Slovak ingenuity

People often wonder why I want to study the Slovaks.

They don't have the cachet of, say, the Czechs or the Poles, the cuisine of the Hungarians. There isn't really a Slovak equivalent of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, and the Slovak capital, Bratislava, doesn't have the same sort of appeal as Vienna. In general, Slovaks are viewed as the somewhat backward, more agrarian, conservative, religious brothers of the Czechs, not so renowned for their politics, cosmopolitanism, or even beer production and consumption.

But I've discovered that the Slovaks get a bad rap. They've done plenty in the way of building a civil society that pushed for revolution and pushing for liberal democratic values (see my dissertation on the Slovak question in the Prague Spring, forthcoming), one of the best meals I ate in Prague was at a Slovak restaurant, and Slovak beer is definitely underappreciated and quite outstanding.

Yet when it comes to mixing alcohol with ingenuity, I think the Slovaks take the cake. Or at least this Slovak man takes the leak:

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Nazdar!