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Abercrombie
myspace.com/ashesband
Registered: Sep 2005
Location: Aurora Borealis
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Allow me to elaborate on part of my family's 'old country'... Well... it was Czechoslovakia back then, but I still have family on both Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Slovakia, along with other former eastern bloc countries used to have 'soft currency', under communist rule. This money was only worth something in that country, nowhere else. This is why the Korun (Crown) was worthless in comparison to ours on the foreign markets. People did not have the freedom to travel, unless they were high-ranked members of the communist party, or very low-risk-of flight travellers. People used to defect when they had a chance. Locals and 'street exchangers' would buy USD and any western hard currency and huge benefit to tourists, as there was an official exchange rate in banks, where tourists were only allowed to buy local currency there. The rate was much less in banks.
Because of the repressive and corrupt government rule, MANY girls were eager to hook up with a foreigner, like me , and will make you REALLY happy. And for little money too. A full pint of beer was about 45 cents in a downtown pub, tip included. The $1.78 or so in Eurotrip still would not allow you to live a life of luxury. But this is HOLLYWOOD, and everything is exagerated in the movies.
So the tiny truth based on folklore makes you believe from movies Bratislava is like that. It's still an extremely historic place to travel, and they do have raves (better in Prague though), and is eevrything is still very cheap in comparison. If you plan to travel, the quicket the better, because the economy is improving, as the coutries desire to join the European Union.
Na Zdraví,
AJ
___________________

Short time TA, Long time Guver, Good time giver.
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Jan-31-2006 15:59
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Chris Allen
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Apr 2004
Location: Calgary, Alberta
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| quote: | Film causes wrong kind of horror in Slovakia
Tue Jan 31, 8:39 AM ET
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Better known to the outside world for their ice hockey players and stunning models, Slovaks are horror-struck that the smash-hit slasher film "Hostel" is giving them a bad name.
The low-budget movie made a surprise debut in the United States, topping box office sales in early January. In the film, American backpackers are kidnapped, tortured and killed during a trip to the central European country.
"It's so sad," said Alzbeta Melicharova, marketing head at Slovakia's state tourist board.
"The events in the film are so absurd. They have nothing to do with reality. We are actually one of central Europe's safest places. It's one of our selling points."
Scenes of teens locked in a dungeon, tortured with chainsaws and blowtorches and sold to sadists have shocked this tiny, mainly Catholic, nation that is trying to lure tourists away from the beaten paths that lead to Prague, Budapest and Vienna.
This formerly communist nation of 5.4 million, independent for just 13 years, is not used to being the setting for Hollywood films, much less nightmarish ones.
The film has yet to open in central Europe, but word of it has already spread to Slovakia, where radio and newspapers have blasted it, and Slovaks are puzzled and offended.
Taxi driver Julius Horvath saw a photo from the movie in a newspaper of a dog chewing a human bone.
"It's like something from a 1,000 years ago," he said. "Like Slovaks live in the jungle."
IDEAL LOCATION
American director Eli Roth said he chose Slovakia because it was close enough to backpacking meccas Amsterdam and Prague to be a plausible diversion for his heroes, but still unknown to most Western audiences.
The film tells the story of a hostel-cum-dungeon, where wealthy foreigners pay to make snuff fantasies come true.
"I would like to apologise to Slovaks for making them look like maniacs," Roth told Reuters in an email.
"But if you look closely, the worst crimes are committed by Americans, Germans, Japanese and Dutch."
Slovakia has rebounded from 40 years of communism to become a stable democracy with a thriving economy.
Tourist brochures tout Slovakia's mountains, stretching over two-thirds of the country, and forests, covering 40 percent of Slovak land, and a multitude of ski slopes that make it the "eastern Alps".
Roth's film instead shows broken-down communist-era cars, black-and-white television sets, gangs of children who kill for bubblegum -- an amalgam, he says, of the worst American stereotypes of the old Eastern Bloc.
Melicharova has challenged Roth to visit Slovakia and see, in her words, what it is really like and the director said he would take up the offer during a promotional trip ahead of the central European release of "Hostel" on February 24.
"I think I have to be a man and go there and face the music," he said. |
Source - Yahoo News
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Jan-31-2006 18:14
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