Phot-o' the Day: View from Castle of the Most SNP; Bratislava, Slovakia

Experts agree that the Most Slovenského národného povstania, or "Most SNP," "most" being the word for bridge in several Slavic languages, is the ugliest Communist-era relic in the greater Bratislava metropolitan area and, in fact, may be one of the ugliest bridges on Planet Earth. It is so ugly that it crosses the line into being "endearingly ugly." It is also called the "UFO Bridge" because of the hideous flying saucer like structure atop the one bridge pillar. (I think it's now a hipster restaurant.)

This is the view of the Danube and the Most SNP from the grounds of Bratislavský hrad, Bratislava's plain, pedestrian castle. Bratislava is a beautiful, fun and interesting city to spend about two days in. It is worth the trek up the hill to the castle grounds, but only for the view of the Danube.

Visited October 2011.

Phot-o' the Day: Trolley Cars, Old Town Bratislava, Slovakia

Trolleys and trams always make the best public transportation pictures.

These particular trolley cars ply the rails encircling Old Town Bratislava, Slovakia. This is the north side of Old Town. Old on the right side of the photo; new (-ish) on the left.

Bratislava is not really a travel destination in and of itself. But it is a perfectly pleasant manageably-sized capital, with some excellent food and beer. So if you are ever in the general neighborhood -- Vienna definitely, or maybe Budapest or even Prague -- a few days in Bratislava would be a nice detour.

Visited October 2011.

Questioning My Decisions In Life

Today is one of those days that frequently got me to question my decision-making powers. Let's start with how it started. I didn't sleep a wink because I wanted to make sure that I would get up early to catch a train to Győr, Hungary, from Bratislava-Petržalka train station (not the main station in which I arrived from Prague, but a "suburban" station). I got on the train at the scheduled time of 8:32 a.m. About 20 minutes later, I got off the train in the middle of nowhere at station in Austria called "Parndorf" all because some German-run train website (http://bahn.de) said to get off at Parndorf and change trains there to get to Győr.

This is what I saw when my Vienna-bound train departed about 30 seconds after I exited. A dead platform in the middle of Austrian nowhere, with only a stray dog on the platform. The station was empty. There were no signs as to which of the three "platforms" the alleged train to Győr would arrive at (important because I knew I would have about 15 seconds to jump the new train). So for the first time this day -- but most definitely not the last -- I asked myself what the #@$% I was thinking.

I decided to stay on the one platform because it served as both Platform 2 (north side) and Platform 3 (south side), so I had a 66.67% chance of being in the right place. Good call, because at 9:13 a.m., two minutes ahead of schedule, my Győr bound train rolled into "Parndorf." Crisis averted.

One last view of Bratislava:

Petržalka station.

Bratislava: Walking to the Castle

The afternoon plan was to walk up to Bratislava Castle, Bratislavský hrad for those following along in the Slovak. And when I say up, I mean up. It was a steep uphill walk!

I first had to walk under the highway with that UFO bridge:

Then around it:

Past St. Martin's Cathedral, where, as I said, the Communists built the dang highway right next to the church (and apparently razed the old Jewish Quarter, too, as part of the process):

I walked up the long hill to the castle and thought about Bratislava. Bratislava is definitely a more manageably sized city than Prague. Prague is huge with a massive tourist quarter. Bratislava is more like a mid-sized state capital, like Boise or Madison, in that there is a nice walkable core where a visitor can easily get to anything he or she wants to see. The Madison comparison is apt for another reason. Slovakia is a lot like the Wisconsin of Central Europe. They love their dairy products in Slovakia. Cheese. And the ice cream is very good. Much better than in Prague. Prague is a terrible ice cream town. Wretched. The ice cream there is all grainy, like a tub of cheap supermarket ice cream that's been left in the fridge too long. Awesome hoppy beer in Prague. But nasty ice cream. And that's important in a town. In Bratislava, the ice cream is smooth and rich and tasty, just as you would expect from the Dairyland of the Old Warsaw Pact.

Maybe I was getting oxygen-deprivation on this long high climb. Maybe that's the reason why my brain went off on that tangent as I climbed the hill. Finally, I reached the gates of the castle:

Impressive gates. The King of Slovakia does not live in Bratislava Castle (presuming there even ever was a King of Slovkia and they didn't just have Hungarians and Habsburgs crammed down their throats for several hundred years). However, the Parliament Building is right next door:

I was somewhat disappointed that the Slovakian Parliament meets in such a boring modern building. Even though Slovakia is very young as an independent nation, couldn't they have found some 700-year-old building to seat their government in? By the way, they have a nice little memorial to Alexander Dubček, an actual good and honorable Communist. Dubček was a Slovak native who was responsible for the "Prague Spring" in Czechoslovakia in 1968, which crushed by the Soviets.

The castle actually is somewhat gutted, although there are exhibits from the Slovak National Museum on site.


The best thing about the castle grounds are the views, it being situated high above the city and all.

It's the UFO bridge again!

See those windmills on the other side of the Danube, just right of the center of the picture, on the horizon line? That's Austria. The Austrian frontier is quite close to downtown Bratislava.

And now, before I talk about supper, some pictures of trams:


Apropos of nothing. I just like taking pictures of trolleys. I think they're the most photogenic of transportation means. Except for this, of course:

That's my car! On the walk up (and again on the walk back down) from the castle, I saw my car. It's an Audi A3 TDI in Meteor Gray.

Anyway, speaking of trams, I forgot to mention something about the Prague subway. They're trolleys! I don't know if you can see it in this picture I took inside one of the metro stations, but if you look closely, above the tracks, are guide wires:

I never noticed that in any other subway I've ridden. It's not like I've ridden in all that many (Washington, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Madrid, and Budapest are the only others I can recall. Boston maybe, too.) Well, I found it interesting.

Anyway, I had supper tonight -- my final supper in the Slavic half of my trip -- it's all Magyar from this point forward -- at a nice place called the 1 Slovak Pub. I did not take my camera to take pictures of my meal because I appear to have a 4GB brain in a terabyte world. I ordered the Bryndzové halušky s klobásou. You don't need to depend on me for a picture of it. Here's a picture from someone else's Bratislava travel blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/577299

As I said, the Slovakians love their cheese. These are potato dumplings (gnocchi or spaetzle equivalent) drowning in smoked sheep's cheese, topped with fried sausage that tasted like a Polish kielbasa. Supposedly there was cabbage / sauerkraut in there, but I couldn't taste it. Best meal of the trip so far. Best dish of 2011 anywhere so far, I believe. Definitely best dish of 2011 anywhere but the M Buffet. Wash down he halusky with a couple of dark Zlatý Bažants and a good time was had by all. And to think I was thinking of skipping the Slovak food for tonight.

One last photo before I turn in for the night. These statues commemorate the Slovak National Uprising, which may have put them on the side of the really really bad guys in WWII.

I do like the statues, even though they are a somewhat on the side of socialist realism.

The Streets of Bratislava

I changed my plans about what I was going to do today because an opportunity opened up for tomorrow. So I cancelled my plans to rent a car and drive to Sopron, Hungary, and, instead, spent the day walking the streets of Bratislava. And I must say, in total heart-attack level seriousness, I am glad that I did. Bratislava is a perfectly lovely town. Not to sound like the Chamber of Commerce or anything, but it has a great Old Town that is enjoyed both by a small contingent of tourists and the local population. The walking tour began at the landmark Michael's Gate.

Michael's Gate, Michalská Brána for you Slovak speakers, is last survivor among the four towers that once guarded the town walls. The Hotel Michalska Brana, where I am staying in my way-too-short visit to Bratislava, is just beside the gate.

Well, not just beside, it's down this little alley that's considered an actual street:

As I said, I don't think I would've found it very easily last night, in the dark, but for the help of the British ladies.

It's a short walk from Michalská Brána (and the hotel bearing its name) to my first destination: Main Square:

Actually, It wasn't the first stop. The first stop was to the "I (heart) Bratislava" gift shop for refridgerator magnets. Given that you can't take snow globes in your carry-on anymore -- thank you War on Terror and TSA -- refrigerator magnets are now my souvenir of choice. So after loading up on refrigerator magnets, the journey began in earnest.

Old Town Bratislava is known for its collection of whimsical statues. The first one I happened upon was this Napoleonic officer. Also on the main square was this proper looking soldier:

A block toward the river I came upon another of Bratislava's statues, Paparazzo:

I wonder who he's caught in his camera?

Of course, I don't know if there's any local Bratislava celebs dining at that cafe. Next:

That's Cumil! The Peeper! One of the more famous statues of a worker popping up from a manhole. Here's a closer look:

He has been run over by trucks on a few occasions over the years. I had heard that there was also a life-sized-ish statue somewhere in the Old Town of Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol, whose ethnic roots are in Eastern Slovakia. I thought he was Polish, and maybe he is, boundaries used to be somewhat more fluid. And there's supposedly a decent Warhol museum in the tiny village from which his family came. I searched and searched and searched for the Warhol statue, which was supposed to be in this ara at the intersection of Venturska and Panska, but he was not there.

Maybe he got stolen. Maybe he out too late last night at 54. Maybe his 15 minutes were up. For whatever reason, he wasn't there. But while looking for Andy, I did get to see this, something I have never before seen in my life:

People vacuuming the sidewalk! Back to walking. This is the Slovak National Theater at Hviezdoslav Square:

I knew what this building was when I snapped the picture, but I had two large beers with dinner (I was thirsty):

Thankfully I have a guide book to help me with my spelling. I made it down to the Danube River at the southern end of Old Town. That's the infamous Nový Most, or New Bridge, otherwise known at the "UFO" bridge, due to that flying saucer-shaped observation deck and restaurant on the Petrzalka side of the bridge.

I did not go up in that communist-era monstrosity. I then started walking back into Old Town and came upon the last of the whimsical statues I would find today:

That's Schöner Náci. He was a Bratislava resident who passed in 1967 and was known for wandering the streets dressed in top hat and tails, kissing women's hands. In the Communist Era, that was OK. The good news is that he has had his arm reattached after it was broken off a few years ago by some drunken British louts, probably here on "stag." I then wandered over to St. Martin's Cathedral:

The Cathedral is undergoing much-needed renovation:

The Cathedral is quite historic. When Budapest was occupied by the Ottoman Turks a half of a century ago, this is where the coronation for new Hungarian kings and queens would be held. The Cathedral is being damaged from heavy traffic on the highway that the Communists built right next to the church. The UFO bridge is part of that highway. Did I say "right next to the church"?

Talk about your zero lot lines. I then walked back close to the river and found the U.S. embassy:

I then started the walk back toward Michael's Gate, back to my hotel to rest my dogs before the afternoon adventure.

Bratislava!

I just rolled into Bratislava and, man, are my wheels tired.

I took the train from Prague to Bratislava hl. st., and I did not fall asleep and miss my stop. The one problem with these European trains is that they do not do an obvious job of announcing the stops. I wish they had those little maps like they have on the airline seats, showing your exact location on the world map at that instant. It would let me know when we're getting close to my destination. Of course, I could've just written down the arrival time on a slip of paper and that would've solved the problem, but, hey, life's not always about choosing the easiest solution.

I got into Bratislava's main train station at about 8:00 p.m. (That's 20:00 for those of you preferring European, or U.S. military, timekeeping methods.) I thought the train station wasn't all that far to the Old Town. And a cab ride would have been 15 euro for a short jump. So I asked people to point me in the right direction and I rolled my giant heavy suitcase down the cobblestone sidewalks of a dark Bratislava wondering what I had gotten myself into.

Turns out it was a fairly far distance, maybe close to a mile, but it was a rather straight line. More importantly, given that I was rolling a very heavy suitcase, it was downhill. I would not have wanted to walked that walk, and rolled that roll, in the opposite direction.

My initial impression is that I am loving Bratislava. That picture above makes Bratislava look a little darker than it was. That's the castle in the background.

I'm having those "everything falls into place" moments that you have when you're in a great place to visit. When I got to the edge of the Old Town, and wasn't sure where my small hotel was, which I knew was going to be hidden off a small side street, I asked these two women who, turns out, were Brits who were staying at the same hotel, and who were walking back to the hotel, and the hotel locks up at 7:00 p.m. (although there was someone at the desk to check me in). And while the hotel is on an old, medieval street, the Hotel Michalska Brana is quite modern. My room looks great and is much more comfortable than my room in Prague:

I checked into the hotel and had dinner at a nearby Slovak pub, the Flag Ship. I need to go back and get some pictures, as the pub looked great, big and wooden and lots and lots of beers on tap, including a few Slovak beers. I had the beef goulash, which was your basic thin, peppery broth with pieces of what would've been tough parts of the cow had they not been cooking in that broth for days. Yummm. Eeeee!

I'm already regretting that I've only got one full day in Bratislava. And I already know I made the right decision in choosing Bratislava over Vienna for this intermediate stop between Prague and Budapest.