What's so cool about Kosice?

Cool stuff inside the East Slovak Museum.

Kosice was nothing more than a dot on the map that I came across when I was planning a summer trip to Krakow.

Budapest and Krakow run along almost the same line of latitude, but between the two cities is a snarl of mountains in Slovakia. Trains run around these, either due west, through Bratislava or Vienna, or deep into the old East Bloc, to Kosice.

On the map, there is nothing to distinguish the city. It’s at the far end of Slovakia. A Czech friend, who grew up near Prague and then lived there, gave me a strange look when I mentioned going there. “But what is there? That is so far east, it’s almost the Ukraine.”

But that dot in the far east of Europe seemed interesting. The summer trip to Krakow did not happen, but I decided to take a weekend, when one came up, to go for a visit. As I waited, I did a little research.

I got St. Elizabeth Cathedral at just the right time of day.

There’s a Gothic church in the old square, the most eastern in Europe. Kosice was the Hapsburgs' farthest eastern stronghold. In fact, this is where Western and Central Europe meets Eastern Europe: The whole area has historically been populated by Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Ukrainians.

It was a free city under Hungarian rule for a long time, such was the mix of ethnicities there. A Hungarian connection still exists today – Hungarians still call Kosice its old Hungarians name, Kassa. The city itself also venerates its most famous writer, Marai Sandor,an ethnic Hungarian.

If this cool history nerd stuff didn’t get my attention, the city is also a European Capital of Culture for 2013.

It’s like a European cultural Olympics. The state poured money into creating and renovating venues for art exhibitions, music and theatrical performances and other artsy fartsy pursuits. The hope for many host cities is that this investment turns into a long-term return – that the infrastructure creates an innovation industry.

Finally, finally, finally, I found an off weekend and dropped in for a brief visit.

It’s an old city, but the Soviet’s fingerprints are all over it. The city is a hodge podge of fin de siècle with socialist urban planning. There are old, clanking trams, but they are brilliantly coloured (with ads, but they are still colourful). The old town centre is a pedestrian only square, with the Gothic cathedral, a 100-year-old eclectic-style theatre and outdoor cafe. Within view of the square are old socialist apartment blocks. The apartment blocks, those monuments to socialist social engineering, are not grey, but lively, with murals and brilliantly coloured patterns.

I’m going to avoid going too deep into art critic mode here, but the art I saw at the Capital of Culture events are something else entirely different.

A great deal of it was contemporary art, and we all know how that can be sometimes. A lot of the work on display had an opinion. But there was a sense of humour in much of it, and there was definitely a distinctive voice, or sensibility to it.

I saw this throughout the city, from the exhibits I visited to murals painted on pub doors. There’s something about the spirit of the city that’s young, brash and darkly humorous. The city is young (so is Slovakia). It is a college town, so there are bars all over and, even though Slovakia is on the Euro, food and drink are affordable.

There is something going on in Kosice. I couldn’t tell you what it is for sure, not after such a brief visit, but it's a place worth watching.

The door of a Spanish pub.

Socialist apartment building, brightened up a bit.

Jakabov Palace