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Published: July 27th 2012
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Greeted by a giant "Welcome to Slovakia" sign at the train station in Bratislava gave me high hopes that we were going to have just as much fun in this city as we have had in all the rest. Fourteen seconds later we were greeted by a bunch of people wondering if we were looking for hostels, similar to previous trips that we have taken; 17 seconds later we went outside to see two chicks in a crazy WWF wrestling match. Okay... not quite like the countries we just left but there is still hope! After buying our transit passes and then figuring out that no one wanted to help us find where we were going as Binnson got sent in every direction twice at the train station, we finally settled for a camera phone picture of the transit map in a window and figured out where to go from there.
We got off the bus and ducked into a graffitied underground pass to get to the other side of the street as Binnson looked at me with a "Why the f^&* are we here?" kind of look. But I had my tulip umbrella weapon ready in the event of
a sudden attack or whatever it is that we were expecting. We found our hotel and checked in with no problems. Binnson began to worry after reading about a racist attack on someone’s blog site that we hadn't seen any other Asians and that he was going to be the subject of some gang beating or something so we went on a mission to find other Asians. So we got on the tram to the Old Town area and walked around. The Old Town was a sharp contrast from where we were staying. This is clearly the tourist area, super nice buildings, tons of statues, nice open air restaurants, fountains, etc! Beautiful! As we walked around we spotted two Asian girls and that made Binnson feel better, haha.
Our hotel didn't have breakfast so we decided to stop by into a grocery store that was right by our tram stop in Old Town. We were walking around the store checking things out when a lady started yelling at us in Slovak, not knowing what she was saying as she yelled the same thing a few times, we grabbed our stuff and headed to the cashier behind another guy as
we assumed they must be closing. The cashier lady was right pissed off and also started yelling in Slovak, looking right past Binnson at me assuming I knew what she was saying, but not being able to reply, she threw the food divider down the conveyer belt. We gave her the money as she frustratingly pulled some change out of the register and continued to yell throwing down the change and the reciept and walking away. It was 8:02pm... the store closed at 8. So we left with our loaf of bread and chocolate bar and walked down the street back to the "more" tourist area, perhaps she was having a bad day. We were set up with a bad impression of the city almost immediately. It’s funny how encounters with one or two people can give you a mindset about the other 460,000 people that live there. So after a discouraging day we headed back to our hotel and decided that things would be better the next day.
We had a lazy morning and got off to a later start than normal the next day. When we went into Old Town again, things were completely different. The place
was packed with tourists taking pictures, tons and tons and tons (I repeat- TONS) of Chinese tourists. This made me and Binnson laugh for a long time as we waited in line to take pictures with certain things. Slovakia is also packed with tons of hot women, stupidly hot, so this made Binnson very happy. After checking out all of the recommended sites in Old Town, we headed up to the Bratislava Castle. There wasn't a ton to see there but the grounds were nice and at the very top of one of the four corners of the Castle, we were able to get great pictures of the city. We headed back down for a really good dinner and another huge ice cream before calling it a night. Bratislava, the land of graffiti and statues, redeemed itself.
Next stop... Budapest!
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