Štefan Harabin

"She brought a spirit of positive energy that has broken the bad mood that Slovaks have had for a long time," Zuborova, an analyst at the Bratislava Policy Institute think tank, told BIRN in an interview.

"She also represented a new hope that Slovakia might take a different direction than the rest of Central Europe."

Some days Adrian Lachata ponders how life would have turned out if he had never left Svidnik.

The 32-year-old engineer would not have graduated from the most prestigious technical faculty in the Czech Republic, where he has lived for the past 11 years since moving from the industrial town in Slovakia's northeast where he grew up.