Field Season Two: September–October 2025

September 29, 2025

Here in Trenčín there is the old railway bridge, and the new railway bridge, and then the car bridge but also the new car bridge. But the old car bridge is also referred to as the yellow bridge, but then the new car bridge is also yellow. So what bridge is the yellow bridge? However, I have also heard some people refer to the assorted bridges as the clothing bridge (no idea what that means — is it a place to hang your laundry?), then others refer to the railway bridge as the obvious Railway Bridge, but again — there are two railway bridges, and they’re both side-by-side! So which one would be Railway Bridge? What if I said: “Meet me at Railway Bridge,” where would I go? Then I have heard that there is, simply, the new bridge, but I am not sure in reference to which one is new: the new railway bridge is from 2015, and the new, other yellow car bridge is from around the same time, so either of those could pass for the new bridge. But, they’re about 5 kilometres from each other, so a fairly major inconvenience if you end up at the wrong new bridge.

In an article about my quest to name these bridges, someone said that “everyone knows which one is which,” — but I don’t! Such a statement takes for granted that everyone has a history with the city, has seen it transformed over the years: but what about people like me, visitors or newbies to the city? How are we to navigate between two bridges each referred to as the yellow bridge, let alone two railway bridges! And what happens if a person refers to one of those bridges as the Clothing Bridge, then how would I know which bridge is that one? I’ve never heard that name before. Does everyone in Trenčín know that one of those bridges is referred to as the Clothing Bridge? This seems like peculiar, hyper-local knowledge that exists in only that circle but doesn’t transfer beyond such specialized knowledge outside that ring. That same person, stating that everyone knows which bridge is which, also said that everyone knows “even the Bierovský Bridge.” I have never heard of this bridge either. Is there a new, other bridge in this panoply of infrastructure I have yet encounter? Why does this bridge seemingly have a name, while the others do not? When I tried to translate Bierovský, Google Translate gave me: Bierovský. Is this just a pseudoword, a nonsense set of letters combined to create some kind of meaning even though it doesn’t contain any such meaning except for as a place marker?

The old car bridge, the yellow bridge, perhaps the Feeder Road bridge, the damaged bridge, or the concrete bridge, or a combination of all of those. I am not sure.

So it seems that many of these names are hand-me-downs, passed down through the generations, a kind of accumulating logic that is only accessible to those in the know. This is what we can call local media — ‘media’ are not only screens and signals, but infrastructures of knowing: knowledge is embedded in streets, kiosks, gossip and other such forms. When that person earlier said that “everyone knows,” they were referring not to signage or cartography, but a kind of informal media system constructed out of family short-hand and hyper-local references that travel as media because they transmit information and orient people in space. Except, I don’t know. I am not a part of the local community, and therefore that short-hand doesn’t translate so well. Thus, I would probably end up somewhere I shouldn’t.

Me in Trenčín.

There are other names, this time defined by generations: so here there is a fracturing of local knowledge into even more hyper-hyper-local examples: apparently, people around my age (Generation X) would refer to the various bridges here as the Concrete Bridge, the Railway Bridge and the bridge to the island. But as I said, there was a railway bridge built in 2015, so would that person still refer to the railway bridge as just that: but since there are now two railways bridges, are they both referred to in the same way? Same with the concrete bridge: there are now duplicates of those as well, an older and newer version of each, doing the same job but in different locations and in different materials.

The new railway bridge, but not Želzák nor the concrete bridge even though its made from concrete.

On one of my first days here, I did hear a lot of Želzák, a shortened form of Iron Rail Bridge. I stuck with that one for awhile, because a) I really liked saying it, there’s a nice ring to it, and b) that name is very specific to its construction: it’s literally an iron bridge, as the new railway bridge is concrete — also further complicating which bridge is the concrete bridge, and which one is a bridge that just happens to be concrete, let alone which one of those concrete bridges carries cars or trains, because neither do both. I have also heard other names: the Main Bridge and the Feeder Road Bridge; the former I have no clue what would be the main bridge: to a railway engineer, that’s probably the new railway bridge, but maybe as a person with a car, its’ the new — or old — yellow bridge, otherwise known as the concrete bridge (at least only one of them) while if you’re a pedestrian or cyclist, maybe the old railway bridge, Želzák, would be considered your main bridge as this is now a direct thoroughfare across the river. The latter option, the Feeder Road Bridge, I think that this is the new, yellow, concrete car bridge on the edge of town, but then the old, yellow, concrete car bridge also feeds cars out to the highways and to the new, yellow, concrete car bridge, so I cannot claim that Feeder Road Bridge is indeed all that helpful.

Želzák, or the old rail bridge, or just simply the rail bridge.

Another complication, of course — and something I have experienced time and again in my time here, is that there are competing and sometimes overlapping official agencies with various responsibilities who never seem to find consensus. The railway bridges — both of them — are controlled not by the city nor the region nor even the state, but the railway company. One of the yellow bridges, I think is controlled by the city, while the other is under the regional auspices of the transportation bureaucracy. So even if a name were to be made official, sanctioned by those bureaucracies, other administrators could easily reject any proposal and stay with the colloquial names.

So it seems the only thing to do is to take these matters into civilian hands, to wrest the sprawling morass of multiple, competing names and try to collectively find some kind of common ground that adequately values these bridges as more than just overlooked means of egress, but as partners in the community. Therefore, I have decided to convene the first Council for the Rebranding of Load-Bearing Icons to settle this matter, to try and coordinate amongst competing voices, memories, conflicts, histories, stories, and experiences a set of names that might reflect these bridges. But naming also means claiming, there is a double edge to such a tactic; while it might orient insiders, those with local knowledge, there is always a counter in that it disorients outsiders: me as a classic example. And yet, my experience is vital here, as I am an “untranslated” listener, cognizant of how fragile, yet powerful, these systems are.

The new car bridge, or the concrete bridge, or the yellow bridge, but could also be the feeder road bridge or is this the clothing bridge?

Želzák is more than representational, its an operative word, a whole apparatus of meaning that locates bodies in space, recalls history (of material, of memories, of generations, of iron, of concrete), and, in the end, performs a kind of identity for the bridges themselves. I came across a few more (comic) names: one local wanted to name one of the bridges (could it be the old yellow car bridge?) the 69-Year Old Bridge, because that’s her husband’s age and in similar shape; another said the bridges already have names: Overloaded, Damaged, Closed, and Blow-up.