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Entrance into Bratislava’s Natural History Museum was included with the Bratislava Pass, so this seemed a useful distraction on what was a very hot day with a hot weather warning. There were a few fans dotted about, likely as there wasn’t obvious air conditioning, that I frequently positioned myself near.

An exhibit about human evolution.

A bone with rickets. This blog never fails to offer exciting content.

And a dinosaur that I thought looked quite cute in its own way.

This is apparently the oldest common ancestor of today’s apes and humans, the primate Pierolapithecus catalaunicus from Catalonia in Spain which lived around 13 million years ago and had African ancestors.

A woolly mammoth and the museum explains that the word ‘mammoth’ comes from the Estonian language meaning ‘earth mole’, which other sources sort of confirm, with some saying that because the remains were found underground some people thought that the horns were for digging. I’m not entirely sure many people of however primitive an education thought that, but there we go, I’m not going to pick a fight with Estonian linguists.

And an actual mammoth tusk and these could grow to up to four metres in length.

I thought this was some sort of shark, but it’s a great sturgeon. It’s like the museum was trying to catch me out, and succeeding…… As a fun fact these great sturgeon, if they’re not lifted out of the sea by hungry humans, can live for up to 100 years and can grow to seven metres in length.

Some wildlife scenes with stuffed animals and don’t those bears look cute? Although I’m still in a mood with polar bears.

A European bison and as a fun fact, although perhaps not fun for them, they went extinct in the wild in 1927 with every living one being located in a zoo. Breeding programmes have saved it and it’s back in the wild, although nowhere near as common as it was before.

I rather liked this museum, although there were some bits on things such as rocks that didn’t engage me personally, but each to their own. It wasn’t overly busy but there was a fair amount to see across the several floors. It’s well reviewed on-line and entrance is currently €6 for those who aren’t using the Bratislava Card. It’s a small price to pay to leave knowing more about bones, beasts and miserable fish.

Weaving some whimsy into the urban fabric seems to be something that suits Bratislava rather well, sometimes it’s just more appropriate than yet another fountain. This is Čumil, a bronze sewer worker lounging out of a manhole like he’s clocked off early and decided to spectate modern life from street level. Installed in 1997, Čumil is one of the more enduring symbols of the city’s post-communist renaissance. His name translates loosely as “the watcher” or “the peeper”, though that sounds more sinister than the reality. He’s not creeping, he’s just more resting. Or thinking. Or possibly trying to avoid doing any actual work. Relatable really when it’s this hot, although I might have already mentioned the sub-optimal temperature around here.

Created by sculptor Viktor Hulík, Čumil was part of a wave of playful public artworks that began to appear after the Velvet Revolution, as Slovakia sought to forge a new identity following decades of rigid Soviet-era architecture and, let’s be honest, quite a lot of grey and depression (or is that repression?). The 1990s were a time of transition, and this chap emerging from the underworld felt like a small but symbolic break from the past. Although I did at first think it was like one of those installations that I’ve seen in Poland where this had some sort of link to the Second World War and trying to resist German occupation from the sewers.

He’s been through a few bumps in the literal sense as Čumil has been run over more than once by inattentive drivers (I can imagine someone I know who would run this over but I won’t give names), leading to the installation of a warning sign which adds a strangely bureaucratic flourish to his otherwise relaxed presence. His nose has now been polished to a golden sheen by the constant attention of passers-by who’ve been told, with great confidence but very little evidence, that rubbing it brings good luck. Perhaps in the sense of “I survived kneeling in a busy intersection to fondle a bronze face” which is an achievement in itself. But at least he’s a grounded chap….

I rather feel that I could have taken more photos, but there we go, Bratislava is a peaceful but vibrant city at night.

And the next in my theme of what I consider to be interesting medieval carvings, carefully placed between beer posts to add some variety for my two loyal blog readers. The gallery states that this is Master of Hronský Beňadik, but I don’t quite understand that as this is a place name of a Slovakian village, so I’ve relied on AI to explain and the answer is apparently that it comes from the abbey there but they don’t know who created it. Either way, the abbey was seized by the Ottomans in the 1520s who kept the building but knocked some of the Gothic bits down and fortified it.

That might explain why this wooden statue isn’t still there, apparently made from lindenwood (I had to Google that, but it’s lime wood) as it’s from around 1470. A fair amount of the paint has survived, it’s in remarkably good shape for its age. I’ve never quite understood why statues from this period give the Madonna such long fingers, especially as that must have been harder to carve than short stubby ones. The young Jesus is already showing a blessing hand signal, which seems very astute for someone so young. I do wonder where this has been kept over the years, I couldn’t find anything of its provenance, but I still like that for a period this was an important devotional artwork that would have been important to at least a couple of generations (and likely more).

As some of my more astute friends have realised, and perhaps quietly judged when they wanted a white wine spritzer, I like a craft beer bar and I was pleased to arrive at Damian Beer Garden especially as it took me a few minutes to find it. It was well reviewed on-line and I did wonder if it would be quite busy on a Friday night, although it transpired not to be which seemed more unfortunate.

I went inside to the bar area where there was a friendly welcome and it was apparent that they prefer table service and so I actually went outside which I thought was brave of me. It was a sheltered courtyard and there didn’t seem to be any pests about (as in insects, I don’t mean English stag groups).

I like a simple food menu, less faffing about choosing.

The bar’s menu is on Untappd and I had my eyes on the Joe in the Garden gose, but that ran out when they tried to pour it. But, that’s the excitement of craft beer bars, they’re always changing and there’s something new and decadent around the corner.

The beer is the Danny Boy 16 from the Barn Beer Co who are from the Czech Republic, this hazy NEIPA was hoppy with tastes of stonefruit, perfectly agreeable. I’m not sure how big the Slovakian craft breweries are, but there’s certainly a lot more emerging from the Czech Republic. I clearly made a mistake here in not ordering a beer from the brewery itself, I’ll have to fix that omission at some point in the future.

The food was one of my favourite things, a perfectly proportioned meat to bread ratio of pastrami with sauerkraut and gherkins underneath, along with some inoffensive Swiss cheese. I’m picky about melted cheese, but this behaved itself and let the other ingredients have their moment.

While I was still admiring the structural integrity of the sandwich, a new beer appeared on the menu from CRAK brewery in Italy, a country dominated by wine but with a fast emerging craft beer scene. It’s the Giant Guerilla CRAK the Rules, a double dry hopped DIPA which was 8% ABV and was creamy, hoppy, smooth and really quite fluffy. Juicy, refreshing and decadent, this was a really decent beer.

I very much liked this bar, this is the kind of place that every city should have more of. The service was friendly, the beer list was well curated, the surroundings were clean, the atmosphere was relaxing and the food completely met my expectations. I hope that the venue is doing well as it was quiet when I was there, locations such as this deserve to prosper by focusing on high quality food and drink rather than verging towards generic rubbish.

And another artwork by Peter Kalmus at this gallery and they note that:

“Peter Kalmus is primarily known to the public through various media reports (pouring red paint in the bust of Vasil Biľak, throwing mud on Tiso’s memorial plaque, etc.) The collection of yellow postal delivery notices (from the courts, police, NAKA, etc.) here becomes a symbol of his tireless determination to fight for his principles.”

These seem a rather nice thing to collect if you happen to get plenty of them and I like the creating order from chaos element to this. Without verging into the area of Slovakian politics that I know nothing about, it seems that Vasil Biľak is now widely seen as an enemy of the people, so I’m not sure chucking red paint proved to be overly controversial. As for Tiso, I’m not sure anyone would defend him outside the world of far-right politics. I rather like this artwork though, there’s something about standing up for your principles and being proud of that. I’ve never seen an artwork like this and it’s certainly a creative way of continuing to make a point for his past protests.

There wasn’t much activity around the rhino enclosure at Bratislava Zoo, either from visitors or the rhinos themselves. Trusting people not to jump over the wall, which wasn’t relatively very high, it meant that visitors could get very close to these animals. I’m aware there’s a school of thought that all zoos should be closed, but I take the view that they perform educational and breeding benefits to the wider community, not just a leisure facility.

It’s quite pointy. I’m not sure that I’ll be the new David Attenborough with these type of observations, but it is factually correct.

The zoo had two rhinos, or at least, it had two rhinos that I actually saw. It seems that they’re both female and one of them, Tootsie, is from Lowestoft (more specifically Africa Alive in Kessingland) so she’s had a dead exotic upbringing. I did wonder how you go about moving a rhino, but here’s a video of Tootsie being moved.

And today’s fun fact is that they have no real predators, just lions and hyenas which might attack the frail, young, stupid or sick. I’m not sure how these things have evolved to be able to run at up to 50 kilometres or so an hour, that’s quite some pace. And as another quick fact, black rhinos and white rhinos are both grey, it’s just that someone couldn’t translate the Afrikaans word ‘weit’ or ‘wijd’ which means ‘wide’ and not ‘white’.

I’m more positive about this artwork by Peter Kalmus than a couple of others he has created that are displayed in the gallery. The text by the exhibit reads:

“The collection of parcels that Peter Kalmus has been assembling since 2005 continues to grow. The artist orders them for various reasons and from diverse sources, but if a parcel is neatly packaged it remains unwrapped, thus becoming a “time capsule” whose contents remain a mystery.”

It doesn’t say this, but I assume part of the purpose of the artwork is to note that many purchases aren’t required, that buyers might even forget what they’d ordered now it is so easy to acquire things. It’s an intriguing artwork though, just rows of things addressed to him that have never been opened although it feels a slight shame that a seller took such care to package items that were never going to be seen again. I can imagine there’s an argument that this isn’t very positive for the environment, ordering things that are never opened, but compared to the wedding of Jeff Bezos, I can’t think that’s a major concern in the greater scheme of things.

I liked the theme of the gallery about order, the transience of things and how that relates to artworks. I wasn’t sure about this one initially, although it didn’t annoy me like some of the other exhibits, but I rather like it now. It’s by Marek Kvetan and the display reads:

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, Marek Kvetan collected food wrappers and turned them into white plaster casts. The result is a silent scene of an emptied city that bears traces of personal and collective experience. Each cast is a frozen moment of the everyday – a memory that brought us together.”

The exhibit feels minimalist until there’s a thought about how much a discarded wrapper or container can say about a moment in time. The snack taken between Zoom calls or the packaging from a food delivery. With them in white plaster, there’s now no branding, colour or context other than the shape, so it feels almost like an archaeological residue. And it brings up the question of whether we needed all that packaging, as well as it being something of a shared universality.

I often overthink these things, but I liked the quiet understatement here.

I’ve muttered about one work by Peter Kalmus that gave me the impression that he and the gallery were almost mocking those without wealth by destroying books. This work is also muddled, although partly brilliant in terms of its collation of a period of transience. These are all posters from the time of Covid, the gallery notes that it’s a testimony of the “unexpected silence that reigned in places” at the time. This seems a useful exercise in recording and keeping a snapshot of that period, a reminder that Covid threatened everyone, regardless of their wealth.

Then the gallery goes further, it talks about how the collection was “appropriated” and was a “subversive capture” arrangement. If this means that signage to reassure people about Covid was removed to make some sort of point, then the privilege and wealth almost drips from the gallery into the street. The suggestion that the gallery can take what they want, regardless of how those with little will cope or manage. I rather hope though that the gallery means that the posters were taken when they were no longer in use, collated without the knowledge of the owners to form part of an archive that only the artist was aware of. Recording transience is positive, there sometimes should be order after chaos.