by Yannick van Druijten –
When Matús first called Petržalka a ‘concrete jungle’, I laughed. At that moment I had not fully understood what he meant. Matús had explained to me that people would get lost in the ‘labyrinth’, especially in the 80s, when the first parts of Petrzalka had just been finished construction and people started to make the neighborhood their home. “This all happened before Google” Matús remarked with a smile. The idea of getting lost in this ‘labyrinth’ of concrete and steel spoke to me in a weird and adventurous way. Imagine, what kind of dangerous animals would I encounter in this ‘concrete jungle?’
Petržalka is the biggest socialist housing estate of Central Eastern Europe (CEE), which consists almost entirely of prefabricated panel flats, made from concrete panels. These paneláky (prefab flats) house more than 110.000 people, which is more than a quarter of the population of Bratislava. Petržalka is separated from the rest of the city because of the Danube river, which has come to not only represent a physical but also an imaginary border. In the 1990s especially, it stood out in statistics concerning alcohol and substance abuse, suicide rates and criminality. Today, Petržalka is a place that looks and feels distant, and far away from the rest of Bratislava.
After meeting with Matús, I decided that I would try to get ‘lost’ the next day, to feel and experience what people in the 80s must have felt when lost in Petrzalka. No phone, no bank card and no English. The only exception to my rule of no modern technologies today, would be my Canon photo camera. Luckily, the weather report predicts a day with no rain and clear skies! Nevertheless, the sun would offer no warmth and the temperature would stay around 0 degrees Celsius. I put on my big, warm, dark blue winter jacket, and my hat and I put a scarf around my neck which I tightly fold into my jacket. Ready for a cold day of walking.
Soon, while on my way, I figure that without a phone, I cannot tell the time since I do not wear any watches. I get excited. After all, step one of getting lost is losing the time. After about an hour of walking, step two has been completed too, I have no idea where in Petrzalka I am anymore. “What a unique place!” I think.
While walking, I am being engulfed in this maze of pre-fabricated panel buildings, which cast their shadows over the streets and make me feel dizzy when I look up to their highest floors. “What a monsters!” I say out loud in amazement, over and over again when I come across new buildings of eight, ten, or even twelve stories high.
Nevertheless, the paneláky are not the only things to stand out in Petržalka. Signs of decay and neglect are to be found everywhere I look. Crumbling staircases leading to overhead public terraces and walkways are closed, because of ‘danger of collapse’, skeletons of unfinished buildings are left behind for good it seems, and roads are full of cracks and have been redone in different colours, which is why some people call them ‘fifty shades of grey concrete’. All of this adds to the idea of a ‘jungle’, where survival is hard and many dangers are on the lurk.
However, I wonder, can one really get lost on purpose? Even without my phone, part of me knows there’s always a way out. But in a way, it’s more than just getting lost physically in this jungle of concrete and steel—it’s about getting lost in Petrzalka’s past, getting swallowed by its vastness and simultaneously suffocating in all its concrete. Eva, a pensioned woman living in Petržalka for more than 40 years, told me that people soon figured that the living situation in Petržalka was far from ideal. “We felt stuck and cut off from the rest of the city. The tram that was promised to us came thirty years too late and we felt left alone in our ‘rabbit hutches’”. The more I hear and discover about Petržalka, the more my admiration for the people living here grows. Living in Petržalka has not always been easy and I imagine people had to work hard to make it their home.
At the end of the afternoon, I walk up a concrete zigzag ramp to get to the road above me, constructed above ground level. I am now standing at Panonská Cesta, a big road about 15 meters above ground level, which links the city’s center through the ‘UFO bridge’ (Most SNP) to Petržalka. After a day of wandering deeper into the pre-fabricated housing estate, trying to get lost in this grey maze, the term ‘concrete jungle’ feels fitting. Every corner I turned, a new panelák doomed up in front of me, seemingly larger than the ones I had seen before. While walking, I had felt both awe and unease. The towering ‘monsters’ all around, fascinate me, but simultaneously I feel chills going through my bones when observing them. Why would anyone choose to live here? Or did people have no choice? Petržalka’s neglected corners, its decayed public spaces, tell a story of a troubled past and abandonment. Of a time when this place was meant to become a beacon of hope for a socialist government, which now feels like a relic of an unwanted past.
Yannick van Druijten recently received his master’s degree in social and cultural anthropology