An old British black cab stands outside a central European water park, a place once believed capable of scrubbing pollution out of our skies.
This strange building of wood, chrome and thermal pools- fed by an underground lake apparantly heated by the very core of the earth – stands in almost complete darkness.
A computer screen flickers in a window and, on a balcony near three thermal pools, somebody has put up a forlornly lit Christmas tree.
It is as if the last person to leave AquaCity-Poprad has turned out almost all the lights, leaving just a glimmer for the future.
But you can’t help feeling that the old rusting taxi cab near the sealed-up entrance to this giant water park is waiting to take the ghosts of what-used-to-be on a long dark journey …
AquaCity, with its almost utilitarian styled buildings, less than a year ago was still a prime mover in bringing prosperity to the mountain micro-city of Poprad, Slovakia.
But now it is as cold and empty as the souls of so many in this Covid-raddled world.
In 2005, when I was first invited to Slovakia to publicise this vast emporium of health, saunas and hot stones, it had credentials so green it was touted as pool of hope for the Western World.
And on its website the owners still claim to stop 27 tonnes of carbon emissions entering the atmosphere each day.
And I dubbed the man originally behind the claim as Mr Cool.
I was taking the journalistic Mickey really because more interesting to my tabloid audience, was the fact that AquaCity had its own cryochamber And that was something that people in the UK had never really heard of except in the 90s Hollywood blockbuster Things to do in Denver when you’re Dead.
A cryochamber metaphorically freezes its clients to death before restoring them to pure health.
But when Jan ‘Mr Cool’ Telensky saw I’d described his water park as the hotel of the living dead, our relationship became a bit icy.
And when Slovakia saw the headline I’d written for City Lights magazine – Things to do in Poprad when you’re Dead – even politicians from Bratislava fell out with me.
There was talk of me being banned from the country!
Well, it wasn’t really ‘least said soonest mended’. No, there was a bit more shouting than that.
But I survived and ended up having a working relationship with AquaCity that lasted fifteen years.
I never, ever once thought we would see the lights go out there.
From the day it opened, its bubbling pools were the place to go, putting Poprad on the tourist map.
Far back in to history Poprad had been a city eclipsed by the Communist dark ages. Only ten years before AquaCity was built, one travel book labelled it “a place where there is no need to linger”.
Communist architecture threw zombied shadows across the streets. Even today there are still row after row of old tenement buildings.
And in 2005, when Telensky’s monolith to water and health officially opened, gypsy boys skulked on street corners and fat men in Shell suits drove their mothers in pink furs and Trabants to the newly-opened mountainside Tescos.
But Mr Cool’s landlocked hotel had already given this once-listless city a sense of purpose. It had also given it jobs, money and the beginnings of an international reputation.
And in the last five years I have seen Poprad – population of only 50,000 – become a sophisticated, vibrant stylish and cosmopolitan city with trendy bars and sushi restaurants.
AquaCity itself, despite being due a facelift, had become popular with British football clubs because of its health giving status, training facilities and a retired English army major who had been chosen to promote it.
Gone too was the phut-phut of Trabants, replaced by the swish of BMWs and Mercedes.
Today, on the positive side there are signs that Poprad is coming back to life. Many of the restaurants are selling takeaways and, after the massive covid testing of two thirds of its 5.4 million population, others are allowing people to enjoy socially-distanced dining.
Fingers are now crossed that Slovakia will drive past the Covid nightmare rather than all the way through it.
Jan Telensky brought the old black cab from the UK to Poprad along with a couple of old red telephone boxes on a low loader. He already had an old fashioned pillar box. He felt they went well together.
Apart from that, I never really found out why he had shipped them almost 2000 miles across Europe. But when I suggested that we turned them into a little bit of England ‘forever in Europe after Brexit’, he became inspired.
***
There is no doubt that the phone will ring again at the reception desk at AquaCity and there have been rumours that it might be sold to the Chinese.
Politics and Covid almost certainly put that rumour to rest though.
The reception desk phone ringing may well call back some of the ghosts too. But it will happen. The restaurant and kitchens will buzz and clatter, the pools will bubble again.
AquaCity will be a steam-driven Phoenix.
But it is curious to note that places like AquaCity might not exist except for viruses like this one killing us off now.
In reality, in water, more than 90% of living material is microbial. And it’s those microbes which produce half of the world’s the oxygen.
And this can only happen because of viruses.
So, it is ironic that miniscule greasy blob of a bug that brought darkness to this world-renowned water park may be doing now exactly what Jan Telensky set off on a journey to do all those years ago…
It has cleaned the air by bringing a near-halt to life, economics and dreams to save the world.
A bi-product of the Covid’s killer’s family has turned the sky blue once again.
#covid19 #slovakia #poprad #aquacity #solar #thermal #health
