When you have no frontiers, you become a frontier yourself

Bratislava is not one of those cities you are told you must visit before you die. This is exactly why I've ended up here. I enjoy the feeling of having no prejudices on any brick I can touch, any word I can hear or any character stereotype that can walk beside me.
I stop at a pleasant corner pub, drinking a strawberry-basil lemonade. While sipping a bit of Mediterranean taste of home, a little Slovakian boy is trying to climb up the gate of his house front door. Interesting how much initiative there can be in such a little explorer.
I turn the corner of Kapitulsá street and an old house in ruins appears behind a gate. The chain tells you that it is forbidden to cross the threshold but it is loose enough to make you ignore the fact that there is actually a line between where you are and where you are not supposed to be.
Suddenly, a little red train full of tourists looking for some historical thrill approaches. A sharp desire for solitude pushes me round the corner and I bump into St Martin's Cathedral. Whenever you're looking up for something new in the Old Town, you always somehow end up in front of this cathedral and the building on its left side that has the reproduction of Van Gogh's paintings in place of its windows.
Smiling at the idea of how much beauty can be squeezed in such a little city, I hear one of those melancholic Central European violin melodies the name of which you never remember but that always sound familiar for some reason. I'll never forget the day that my wornout soles walked on the directions and distances to various cities of the world carved into a bronze compass rose set in stone through the medieval St Michael's city gate.
Rome, my home: just 783 km from where I am standing. Oslo, one of the capitals of the dark North is 1373 km from where I am dreaming about it. Tokio, a capital that carries within itself both East and West is just 9142 km from my sandals. While I let myself go to a fantasy ride, 15,914 km away from here next to Sidney's beaches people are riding the waves. My imagination tiptoes along the bronze circle and trips over the only measure that is repeated twice: 4667 km. I realise that I am standing on the point of the same distance from the North and South Poles.
I think of the person who is the reason why I had the solitary stroll and all the places we could visit. I smile at the sight of the strange orange laces of his shoes which have been following me all the way down a little city tickled by the Danube.