Tell me how ‘Next Apache’ got started? Today it’s a cult Bratislava café and second-hand book store frequented by almost all the cultural elite of the city.
15 years or so ago, three or four years after I moved to Bratislava, I started to think about a second-hand book store specifically for English books with a friend of mine. At the time, it was really hard to buy books in English. When learning Slovak, we used various techniques to help us remember things, for example, na zdravie (‘cheers’), which was hard for us to say, sounded like ‘nice driveway’. Then we realized that nech sa páči (‘there you go’ / ‘you’re welcome’) sounds like ‘next apache’. And that’s where the name came from. People don’t immediately clock it, but when they start repeating the name out loud, they work it out.
My friend Jan Schrastetter (second from right), who has brought the project "Jewish-German Bukovina 1918+" to life in such an extraordinary way, took me into his "living room" at "Next Apache". The street party in front of the door was a free bonus. Thank you, Jan!
"Next Apache" has become the focal point of support for Ukraine and opposition to Putin's war of aggression. It's a meeting place for MEPs, the mayor of Bratislava, chief editors of liberal media, artists, intellectuals and many others. So it is not surprising that we could meet Misha Kapustin (second from left), the rabbi of the progressive community of Bratislava. Rabbi Misha Kapustin, an Ukrainian native who was single-handedly serving the progressive Jewish community across all of Crimea belongs to those rabbi who are demolishing Putin’s excuse for Russia’s invasion:
And what does the restless world traveler (first from the right) do next? Well, he drives on to Budapest and enjoys life in the hip (Jewish) Újlipótváros Neighborhood. The trendy main street Pozsonyi út and the Pinball Museum are part of it, of course.
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