Blogs from Bratislava, Bratislava Region, Slovakia, Europe - page 23

Well, not really the USSR, but it might as well have been, on the way to our Hostel at least. Our first impressions of Bratislava were marred by, in order of appearance: - A dead body lying outside the train station; - The ugliest building this side of the BNZ centre. The dead body you can leave to your imagination, but the building I refer to is the Slovak Radio Building (see photo). To my untrained eye, it looks like an upside down pyramid, and is exceedingly ugly. However, I expect to recieve emails from the architects among us to enlighten me on the errors of my ways. We never intended to go to Bratislava, you see. Or Slovakia. The fact that we went there at all was really a function of the (earlier mentioned) bureaucratic ... read more

On Wednesday afternoon we got the train to Bratislava. Although we had reserved seats, we couldnt figure out where they were exactly so we ended up being shifted half way through the journey by some angry French people. We eventually made it to our least favourite Hostel so far - The Orange Hostel. Which appeared to be run by 12 year olds who were unhelpful. Certainly not as glamorous as our last hostel. Started the sightseeing, one hour later finished the sightseeing having seen everything touristy. In fairness the castle was interesting and the views incredible. We also got to visit a Da Vinci exhibition of his inventions. On our second night we headed out, had a few beers and ended up in another dodgy house club, but it was not as good. Bratislava is definitely ... read more

Ahoj (Hello) from my brief visit to Slovakia where I spent a lovely day (8th May) in Bratislava with Mitchell Nganeko from Waiuku, hometown for both of us in NZ. Mitchell is a past-pupil of mine and this year he has been an AFS exchange student in Slovakia. His words in a later email summed it up: "It was so cool to meet someone from your country, your own town, on the other side of the world." It was very special to visit Mitchell's host family in their home and get a glimpse of his life in Bratislava. His Mum Martina, Dad Jozef and brother Filip made me very welcome. After a chat over coffee and the delicious cake his Mum had made, Mitchell and his German AFS friend Tobias took me to a Slovak restaurant ... read more

Greetings blog readers....... This is getting very confusing.......I am sitting on a bench in front of the city hall in Bratislava.....a country that begins with "SL"and ends in "ia". Problem is, is it Slovakia, Slovenia or Slavonia? OK. it is Slovakia. I have just watched a long ceremony in front of thye Presidential Palace where I either expected Peter Sellers or Julie Andrews as Queen of Devonia to be standing outside, not the president ofthis country. Would you believe that they had majorettes doing a routine to the Colonel Bogey March in addition to the band, military drill team and an exercise by the commandos!!!! They say that Bratislava is the small cousin of Prague and they are right. Actually, this city of about half a million people has a squeekily clean and restored old town ... read more

So I am officially on my way back home, I’m just taking the scenic route. I said my farewells to Croatia on Sunday and headed north. To be honest I had grown quite attached to Zagreb, and it was a bit sad leaving. I believe that in my travels so far, Croats have been the friendliest bunch of people I have had the pleasure of coming across. I am also going to miss my “Zagreb Breakfast”, bijela kava (white coffee) and cherry strudel. I am currently basing myself in Vienna. The train ride up was a pleasant one if not a tad long about 6 hours in all. The scenery was great almost the whole way up, there were deer in many a Slovenian meadow and once we crossed over into Austria beautiful mountains and green ... read more