Blogs from Slovakia, Europe - page 36

Starting to wonder whether this plan to post on each country makes sense but I will try to keep it up for a bit longer. So what do we know about Slovakia? There was one of those filler programs on TV program that focused on British people who bought houses in Slovakia. It basically showed a beautiful country that had cheap houses and an easy atmosphere. Slovakia used to be part of Czechoslovakia until the Velvet Revolution when the Communist regime was removed and elections were fought by more than one party. Slovakia supplied a couple of Prime Ministers at least for the former 'joint country. Alexander Dubcek was the one who was probably the most famous. He took a view that wasn't supported by the USSR at the time and the Soviets sent in the ... read more

Jim - Write up 5 -5/11 We arrived at in Bratislava at 4 PM and took the bus to the hotel. It was warm, almost hot, and our tour leader, Ben (Carol) Szyplinski discovered we did not have Air Conditioning in the hotel rooms. This was something she specified with our travel agent. We now refer to Ben as our “Polish unguided missile”. It was not pretty. Needless to say, we moved to the Executive suites which have AC, Refrigerators, Digital TV and post Soviet Furniture. The only thing we don’t have is in-room internet access. Yesterday afternoon I walked down the street and they had a beautiful church they built in 2001 (St. Vincent de Paul). I stopped in and it reminded me that their first priority after the Soviet occupation was to rebuild/build their ... read more

Tatra Mountains - Tatranska Lomnica Day 14-15 (May 31-June 1) We had the morning to fill in, in Krakow and thought a visit to the local Shopping complex would be a good start. However, it turned out to be a public holiday for Pentecost, so waiting for the shops to open turned out to be fruitless. We filled in our time by catching up on our internet mail, as the weather wasn’t looking great. We then caught a bus to the border with Slovakia, where we then had a mini-bus that took us across the border to a stop where we could catch our third bus. However, the bus timetable had been changed and we would have had more than a two hour wait, so we organised for a local taxi to collect us. We arrived, ... read more

Bratislava — historically Pozsony and Pressburg (see also other names) — is the capital of the Slovak Republic and, with a population of about 429,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two countries. It and Vienna are also two of Europe's closest national capitals, at less than 60 kilometres (37 mi) apart.... read more

10 February Flying out this afternoon but not until about 6pm so had plenty of time to spare before then. Had a bit of a leisurely morning given I saw much of the old town yesterday. Checked out of the hostel at around 9am and left my luggage in the hostel. Basically spent a couple of day seeing the last of the sights I didn;t get a chance to see yesterday. Got incredibly lost and ended up on the other side of town from where I was supposed to be but that does tend to happen to me. After a few hours wandering it started snowing so despite it being too early to head to the airport I headed back to the hostel, slightly concerned that my flight might end up being delayed because of the ... read more