ESL Teacher

One of my fondest memories of teaching in Bratislava is going out to the Christmas markets with my students.

These were my first experiences of Christmas markets, after growing up in a country where Christmas happens in summer and therefore lacks a lot of the normal traditions. In Bratislava they set up a fantastic display of markets through the old town centre, especially near the town hall and museum. Absolutely picturesque!

Added to that, it’s cold. Really cold. Rugging up in a thick coat, scarf, hat and gloves gave me an extra Christmassy feeling!

My favourite expedition here was with two students who worked in marketing in an international company there. They were both about ten years older than me and loved to tease me, so our lessons were always full of laughter. One day they decided that instead of sitting in their meeting room for our lesson, they’d take me out to the Christmas markets, a short walk away. We ate traditional Slovak food, drank hot honey wine (which made me pretty tipsy very fast!) and had a lot of fun. At moments like those, thinking to myself that I was getting paid to have this experience, I couldn’t believe my luck.

Several other classes of mine decided to take me to the Christmas markets that week, including some of my evening classes, which was especially dangerous - all of that medovina (honey wine) made it pretty difficult to get up early the next day for my morning classes. But since my students were in a similar boat - all the locals spend many evenings at the markets - nobody seemed to mind.

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