NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

MY NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE for 2017 is being written in the unlikely location of the Blue Hotel, in Nove Mesto, Bratislava, where I have come to spend a few days experiencing what my younger son calls “proper snow” and my good lady wife calls a “nightmare”, albeit an opportunity to invest in hats and boots.

PRIOR TO BRATISLAVA were several days spent in Austria, including Christmas in a blizzard at the Alpenlounge in Seebruge on the Nordkette Mountain, Innsbruck, and a few days in Vienna, where we were able to compare how Viennese imperial opulence stands up to Parisian republican decadence nowadays.

AS FAR AS BEING IMPRESSIVE goes, Vienna comes out on top every time, with the Julius Meinl gourmet coffee store being perhaps the jewel in the crown of its tasteful demonstration of wealth, and this was our last experience of Vienna before retiring to bed and then coming to Bratislava by train the following day.

THE ENSUING STARK CONTRAST was deliberately engineered in order for us to be able to compare the height of free-capitalist imperialist overkill, shown most famously in the racist tones of the logo of the Julius Meinl store, with the presumed grim poverty of probably the poorest capital city of the old Soviet bloc, vestiges of the influence of which I expected to find here and there.

THE RAILWAY STATION was the first evidence of what I was expecting, showing that you can bring a country in out of the cold, but you can’t bring the cold out of the country. Brutalism and reinforced concrete were still an ever-present on the skyline, competing with absurd mushroomings of blingy building complexes. All in all, however, downtown Bratislava was extremely pleasant, hip and efficient. Hot and cold running water and Dyson dryers everywhere.

THE TV SOUNDTRACK TO THIS SHORT BREAK was the America v Russia affair over Obama’s foolhardy decision to expel thirty-five Russian diplomats whom US intelligence had decided were responsible for cyber hacking and altering the result of the recent US presidential elections, followed by Vladimir Putin’s equally foolish decision to invite all of the children of American diplomats in Moscow to a New Year’s Eve party at the Kremlin. One of them will regret their actions forever, when the Kremlin staff have to smack some precocious brat about the face for “doing a wedgy” or whatever it is that American children find amusing during the ten minutes per day away from their gadgets.

MOST OBSERVERS ARE AWARE of the particular nasty game being played by the spiteful outgoing president, yet I am intrigued by the language used to justify this mass expulsion. These ladies and gentlemen have been accused of, and are being punished for “getting involved in American democracy”.

MY OWN ADVICE HAS ALWAYS BEEN that democracy should be avoided at all costs, so no doubt Obama has a point, but if the Democrats are so keen to revert to Cold War tactics to punish Russia for “getting involved in democracy” then it will be somewhat curious to see how 2017 plays out in the USA. The many people who claim that Donald Trump has no regard for democratic rights will surely be pleased.