Bratislava: Not That Spooky

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If you're following this travelblog, we apologize in advance for our super long off-the-blog period. It's not that we had stopped traveling, we have just been super busy to find a free hour to sit down and post. In fact, we have a pile of pictures and travel journals and notes to be processed to texts once we have some free time. Today, I finally have the time, while Kiki is still on a business trip to Montenegro. Let me get to this one story first.

It's about Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. We hopped to Bratislava on our easter trip to Vienna. About the trip to Vienna itself, we'll get to that later. So, we were driving to Bratislava from Vienna. Few meters from the border, we tanked the car in a gas station where we also bought some sweets and coffee. We coninued driving and finally arrived in Bratislava, found a parking lot where we could leave the car for free, just to figured out that we had lost Kiki's credit card. Like, we left it in that gas station. We went to a nearest gas station in Bratislava that is under the same company, begged a lady there if she could call her colleague in Austria, but we failed to communicate. She did not understand English, we did not speak Slovakian. Thank God she understood few Croatian words, so after struggling for few minutes, she got it that we had left a credit card in Austria. She called somebody, told us that the card is there and we had to pick it up. So, that was Austria-Slovakia-Austria-Slovakia in one hour story.

When we got back in Bratislava, we head to our hostel that I booked through my favorite site. A hostel, yes. Like, the movie "Hostel" whose the set was Bratislava. That horror movie about the torturing and killing tourism, rings a bell now? Yes, we were sleeping at a hostel in Bratislava, creepy. But no! Not at all, it was actually really nice hostel. It was located in the center of the city, very close from the old town and all. The elevator was scary though, but that story should go to a review to the hostel, not here.

We spent the night climbing the hill to the Hrad, the Bratislava Castle. It's a cultural park consists of the castle itself and a park surrounding it. It's actually too bad that the castle is not functioning as a museum like the usual European castles. Tourists cannot get inside of it. The park was actually pretty nice to take a walk around. And the view! It was fantastic. Especially the view over the Danube river, although you can view the whole Bratislava as I believe the Hrad is the tallest point in the city.

The next we wandered around the old town which is a typical European old town equipped with the gates, the watch tower, the fountains and the cathedrals or churches. What made Bratislava different was the fact that it was not too touristic, compared to Vienna for example, that we visited the day before. There were no busses with massive numbers of tourists in Bratislava, which we kind of liked. The old town was quite and pretty.

I personally think that Bratislava is worth to visit, especially if one is already in Vienna which is very close. You might not the whole weekend to explore it, as it is pretty tiny and there is no that many things happening. And get the movie out of your head, Bratislava is not that spooky. Beautiful and nice people are there.

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Photos

Hrad
The Bratislava Castle

Danube
The view of the Danube river from the Hrad

White House
The Presidential Palace of Slovakia