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Don't try to blame some other central European capital for this one, Bratislava.Today we spent an inordinate amount of our day sitting in the hot (!) sun waiting for the High Speed Catamaran To, it turns out, Nowhere.
Where we were
trying to go, and perhaps this was our first problem, was the city of
Bratislava, capital of
Slovakia, just down the
Danube River (yes,
that one) from Vienna.
Why Bratislava? Rick Steves has
this to say: "Conveniently located Bratislava — the capital of Slovakia, on the Danube between Vienna and Budapest — has not-quite-charming streets filled with dull cafés, mildly interesting museums, and tourists wishing they'd spent more time elsewhere."
Bratislava's top tourist attraction is a
castle (Bratislavský hrad) affectionately referred to as an upside-down table thanks to its undistinguished architecture. Its second-most-noteworthy attraction is the
Dóm sv. Martina (St. Martin's Cathedral) in the old town, wedged in scenically next to a Communist-era freeway and access ramp (from which traffic vibrations now endanger the art and architecture of the cathedral).
The name "Bratislava" is made up¹: the city has been known as Preßburg (Pressburg) in German,
Pozsony in Hungarian, and Prešporok in Slovakian. That's right, "Bratislava" is a made-up name
even in Slovak. I'm not sure why it needed a new name, but it seems to have something to do with the contentious annexation of the city to the newly-independent Czechoslovakia at the end of WWI in 1919. It wasn't even the capital of anything then, but apparently the Czech/Slovak nationalists wanted to make a statement by calling it something reminiscent of a former ruler of Bohemia (Bratislava isn't actually
in Bohemia) and artificially evocative of the notion of a Slavic brotherhood ("brat" means "brother" in many Slavic languages, the humor of which to English-speakers is another story entirely).
Following the post-Communist
Velvet Divorce (best revolution name ever!) of 1990, Bratislava became the capital of newly-independent Slovakia, a country best known for most of the rest of the world being unable to tell it apart from
Slovenia.
And yet, Bratislava rated high on
my list of sights for our week in Vienna.
Hmm.
Actually, now that I think of it, I can't imagine how I could possibly
not go there.
It's Slavic(-ish), its tourist attractions are "subtle" (as Rick hilariously says of
Dixieland Band
Celebrating opening day of the Vienna-Bratislava high-speed catamaran. The entertainment seemed like a great idea for the first 20 minutes... one of his favorite Austrian hill towns), and it's a poster child for the chaotic and often bizarre history of central Europe. I'll take a half-fabricated tale of wacky Communists over a half-fabricated fairy tale about a pretty Empress any day.
And now we reach today's problem. We waited more than three hours for our high-speed catamaran down the Danube from Vienna to Bratislava, only to find that the boat, when it arrived more than an hour late, had broken down and was a far cry from high-speed in its current state. It could have been much worse, though... unlike the poor passengers whose sailing from Bratislava to Vienna took more than twice as long as advertised,
we learned of the mechanical failure
before we got on board, and were able to secure a full refund.
They were offering bus tickets as a replacement; I already knew a 1-hour train ride was another possibility if we wanted to see Bratislava today, but we were hot and tired and cranky already, and winging it, with a narrow time window, on trains, in chaotic formerly-Iron Curtain countries, where we didn't speak the language, and where our hotel and our stuff
Votivkirche
A spectacular example of 14th-century Gothic architecture... PSYCH! it's really only 150 years old! was not located, felt suspiciously like Bratislava laying another trap for us. We decided to shake our fists generally eastward and spend the rest of the day in Vienna instead.
Votivkirche, just a block from our Pension, is gorgeous and entirely church-like and even historically and architecturally significant. It was built in the 1850s by Emperor Franz Josef, but its design is
neo-Gothic: it mimics the style of churches nearly 700 years older. Non-students-of-architecture such as myself cannot tell the difference between the neo and the original without the aid of Wikipedia. Visitors who know a bit about the history of
engineering might recognize that a neo-whatever construction uses technology and materials out of sync with (more modern than) its style, which I think is a very cool idea, but I don't know enough about the history of engineering to identify any of that on my own either, so my conclusions at the Votivkirche were that it is pretty, it looks a lot like a church, and my image stabilization camera rules.
We then did a bunch of research to locate an Asian restaurant in Vienna. We all know (at least, I
hope we all know) that, e.g.,
Chinese food in America has been reformulated to be appetizing to American palates. I think it's fun that Chinese food in Europe is also reformulated, but differently, to be tasty by local standards. (Or for another example, in 2005 I had heavily paprika-spiced fajitas at a Mexican restaurant in Berlin.) The staff at the restaurant spoke Chinese amongst themselves, and spoke English perfectly well, but on principle we did our best to stammer through German with them anyway and they humored us doing so.
After dusk, we decided to stroll around the Altstadt (old town). I felt strongly that stopping every 20m or so to take pictures was a worthwhile effort even though 90%!o(MISSING)f the photos weren't going to come out due to lack of light. Greg's feet felt differently about this, and frankly neither one of us was in the best shape for strolling in general: carrying too much weight around makes this miserable on the feet, knees, hips, back, you name it. We learned, the hard way, that
strolling is an essential skill for tourists in Europe, and we shall make sure we have recovered our strolling ability when we return.
--
¹ I know
they are all technically made up. This one was made up
recently, which is completely different.
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