Central Station is as ugly as it was in 2004 when I was there the last time. The passage to the trams stinks. The city got new trams, though. I wandered through the centre and, well, it was different. All the places where we used to go somehow disappeared. The Architects' gallery moved somewhere, elsewhere... oh, those were the parties! I happened there once and as I used to wear what was then called architects' uniform aka black from head to toe, they thought I was there with those guys who were exhibiting their works, I befriended some people so they would invite me to the following events, one of the architects had a winery so he would bring his own produce.... Then those moments of recollection - oh, we were in the old city hall with the Medieval seminar to see some bits of architecture, how could I have forgotten. And in the, was it Franciscan? church... The usual conclusion: I need to get back to my books.
It was sort of sad. Bratislava has become much more cosmopolitan in the bad way.

I love carnations. For whatever reason, they are totally out of fashion. For whatever reason, I keep telling people that I love carnations and hardly anyone pays attention enough to notice it - yes, I know, people live in their respective universes that revolve around their heads but that's why God gave us notebooks, to note shit down for later use - so when I get flowers, I get either roses which generally suck and wilt within two days or some ugly crap. Or orchids. For some reason, I find cut orchids somewhat pathetic and sad. However, we live in the century of Fruit Bat so ladies are allowed to procure their flowers themselves. And in Bratislava, there used to be a florist's which had carnations in an assortment of colours and they always had green ones. I would buy 10 or 15 of them when I was going home for a longer period of time. Haven't had green carnations for years, I discovered some once in a florist shop in Prague years ago but that was it. I didn't hold hopes but it was there!