Walkable Cities

I love Ferndale.

Ferndale, my home in the United States, is a lovely inner-ring suburb of about 21,000 people with housing stock built primarily between 1910 and 1940, fantastic municipal services, and wonderful people. It even has a great wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferndale,_Michigan. It is also a Michigan-designated Cool City and has received considerable attention as a fine example of the “new urbanism” that makes for attractive, inviting and ecologically-conscious places to live.

One of Ferndale’s main advantages its its walkability. A quick check with the ruler tool on Google Earth shows that my house is 1061 feet from a playground and recreation center, 2390 feet from a grocery store, 3480 feet from a coffee shop, 4463 feet from a library.

And yet, how much better from this perspective is the old new urbanism of Bratislava. I know there are many reasons for the difference and that there are places in the United States that are similar (much of the island of Manhattan, for example) but all factors aside, I am simply delighted at my good fortune to live in a place like the one we do now. The same Google Earth ruler gives the following remarkable distances from our front door to places we like to go (yes I know I should do this in meters, but I am not going to): 43 feet from a coffee house, 127 feet from the vegetable market, flower shop and sandwich shop, 149 feet from a Czech pub, 306 feet from a pizza place, 161 feet from a coffee house, 201 feet from small grocery store, 156 feet from the best bookstore in Slovakia, 330 feet from a pharmacy, 503 feet from the EU information center, 489 feet from a church with English-language services, 615 feet from the library, 949 feet from Bratislava’s English language bookstore. We could, quite literally, live for months without ever going more than 1000 feet from our apartment. Not that we will, since beyond that 1000 foot limit is a beautiful and vibrant city that I am again coming to know.

I love Bratislava.

Kevin

A plug for Drayton Avenue Cooperative Preschool (DACP) in Ferndale

For whatever reason, we are having a difficult time getting google to give a good page rank to the homepage of Elena’s and (presumably) Peter’s school–Drayton Avenue Cooperative Preschool (DACP), so I figured it would not hurt to throw a link in here:

http://draytonpreschool.googlepages.com

And it probably wouldn’t hurt to throw in the alternate link:

http://www.la.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/stuff/draytonpreschool.htm

We’ve enjoyed the school a lot and the parental involvement is fantastic (as it must be for a school like ours that is a true co-op).

Kevin

Bigger City Neighbors

(from a January 22 letter to my beloved next door neighbor, back “home” in Ferndale)

. . . I really like city life, although the one kind of weird thing is (one of many for me) is lack of interaction with neighbors. People are very private and reserved here. Kevin suggests that it has to do with living in close quarters with some residual effects from the whole former pressure of Communist era life in which one never really wanted one’s neighbors to know what happened in private. People really kept to themselves, and for many this way of living has stuck, except for those in their inner circle. For those in the inner circle the hospitality is remarkable (sometimes almost overwhelming. ) It all makes me really grateful that I have you next door in Ferndale, and that we have so many other kindly neighbors who are eager to connect. I know I need to give it more time. And I suppose the fact that I don’t speak the language and I that have the two loudest kids in the entire city might not help matters. Still, the whole dynamic makes me a little sad and lonely. You know me: I smile at everyone and want to connect. Alas, I have adjusted my expectations.

Other than this, I really like having the wonderful public transport, the walkable markets (I wish Ferndale’s Wide-A-Wake had stayed open). We pay more for our food, but why the heck shouldn’t we? We in the US we pay far less of our overall income for food than do most people.

The other thing that I secretly love about this place is the laundry. I am big into line/air drying. And it is the way it is done here. We have this high efficiency washer right in the bathroom (so convenient), smart drying racks and line options — so the job gets done and so far for me it is really pleasant. Proximity is key, I suppose. Anyway, I will be bringing back some clothespins for the Rasma line. (Please don’t let your husband take it down!!!)

It’s All About the Basics

(From a January 20th letter to a friend)

Today is Sunday when most everything is closed and everyone is out and about. We have a mild day which hints at spring — very inspiring indeed. So we wandered at a very relaxed pace. The basics are my total focus right now, which I like and appreciate. I conquered the laundry thing this weekend – very different set up here, but one that makes sense. Everyone lives on a smaller scale here which is great and workable – I am getting used to it. Every day we buy food – in small quantities — and we relish it in a different way. Nothing has been wasted yet, and I think Kevin and I may be eating less (not a bad thing). We have been eating around the table at least twice a day, which is very new for us. And such a good thing.

My walls are so bare, so I hope to get something – maybe even some fabric – up. We have a great flat, with tiny porch on each side, and new windows. Pretty much everything has been redone in the past couple of years, so the apartment is very fresh (with the exception of the carpet – only in the bedrooms – everything else is tile – I am working on this).

Beginnings in Bratislava

(From my January 18th letter to my family, 2007)

We are over a week into this adventure. Kevin has the kids on a trek to “Tesco,” a British chain which replaced Kmart of Bratislava, to buy laundry soap and food — we have a new washer today. No dryer (the Slovak way) so I suggested he pick up some clips and clothesline as well. A trip to Ikea Bratislava yesterday brought pretty new linens, which means we now have a fairly complete apartment. It is really a perfect spot which we appreciate more and more every day. We are on the 2nd floor overlooking a tiny, cute fruit and veg store, a flower shop, and a sandwich/pizza place. Down the street is the “best bookstore in Bratislava”, and around the corner is the English language used bookstore with cafe – a great get-away spot for me. From here in my perch in my sweet kitchen I can also see the library branch and all of the activity on Kozia street in front of me — no goats these days (Kozia means goats), but lots of pigeons and folks walking doggies. Fresh bread and basics come from the potraviny (small market) around either corner. We are just four blocks north of the castle walls, and 4 west of the old city walls — most well known cultural draws are really close. We can pick up several buses or Peter’s new favorite, the tram or “electrichka” (imagine him saying this excitedly and so carefully) just a couple of blocks away. We have a dust porch in the front overlooking the street and a porch off the back overlooking the Orthodox Jewish English language preschool/kindergarten (the kindly international teachers live in our building – made us a hot meal the other day as we still did not have pots and pans). I waved at the kids the other day through the window.

We explored the park around the corner which backs up to our parking lot. It was pretty muddy as most parks are these days. However the kids liked it a lot, especially the “pitter-patters” (Peter’s so-called teeter-totter). We hear that it will be busy when the weather gets better. Speaking of which, we have had a couple of mild days. It is clearly more like Southern Ohio here, or even DC, and we are told that March is really great — this is not the case in Ferndale as I recall.

You can see from my note it is all about the basics these days . . . . by necessity. Broom, sheets, can-opener, trash, cooking, all of it. And trying to communicate — Elena is getting the basics and helps me out — numbers and greetings.

I got out on a hike last weekend, and will this weekend as well, to “the nature,” with Frantisek and Bozena, my host and hostess of our first four nights here — the in-laws of one of Kevin’s good friends and co-authors. Bozena plans to connect us with a hiking group on Saturday! This will be great for me. Kevin is moving into work mode (having been pretty focused on helping all of us be as comfortable as possible — he is taking great care); he will connect up with Comenius University, his academic perch, in the coming week. We visited the Fulbright office as a family the other day — we were so warmly welcomed. In a couple of weeks we will travel for a 3 day gathering to meet other Czech and Slovak Fulbright scholars, both academics like Kevin, as well as students, and their families (we are not the only ones with kids, I guess), in a nice Czech town on the Slovak border, known for its wineries.

All is going as well as it possibly could.

First Week

We have been in our apartment for one week now and we have made it home. The next step (probably somewhere on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) is sharing interesting parts of our experience with friends and family, hence this blog. We’ll try to occasionally to post stories and pictures that others might find interesting (or that we want to try to remember for ourselves). With any luck we will get more up this week.

Kevin & Bridget, Elena and Peter

p.s. I just checked and blogging is in the hierarchy of needs just after Safety Needs and Physiological Needs.

p.p.s. While we have not yet had time to upload (or indeed take) any pictures, the all-seeing-eye of the internet again proves its worth: pictures of our closest corner (though not our actual street) are already online. Here is the closest to our own flat: