Free The Woman from Bratislava by Leif Davidsen

T-shirts and tiny white mini-skirts teetered about on stiletto heels. The mini-skirts did not look quite right with their somewhat plumper Slovakian legs. On their T-shirts, emblazoned across their chests, were the words ‘Food only’. Next to the door was a sign saying: ‘Food waitress with experience wanted’. Some day the whole world will speak an English of sorts. A bent, old woman shuffled past the open door, all happed up in a threadbare coat and big shawl despite the spring sunshine. She accosted a young man with a mobile phone to his ear, reaching out a gnarled, veined hand. He passed her by without so much as a glance. When another young man standing next to me started jabbering on his mobile, the ringing tone of which sounded like ‘The Wild Rover’, I decided I had had enough, paid the few karuna I owed and made my way back through the relatively quiet streets to my hotel. Back in my room I tried calling Janne again, but again I got theanswering machine. I left a brusque message, demanding to know where the hell she was, telling her when I would be landing that evening and asking if she could pick me up at the airport. She had the bloody car, after all. I called the Institute, but was told that they had not seen her for a couple of days. She was off sick, her secretary informed me, with thinly disguised glee. Well, that would give them something to gossip about over lunch.
    So by the time I set out for the airport I was in a pretty foul mood. In the taxi, driving through the dun-coloured, concrete Stalinist desert of Bratislava’s suburbs, I kept expecting to see a cement factory proudly proclaiming that its workers strove tirelessly to fulfil the party’s magnificent Five Year Plan and wholeheartedly supported the indissoluble friendship with the Soviet Union. Instead my eyes were met by adverts for Sony and Marlboro.
    The terminal was deserted. It looked more like a dismal provincial aerodrome in some far corner of the globe than an airport in a capital city. The fake marble flooring, the virtual absence of any passengers, the few departures announced on the information display boards and the smell of the erstwhile Soviet Union which clung to it, all testified to the fact that Slovakia was still a European backwater. Slovak Air Services and Russian Aeroflot fought for precedence in their own little signage battle. There were no staff at the check-in desk or in the small office underneath the fancy Informácie sign. Besides my flight to Vienna the departure schedule from Bratislava Airport also included a flight to Prague, one to Kiev and, strangely enough, a late-night flight to Tunis. That was the lot from the capital of Europe’s youngest nation. Over in a corner I noticed a woman sitting quietly reading a magazine. In a minuscule post office an elderly man stared vacantly into space. In the tiny newsagent’s I could purchase a copy of Die Welt , and this I did, but I did not dare to sit down. I wandered around, biding my time, and eventually a young man who spoke English appeared and checked me in along with the handful of other passengerswho drifted in as departure time approached. I was like a little child, I couldn’t wait to get home.
    I changed planes in Vienna and landed on schedule in Copenhagen . I swallowed my pride and asked the stewardess to help me out of my seat. The pain when I had heaved myself to my feet unaided in Vienna had been so bad that I would have screamed out loud, were it not for the fact that, no matter what, a man just does not do that. My back hurt like hell. Our passports were checked by the police when we got off the plane and again as we were about to step into the safe arms of the motherland. The usual poor sods were already sitting in a huddle alongside passport control, with no hope of being allowed to enter the promised land of the EU, while I, with my splendid beetroot-red document was able to sail straight through. Now aching in three different places: my back,