A Budding Romance
I’m spending my sixth Christmas in eastern Slovakia with my now-fiancée and his family. My soon-to-be mother-in-law comes in and out of the room, scuttling between the bathroom and bedroom to hang laundry to dry on the balcony. She then transfers a tub of boiled potatoes outside in preparation to make potato salad, without which Christmas wouldn’t really be Christmas at all. M and his father are stationed in the kitchen, making lunch and drinking beer.
At this point, all of this is second nature to me. I’ve come to know and cherish this unique country and its culture over the past handful of years. At the same time, I’ve built a world inside my relationship with my partner and his family, with whom the two of us visit two or three times a year.
It’s a good time to look back on my experience getting to know this place. The first time that I visited Slovakia may not be what you’d classify as love at first sight, but in its own way, it’s a story of courtship that’s just about as quirky as the country itself.
It was the summer of 2015 when M first invited me to accompany him in his home country, where we would be attending his cousin’s wedding. As we discussed the logistics of the trip, M mentioned that there would be an apartment available to stay at, so there was no need for me to arrange my own accommodation. He phrased it somewhat vaguely — the exact wording might have been something like “an apartment will be empty” or “there will be a place to stay at”.
Either way, the plan sounded great to me. I began to think through the specifics: perhaps we’d stay in different rooms, or perhaps in the same one. The arrangement left room for possibilities. Regardless of the particulars, I was game and happily accepted my role as his plus one.
The context of this invitation was significant, as it came during the point that the two of us had a hunch that we shared feelings for each other, but neither had yet to put anything out into the open for the other to deal with.
Taking this into consideration, the whole thing had me feeling both excited and flustered. I had almost no idea what to expect in Slovakia, let alone a Slovak wedding. I hadn’t given much thought as to how life might look in Slovakia. Up until that point, I had envisioned the country as Czechia’s peculiar eastern sibling, like an older brother with whom you’ve lost touch.
A few weeks later, the weekend of the trip arrived. It was a Friday, and after finishing up at the office that afternoon, we headed to the train station to embark on the approximately eight-hour journey from Prague. (This would turn out being the first of many times that I would make this lengthy trek.) To pass the time, we watched a couple movies and split a bottle of white wine, sipping from plastic cups. We talked for an hour or two at a time. We were the perfect picture of two people just beginning to know each other more deeply.
By the time we arrived at our stop, it was past 10 p.m. I was drained from the trip, yet at the same time, I felt giddy and disoriented in this strange, new place. M’s parents picked us up at the station and hastily loaded our luggage into the trunk of their car. Given that my Czech/Slovak language skills were next to nothing at the time, my introduction to them consisted of a series of clumsy gestures. I looked out the car window during the drive to their neighborhood, eager to catch a glimpse of my surroundings. The fact that it was completely dark outside, however, meant that the streetlights were about the only things visible.
When the four of us arrived at the apartment in which we were to stay, things took a turn for the strange. I was setting down my things, relieved that we’d finally have the chance to unwind, when I heard M getting my attention. He asked me what time I’d like to come over to meet them for lunch the next day. I spun around to meet his gaze, frozen in a moment of inner panic. When he had brought up the availability of the apartment, I had mentally established that we’d be there together.
As things turned out, there had been a bit of a misunderstanding, and I’d be staying alone. This wouldn’t have been an issue had I known it from the start, but in my energy-sapped state, I struggled to cope with the fact that these people (including my romantic prospect!) were leaving me to fend for myself.
I woke up in an empty, sun-filled room and remembered where I was. Gathering my wits, I prepared myself for the day in the windowless bathroom, all the while shaking off how pathetic I felt about having spent the past night solo.
The previous night, M’s mother had given me several small food items to tide me over until I would meet the rest of the group for lunch. I ate a croissant for breakfast and was preparing to head out of the apartment, when I came upon a stick of butter that had been left on a side table. It had completely liquefied in the morning heat and was presently oozing down the wall below. In a frenzied hop, skip and jump to the kitchen, I placed the greasy mess in the sink and decided to deal with the rest later.
I finally made it out the door, struggling to find the light switch in the hallway as I did so. The building had no lights in the corridor, so for a moment, I stood in complete darkness. The automatic sensor then sluggishly triggered the light, and I was able to locate the elevator across the hall. It looked less like an elevator and more like a poorly placed storage room door.
I stepped inside and tugged the heavy door shut, instantly feeling claustrophobic. I realized that I was nervous to push any buttons because I was unsure of what they might do, which felt embarrassing. Fighting my fears, I winced and pushed a big grey one, which jolted the elevator car into motion. Since the car didn’t have its own door (instead, the elevator shaft had doors that opened onto each of the building’s floors), I watched as a series of red and yellow doors passed in front of my eyes. It doesn’t take much to make me experience motion sickness, so the process of watching the doors blur in front of my eyes quickly had me feeling nauseous. After one more jolt, I had arrived at the ground floor.
As I scampered down the front steps of the building, I noticed an elderly woman whacking the dust off her carpets onto a patch of grass. I could tell that it was something that she did reflexively and had been doing so for years, decades even.
I continued my walk to the other side of the housing development, where M and his family would be waiting with lunch, and I wondered just how it was that I had ended up there in the first place. I wasn’t sure if I had ever felt like more of an outsider. Not that the feeling necessarily bothered me.
The wedding itself is a story for another time — the details deserve their own entry.
As I now look ahead to our own wedding, which is planned for early March, it makes me laugh to relive our relationship’s unlikely origin story. Despite the miscommunication about that weekend’s sleeping arrangements and my various cultural fumbles, we managed to find a way to each other.
The rest is history. It goes to show that things seldom happen as you’d expect them to.
