The New York Times: Once Soviet Gray, Now a Colorful Mix

DOWN a dingy alleyway lined with beer gardens and hookah bars, an Afro-jazz funk band took the small stage at the Piano Cafe, a smoke-filled lounge in the center of Kosice.

It was not exactly what a first-time visitor expected to find in a Central European town of steel factories and Soviet-era apartment blocs. But as the beat of African samba filled the cramped cafe, an arty crowd of young Slovaks in metal-rock T-shirts and bookish glasses sat in rapt attention, slow-sipping their Mojitos and ignoring the techno music downstairs.

For decades, Kosice, a city of 250,000 in eastern Slovakia, was considered an industrial backwater — if it was considered at all. (Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital, got the attention.) But in the past several years, a beautifully refurbished center has emerged from behind Kosice’s ugly veneer of gray concrete and steel, drawing artists, entrepreneurs and a growing number of tourists.

Hlavni Namesti, the city’s newly renovated Main Square, now gleams with intimate art galleries, white-tablecloth restaurants and upscale hotels equipped with wine cellars. Dormant mines and military barracks have been refashioned into studios for underground artists. And a hilltop collection of unused warehouses is being converted into a site for open-air festivals, electronica parties and laser shows.

“It’s really booming,” said Michael Hladky, 27, a local architect who specializes in new urbanism. “It’s no longer the case where public art gets decided by old guys from Communist times. A younger generation is coming in.”

The transformation was no accident. With its steel factories slowing down, Kosice, a former Soviet Bloc city, decided in the late 1990s to restore the town’s cobblestone center. The idea was to stimulate culture and the arts.

“We want to be an incubator for young artists,” said Marek Kolarcik, project manager of Kosice 2013, a public task force lobbying to have the city named a European Capital of Culture. “We’re lagging behind Bratislava, but in two years’ time, the boom will come.”

Its historic diversity may help. Thanks to its location along the border of the Hapsburg Empire, Kosice has Slavic as well as Magyar roots. The region’s only Roma theater can be found there, and bookstores carry both Slovak and Hungarian magazines. Locals also like to point out that in 1968, when Moscow sent tanks into the country to suppress the reform movement known as the Prague Spring, some of the Czechoslovak intelligentsia were hauled off to work in Kosice’s steel mills, laying the foundation for the city’s renaissance in culture.

On an intermittently soggy afternoon last fall, the beer gardens along the main square were emptied of their regulars — a mix of university students and steel workers — but the sidewalks swelled with the rush of passersby. A pair of elderly women fed pigeons in the park as faint elevator music could be heard from a nearby singing fountain.

A fog lifted over the towering spires of St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral. Begun in the late 14th century, it is Slovakia’s largest church, and its gargoyle-studded exterior leaves one wondering if Quasimodo is hunched over its Gothic entranceway. The top of the cathedral’s clock tower offers panoramic views, and the crypt below lets you mingle among the tombs.

Next to the church stands the medieval bell tower of St. Urban. Its vaulted interior has been turned into a tacky wax museum devoted to hometown heroes like Andrej Varchola — otherwise known as Andy Warhol — who has familial roots in the region. His wax likeness, complete with the signature shock of white hair, stands next to a general and other heroes from Slovak history.

Indeed, Kosice seems to have embraced its quirkier side. Filmmakers and media types descend on the town each June to hand out a documentary film award called the Golden Beggar, which depicts a vagrant tipping his hat.

Nor are locals above showing off their pro-Americanism. Slovak-style spaghetti is served at the Bill Restaurant, named after — who else? — Bill Clinton, but a waitress said he never stepped foot in the place. The entrance features a cartoon cutout of the former president sporting a wide grin, and the cavernous interior features kitschy American memorabilia splashed across its orange walls, including, of course, a saxophone.

But Kosice’s hammer-and-sickle past is never far away. Lurking around the corner is Krcma Nositel Radu Prace, a dive bar straight out of the cold war. A group of blue-collar men cluster around tables, singing what sounds like Soviet songs and washing down cheap Topvar beer, while portraits of Lenin and Marx peer from the peeling walls and an angry-looking babushka tends bar. “This is a place for the unemployed, not tourists,” said Milan Seliga, a truck driver, before downing a shot of vodka.

Attempts to shed Kosice’s provincial image have not come easily. Part of the problem may be Slovakia’s reputation — not entirely unfounded — for poor service and lack of foreign language skills, a holdover from its Communist days. “They go to hotel school for four years but learn to smile on the fifth,” said Richard Gibbs, a retired teacher from England, who was visiting the High Tatras, the mountains dividing Slovakia and Poland.

But walk past the Piano Cafe down an unmarked alleyway known as club row, and you might encounter a gregarious man with a mullet haircut tending bar at Diesel, a kitschy bar, and teenagers in hoodies eager to chat up out-of-towners between puffs of Marlboros.

That bonhomie is perhaps most clearly felt by the city’s artists. “This place is what I imagine New York was like back in the 30s,” said James Austin Murray, 38, a painter from New York City who visits Kosice occasionally. “There is this sincerity that comes with the lack of ambition toward money.”

NEXT CAPITAL OF CULTURE

HOW TO GET THERE

Flights from the United States require a stopover, in Vienna or Prague. A recent online search found a Czech Airlines flight from Kennedy Airport, with a plane change in Prague, starting at $1,176 for travel this month. Kosice is about five hours by bus or train from Bratislava or Budapest.

WHERE TO STAY

The 32-unit Hotel Bristol (Orlia 3; 421-55-729-0077; www.hotelbristol.sk) offers cathedral views and a Roman spa, with singles starting at 3,300 Slovak korunas, $171 at 19.65 korunas to the dollar.

The Hotel Bankov (Dolny Bankov; 421-55-632-45-22; www.hotelbankov.sk) has some of the most lavish quarters in town, with park views on its summer terrace and a Finnish sauna. Rooms start at 2,950 korunas.

WHERE TO EAT

For traditional Slovak fare, head to Twelve Apostles (Kovacska 51; 421-55-729-5105), where diners sit around wooden pews in a tabernacle-like room.The menu includes chicken breast with cherry (385 korunas) and steamed salmon with grilled vegetables (450 korunas).

Bill Restaurant (Hlavna 117; 421-9-07-970-863) serves American-inspired fare.

Another popular hangout is Diesel Pub (Hlavna 92; 421-55-622-2186), which offers greasy but good food.

Tamas Dezso for The New York Times
By LIONEL BEEHNER
Published: August 10, 2008  www.nytimes.com