Postcard from Košice

The city of Košice in eastern Slovakia is one of the locales mentioned in Laurent Binet’s novel HHhH (mentioned in my previous post). Although it didn’t play any sigificant part in the story of “Operation Anthropoid”, Binet recounted how time he spent teaching there in the ’90s was a foundational influence on his becoming obsessed with the subject.

The postcard above was sent to me from Košice in 1989 by my then-flatmate who had gone for a week or two as part of a long-standing inter-university exchange programme. He had the good fortune to arrive at a heady moment when the ‘Velvet Revolution’ was gathering pace, joining with his hosts in some of the on-going mass demonstrations, and learning the phrase slobodné voľby teraz! (‘free elections now!'). His message on the card didn’t mention any of that, praising instead the virtues of Prazdroj, which I already knew and loved in its exported form as ‘Pilsner Urquell’.