Land of the Happy Slavs

People who travel to the former Soviet Union almost always comment on the lack of customer service that exists there. It could be falsely assumed that Russians and Ukrainians are just a rude lot of people--but if you have been guests in their homes you know this is not the case. Warm and giving, they are incredibly hospitable, friendly, and caring to a fault.

Slovaks are like that, but ALL the time, which only leads me to believe that the poor customer service is the result of the Soviet influence, which also means that it can be reversed in time.

I have found time and time again people going out of their way to help me in Slovakia. This was also true when I traveled here with a friend in September. We had people literally leave their job posts to make sure that we got headed into the right direction. This happened again with me arriving in Kosice to find that basically every place in town was full. A young girl who spoke no English or Russian called a pension for me and then helped me haul my large suitcase down the stairs and got me into a cab.

Then a man on the train to Bratislava found out that I spoke Russian and proceeded to point out various things to me along the way and had other people doing the same, pointing out castles and such. When we arrived at the station, he carried my large bag all over the place and made sure that I got it into storage and then put me on the correct tram. Certainly saved me a lot of time, since I would have had a hard time figuring all of that out.

There have been other small exchanges along the same vein with people just going out of their way to help in some small way. It has made for a very pleasant trip here indeed!