Make that Snowslava

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When you're away it's always interesting to see what from home makes the local news where you are. Last night while sitting around at the monkey replica watching the first bit of TV that I've seen for a few days there was a news story from Sydney, the Burmese democracy protest. There was also a news story on the little bit of neo-nazi civil unrest in Prague.

But back to the monkey replica that I found to take in a bit of live music last night, the Jazz-Cafe, put a .sk on the end of that and you have their website. So it's not quite the monkey, half of it is above ground for a start and the bar is somewhat less stocked then Jad's, oh and there was no ever friendly door bitch!! but the salmon and caviar penne was just the thing to impress me, even if the red was a little off the mark.

The live music part of the bar was in a cool subterranian part of the club where a guitar duo were playing all the hits from the 70's, 80's and 90's, they may have squeezed a couple of 00's in there as well. The novel part was the between song banter in Slovak after that they then start singing Sweet Home Alabama and Runaway Train in English, then it was back to the Slovak banter. Sadly or gladly the aliens didn't abduct me and I made it home at a sensible time.

Today's planned adventure was to go see the castle at Devin, conveniently located 8km down the road from Bratislava. This plan changed a little when it started snowing, and snow it did big time. Now for someone who hadn't seen a decent fall of snow, I don't really count that white frozen stuff that fell from the sky in Bathurst and dusted the road a little, it was time to go and play. Well walk to the nearest cafe and watch it drift down anyway. Fortunately the Coffee & Co cafe has big windows designed for just that purpose. For something that is probably the twice removed bastard cousin of starbucks, Coffee & Co is a pleasant surprise on the coffee stakes, so much so that I'm rating it the best of the trip so far. There's always next time to see the castle at Devin it's been around for about 600 years so I figure it's going nowhere. Since the snow may have been vanishing soon it was a good time to go and amuse myself with snowflakes, make a snowball and err against throwing it towards something that may have been culturally significant.

Being down to the final few korunas, I went to the KGB bar to hang around with photos and statues of all your favourite cold war buddies. It's in the locals part of town just down the road from the hostel, so the prices were a little less then the old part of town where I've been spending my time. By being a little less pricey means that a schooner of the local is AUD$1.50 here rather then AUD$2 down the other end of town, an evening meal is AUD$10 including a glass of the local rough red instead of AUD$15. But after tonights feast it is a little bit of false economy, at least I had enough korunas left to invest in another hot chocolate.

In the morning it's off to Budapest where looking at the weather it's looks like it will be Budafreeze.

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Photos

Look, look it snowed
OK I was excited, then I realised it gets wet and cold later

But then you go inside
Some of the bars in Bratislava are underground in these really impressive caverns

Come and have a drink comrade
at the KGB bar

There s only heating if you are sitting on the right
One of the older style trams, interestingly the sleek new modern ones still only have heating vents on the right hand side as well.