A Bear in Bratislava

I thought that the photo of me with the Napoleonic soldier might throw you off but it seems that a few of my savvier readers were able to identify my new location as Bratislava (or Pressburg in German and Pozsong in Hungarian, although no one guessed those), the capital of Slovakia. I've been here for almost week now and, I must confess that I thought I’d enjoy a certain level of anonymity in this part of the world (I seldom modelled east of Milan) but as you can see from the above photo, the paparazzi always manage to find me.

I mean, as a former international fashion model I'm used to having my photo taken but this fellow was a little too much in my face.

In any case, Bratislava is going to be my den for the next 11 months and I have to say that my bipedal attendants have been awfully long in the face about the whole situation. I miss Spain too - I haven't had a manzanilla for over a week now! - but Slovakia brews excellent pivo (beer) and of course Czech beers are cheap and ubiquitous so you'd think my he-bipedal attendant would stop moping about.

There's a lot I can say about Bratislava but I think I'll pace myself a bit. I have to get a handle on the language which is a bit tricky . So far, besides pivo, all I've managed to learn is ahoy (hi), prosím (please) and d'akujem (thank you) because bears are nothing if not polite.

And I do know that "bear" is medved' and "grey" is sivý, but I'm not sure if that makes me Sivý Medved'.

So for the next little bit I'm going to work on my Slovakian as well as the attitudes of my two bipedal attendants. As a freelance Good Will Ambassador, there's always plenty of work for me to do (especially now that Angelina has repopulated the world again - I mean, she hasn't worked for months!) but this time it's a bit closer to home. Some people are just so ungrateful for the new experiences offered to them. Even if they could just learn to grin and bear it they might learn to actually like it here. And if not, I may have to hand out a few pink slips.