Of course there are Irish pubs in Slovakia. This one is in the city of Banská Bystrica in the centre of Slovakia. This region is considered to be at the heart of Slovak culture, but they manage to make a bit of room for Irish culture too.

And this is the Dubliner Irish pub at night in Bratislava’s Old Town Centre.

Irish Whiskey

You can see it here in front of two local favourites, Becherovka and Fernet. Don’t forget the “e” in Irish whiskey that distinguishes it from Scotch whisky.

Irish Dancing Lessons

You can learn Irish dancing in Banska Bystrica…

…or in Bratislava. This poster is advertising a 10-week course for beginners.

Irish writers

In a bookshop window in Bratislava I spotted these Slovak translations of books by John B Keane and William Trevor. You can also just see the corner of a book by that famous Irish author, Maeve Binchyova. Foreign women’s names tend to get Slovakicised here along with their writing.

Crubeens

otherwise known as pigs’ feet. They are a traditional Irish delicacy, but there just isn’t an elegant way of eating them. You have to get down and dirty. Dobru chut!

An Irish Dog

I met this happy Irish setter taking some excercise in front of Bratislava Castle. I bet he’d enjoy some crubeens!

A Celtic Cross

It’s on a man’s sweatshirt, which is on a man.

Some Irish Flags in Company

An Irish flag with an EU flag and a Slovak flag

An Irish flag and a gay flag

Three mini-tricolours together:

Irish, French and Italian. They were on adjoining desks in the European marquee in Hviezdoslav Square, Bratislava on 26th March. This big tent was erected to mark the founding of the Europen Union 50 years ago. Neither Ireland nor Slovakia were members back then, and it wasn’t called the EU but the European Economic Community. Ireland joined in 1973 and Slovakia in 2004.

Irish Tricolour Balloons

Dymphna Headen is an Irish artist who had two exhibitions of her paintings in Slovakia in 2006. The first entitled “Light into Darkness” was at the F7 gallery in Bratislava from 10th to 30th April.

Roads to Harmony and Eternity

Dymphna’s second exhibition, “Roads to Harmony and Eternity” ran from 11th May to 12th June at the Merum Gallery in Modra, a town in the Small Carpathian Mountains that is famous for wine production.

Slovak Connections

Why Slovakia? Well, until she retired to her cottage in Ireland where she paints all her pictures, Dymphna was the first secretary of the Irish embassy in Bratislava. Here’s a photo of her with her partner Jan Dolman at the Irish embassy party for St Patrick’s day 2005 in Bratislava.

Art and Inspiration

Although Dymphna only retired from diplomacy in 2005, she isn’t an artistic novice. She has been painting and drawing since she was a child. Later she studied art and art history at college, and taught the history of art. In the late 1980s and early 1990s she worked as an artist from her own studio in Dublin.

As you can see, her style of painting is semi-abstract. She makes use of vibrant colours and strong motifs. The Irish landscape and its ancient stone monuments are her greatest source of inspiration and she incorporates legends from Ireland, Slovakia and other places into her work.

While visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, she saw a picture of a bird that someone had drawn on a wall. It lodged in her mind and later also found its way into her paintings.

Celtic Heritage

She feels a deep bond with Europe’s pre-Christian past and the philosophy and culture of the Celts. She has noticed similarities between the cultures of Slovakia and Ireland, which she thinks are due to Celtic influences. The Celtic tribes lived in Central Europe before they migrated westwards to Britain and Ireland. They left behind, not just the remains of their settlements and artefacts, e.g. at Devín Castle near Bratislava, but also, Dymphna believes, the names of places, rivers and mountains.

Here are some examples she has given. The city of Brno in the Czech Republic may have been named after the Celtic god Brian, and the river Danube, or Dunaj in Slovak, after the goddess Dana. The Morava, a large river that flows from the Czech republic into the Danube at Devín, has a name that sounds very similar to the Irish words for big river. The Irish word for life is pronounced like the name of the longest Slovak river, the Vah. Was it the River of Life to the Celts?