Unnecessary coffee

The excellent Hotel Akademik, where I'm lodged, has no internet connection, so I'm driven to subterfuge for my web kicks. At the moment I'm sipping -- very slowly -- a cheap coffee in an posh Bratislava restaurant, taking advantage of free town square internet in the only place in range that's both inside and public. My insensitive-tourist shell's hardened enough to intend to stay put until actually removed.

I've been living the quiet life for the last couple of days, spending lots of time in my hotel room in my pyjamas with curtains drawn typing mathematics. There was a long and fiddly proof for the paper I'm writing with Tomas and Jana, whose writing-up I'd put off for some eight months and whose details proved just as nightmarish to explain as I'd expected. Other times, I spend hours sitting with Jozef in his office gazing at his whiteboard and daydreaming vaguely about a new problem of his which I at least have no idea how to attack.

I go out in the evenings, like now, until sunset or shortly after when I retreat into safety. I'm not really worried, but you can tell from things like the power-saving measures (traffic lights off at night, unlit hotel hallways) and the graffiti and the weird juxtaposition of gorgeous old buildings and crusty ones that Bratislava's not so prosperous as elsewhere. I don't like feeling like fresh meat.

Though some of the graffiti has an explanation: there's a graduation tradition at the university of spraying a celebratory tag.

Bratislava, and Prague, appear to be just west of what I shall term the "Deutsch-Russkiy Meridian": the German translation on signs for tourists is usually, but not always, above the Russian one. English is generally ahead of both.