Rates of Exchange [antikvár]

VISITING SLAKA: A FEW BRIEF HINTS 0/ 0' 0' 0' 0' 0' 0' 0' 0' 0/ 0' 0' 0/ 0' 0' 0' 0/ 0/ 0' 0' 0' 0/ 0' 0/ 0' 0' 0' 0/ 0' 0' 0' 0' 0' 0/ 0/ 0' 0/ 0/ 0' 0' /O /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /O /o /o /o /o /o /o >'0 /o /o /o /o /o /o /o /O /a /o /o /o /O /o /o /o /o /o If you should ever happen to make the trip to Slaka, that fine flower of middle European cities, capital of commerce and art, wide streets and gipsy music, then, whatever else you plan to do there, do not, as the travel texts say, neglect to visit the Cathedral of Saint Valdopin: a little outside the town, at the end of the tramway-route, near to the power station, down by the slow, marshy, mosquito-breeding waters of the great River Niyt. A city infinitely rich in this, and no less lacking in that, Slaka is, you will remember, the historic capital and quite the largest metropolis of that small dark nation of plain and marsh, mountain and factory known in all the history books as the bloody battlefield {tulsto'ii uncard'ninu) of central eastern Europe. Located by an at once kind and cruel geography at the confluence of many trade routes, going north and east, south and west, its high mountains not too high to cut it off, its broad rivers not too broad to obstruct passage, it is a land that has frequently flourished, prospered, been a centre of trade and barter, art and culture, but has yet more frequently been pummelled, fought over, raped, pillaged, conquered and oppressed by the endless invaders who, from every direction, have swept and jostled through this all too accessible landscape. Swedes and Medes, Prussians and Russians, Asians and Thracians, Tartars and Cassocks, Mortars and Turds, indeed almost every tribe or race specialist in pillage and rape, have been here, as to some necessary destination, and left behind their imprint, their customs, their faiths, their architecture,