Bratislava

Now that I have a few down moments while on the train from Prague to Cesky Krumlov, I thought I'd take the time to summarize our trip to Bratislava on Wednesday, May 23.

We got up early and caught a train around 930. No major issues getting to the train station. We were even there early enough to wander around the neighborhood. We stumbled upon the Belvedere Museum, which I can only assume is dedicated to the great Mr. Belvedere.

Fairly easy ride to Bratislava. Vienna suburbs for about 20 minutes, countryside for the rest of the hour. You go through a tunnel and pop out in Bratislava.

It's about a 15 minute walk from the train station to the city center. We saw a historical palace - now the home of the President - along the way.

City center is an old medieval town, small streets, cobblestone, buildings close together, etc. They even still have one of the old city gates and part of the old wall. I'm not sure why, but I think this was my favorite old town. It felt more real than some of the other old towns. It was certainly commercialized, but it didn't seem so overbearing. Maybe I just felt a connection to my Slovak roots.

The main cathedral was nice, but there is now a highway running adjacent to the cathedral, which is apparently compromising the integrity of church. The highway also effectively separates the castle from the old town. It reduces the beauty, but I guess progress is important too.

One thing I did not anticipate was the number of tourists. I though Bratislava was kind of off the beaten path, but I guess not - the place was crawling with tourists. Guess we can't complain, as much as we may like to pretend we're not, we're tourists too.

It only took an hour or so to walk old town. Next, we walked up a pretty steep hill to the castle. There has been a castle in this location for about 1,000 years, but the current castle was actually just a replica of the original, built 50 years ago. The original castle burned down sometime in the 1800s. That took some of the allure away, at least for me. The castle was nice, but not anything special. Perhaps I've seen too many castles recently. I can say this looked like a great location for a castle - at the top of a steep hill overlooking the Danube.

We were getting hungry and it was about to storm, so we headed to Slovak Pub for lunch. Might have been the highlight of the trip. The food was delicious. We split a plate for two that was pierogis, gnocchi in sherpa cheese, and potato dumplings with sauerkraut. So good. I don't usually like sauerkraut, but I enjoyed this dish. The pierogis were probably my least favorite dish on the menu, and I love pierogis.

After lunch we wandered around old town some more, walked down by the Danube, past the magical Eurovea, and saw the blue church. We considered booking a boat trip back to Vienna, but decided against it.

There was nothing else we wanted to see in old town, so we hikes up to Slavin. Slavin is a military cemetery and a monument for the soviet soldiers who died liberating Bratislava from the nazis in 1945. It offered picturesque views of the city, and is apparently where couples go to make out. Which is kinda weird, cause its a cemetery.

It was interesting to see how they felt about the soviets. In 1945, I'm sure they were happy to be liberated. Probably didn't know the soviets didn't intend to leave.

We walked back down the hill and headed to the train station, there was nothing else we wanted to see. I'm sure Bratislava has more to offer, but I'm happy with our day trip.

Bratislava reminded me of Budapest. It's a city/country that has only been free for 20 years and the people are eager to enjoy that freedom, and the economy is working furiously to modernize.