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Published: June 12th 2008
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Bratislava is one of those cities that people simply reject off hand; case in point: when I was in Vienna 3 years ago, there were 3 Swedish guys who wanted to take the bus to Bratislava for the day, and everyone asked why - their reason: EuroTrip, the movie where the 4 Americans live like kings in the city for pennies. Now, to be fair, there is not a whole lot in the city, but it is worth the visit for a day. It does have a lovely area that feels very European with the outdoor cafes and the squares with churches and the weather was lovely. It also has a kosher restaurant (I’m not sure why) and provides real easy access to Vienna, as the two are the world’s 2 closest capitals.
Thursday, May 29th:
Overnight train from Krakow was easy, and we both got some sleep on the ride. Our first trouble came when we tried to get to the hostel. We both needed change we didn’t have (this necessitated buying a bottle of water each at the train station) to pay for a ticket on the tram into the heart of the city. Got off on the
right stop, but the directions from the hostel sent us in the wrong direction for a few blocks until we realized that we needed to turn around and go past where we were dropped off, at which point we found the hostel in just a minute. The other problem with the hostel was that they wouldn’t check us in until 2pm - at this point it is about 7:15am. They would let us use the bathroom and put our luggage away, however, so we did that, changed our shirts and, after an attempt to use the non-functioning internet, headed out into town in search of breakfast.
Eventually, we found a nice little café where we could watch the sparsely populated street (except when a loading van or 2 would park about 5 feet from us) and warm under the sun. After breakfast we decided to check out the old part of town, a network of small, mostly pedestrianized streets in sort of a grid pattern. For the most part, they were fairly wide and airy with large pavers for a street/walk, which made me think the place was rebuilt fairly recently, rather than being medieval. There were also, surprise, surprise,
Wine festival
This is the guy sucking the wine up the straw to serve it churches and museums all along the streets.
Considering how early it was, and what was going to be open, we decided to head west over to the castle and see what kind of trouble we could get ourselves into. Not a particularly exciting place, as much of it was undergoing fairly extensive renovations on buildings and ground. It did, however, offer great views of the city, both new and old parts, and the river, especially the closest bridge, which has a UFO-looking restaurant atop the tower. Generally, the castle was pretty, and mobbed with school/tour groups.
We soon decided that we should head back to the hostel and ask around for things to do in town. The clerk, though he would still not check us in, advised that there was not much going on, except for a wine festival in a courtyard off the main town square. Aaron and I, after talking with other guests, and getting online now that the web was working again in the common room, decided to head back into the old part of the city in the hopes that the museums would be open. After wandering around a bit and buying our little memorabilia in
the square, we did find the wine festival. It was devoted to a local variety of grape that was the base for all the wines available. The cost was about $.25 for the glass deposit and $.35 for 5cl a tasting from the different vineyards in the area - I kept the glass. The wine was generally very good, but the coolest part was the way they served a free glass to everyone there by using these long, glass straws that a guy would basically suck the wine up much of the way without getting it to his mouth, and then cover the top to keep the vacuum, and then by taking off his finger from the top, he could pour the wine into you glass. Very cool and very communal.
After the wine festival, we decided on lunch and found a little street-side café as are so common in Europe and had something not particularly memorable. At this point, we had pretty much decided that we had done what we really wanted to do in Bratislava, so we headed back in the general direction of the hostel. On the way, we saw plenty of old little buildings and stopped
by the city museum. Honestly, this is not the greatest of museums, having a few pieces of art devoted to the pouring devices at the wine festival and some locally produced artwork and some works from the old Hungarian imperial palace in the city.
After the museum, we made our way back to the hostel to officially check in and ended up chatting with a few of our fellow hostel-mates. One of whom ended up bein Paul, the same Australian guy who I had met in Bucharest and Brasov. We compared notes and talked a bit, and he soon headed off to try the wine festival Aaron and I told him about. Since the only interesting part of the city is very small and we had walked every bit of it, we relaxed until we decided it was time for dinner. Back by the castle, we foud Chez David, a Kosher restaurant, which was something of a surprise to find. Aaron made what was a completely unnecessary reservation as there were about 2 other tables with people at them, and then we worked our way on over. On the way, I stopped by the post office to grab a stamp
Windmills
Aaron powers the city by blowing the windmills for a post card back to the states. The restaurant was a dissappointment, to say the least. It was real Jewish cooking: overpriced, over cooked and over salted.
After dinner, we met up with a few American students on the street; 4 guys who were having a great time and a few beers. We then met up with Paul to head out on the town. We had heard about 2 places, one was a former bunker that had been converted to a club, the other was on a barge in the river. The bunker was nearly impossibe to get to as it was under the castle, but the sidewalk was blocked on the way to get there, so we had to dodge traffic on the highway access road to make it. Our cards from the hostel also were suppossed to get us a discount on the cover - they did not - but the cover was only about a buck, anyway. I got the first round of 3 beers for 3 Euro and we moved forward down the small bunker of a club and heard the band: a rotating group of rappers and musicians playing some alternative/emo type stuff. The
Castle
Castle over the river crowd was smoking and swaying, so after the 2nd round, we headed out for the barge. This place, too, was odd. It was actually a dock on the river that had a cafe and a club in the bottom level (actually mostly below the water level) and tons of beautiful women. There were also very large guys just sitting there on the side of the dance floor just watching, not even drinking. We had heard stories from other guys in the hostel earlier today about this whole setup and one scandavian guy who nearly got his ass kicked by some guy who didn't like him dancing with his girlfriend. So we didn't know who was a land-mine and who was single. After a few minutes here, we called it a night, as we wanted to get up fairly early for the first boat to Vienna at 10:00 the next morning.
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