Last week in Bratislava ...

Last week in Bratislava, I saw Zdenka Trvalcova perform French retro. She was in Prague last Tuesday night at a club called Popocafepetl so a couple of my new friends from the seminar and I decided to go.

I thought I could find my way to the club because it was along the same route that we had taken in the morning to visit the Czech Parliament. Turns out all I remembered correctly was the metro part and I didn't remember how to get from the metro stop to the right street car. After unsuccessfully trying to find the no. 22 street car stop, we decided to walk. We were more or less going in the right direction but were having trouble finding the bridge we needed to cross. I asked for directions a couple of times but the streets are so convoluted here that it was still taking us a while to get to the river. By now it was getting close to 8 pm when the concert was supposed to start so when I saw a taxi by the curb, I asked him how much to get us there. "150 crowns," he said. The price was reasonable so we piled in. He was a polite, sympathetic young man, we had a nice little chat about where we were from and he told us that he had a relative in North America but that he had not yet visited there. Anyway, he found the club without a problem, we paid, gave him a bit of a tip and found our way into the club. It looked like a typical former wine cellar, dark and dungeon-like. There were young people at the entrance to take our money, with just a few customers sitting at the tables. The band was on the stage milling about, getting ready. We found a table and sat there for a little while just enjoying the atmosphere and checking out the offerings. We ordered drinks and nachos with salsa and sour cream. The salsa turned out to be sweet and sour sauce.

The performance started at 8:30 and didn't disappoint. The club filled up and a number of people brought their chairs up to the front, to be nearer the stage. Zdenka mesmerized this audience with her voice and performance, just as she had the audience in Bratislava. At one point, she told a story about the song they were about to perform. She said that the last time they played it was at midnight at one of the town squares. As they were playing, the police pulled up and told them that they were disturbing the peace. But they were also curious about the kind of music they were playing. A member of the band explained that it was French retro. "What's that?" a policeman asked. "Well, we can play some for you, quietly," they said. "This song needs a bit more accordion," one of the policemen said after they started to play, and "Could you play some Edith Piaf?" Anyway, the band extended an invitation to the policemen to come and hear them here at the club but we don't know whether they actually showed up.