Bratislava

The upside down table of the Slovak castle

We took an overnight train from Krakow to Bratislava, the trains are not what I am used to. In western Europe you would always take trains, they are much faster than driving and a lot less stressful. But in central Europe that is not the case, trains can be twice the time as driving. You can drive Krakow to Bratislava in 4 hours, the fastest train is 6 hours and the night train is 8 hours.

I was kind of keen to take the night train anyway, we took one in Egypt years ago and that was pretty fun, so I thought it would be similar. It was not quite the same though, a lot more juddery and noisy, with a lot of sharp braking and squealing. But our hotel in Bratislava was amazing, which more than made up for it. I think the best hotel we stayed at the whole trip, amazing breakfast, lovely rooms, and friendly staff.

Bratislava was an interesting little town, I wouldn't spend more than a day there. It is obviously not on the main tourist route. They don't get nearly as many people as Krakow or Budapest does. And it is all the better for it.

I really liked Bratislava, the old town is really pretty. There is a lot more of a contrast between the old town and the rest of the town in Bratislava. In Krakow it felt like there was some money there, outside of the old town, it was a bit more run down, but not majorly so, maybe a little worse than Paris. In Krakow the train station was super flash, full of shops and restaurants and all very new. And then you get off the train in Bratislava and it's like travelling back 50 years or something. A really dark, low ceilinged station, everything is really old and cramped, and driving into the old town the buildings were quite similar to that. Big, Soviet era style apartment blocks, a lot of graffiti and concrete. But then you walk into the old town and it's this lovely pedestrianised area, with the historical buildings and the castle on the hill. They are obviously putting all their money into the old town.

There were awesome statues everywhere

They have the obligatory castle on a hill which the locals think looks like an upside-down kitchen table. On the other side of the Danube from the old-town is the communist-era apartment blocks, which is a bit of a contrast with the picture-perfect old town. They are probably not making the most of the Danube. It seems to be something most towns with a river running through it struggle with. What to do with the river. I guess in the past the river was the main artery of the city, so now we all have cars instead of boats they build big roads running alongside the river. It means the river kind of gets isolated from the city, you can't reach it without crossing multi-lane roads, and you wouldn't really want to anyway, since once there you are surrounded by cars.

Communism and fashion - looks OK to me

Dave struggling with the passage

One surprising thing with Bratislava were the number of great art galleries and museums. I was not expecting that. None of them were very large, maybe an hour at most, but there was a big variety. The main gallery is the Slovak National gallery. That was interesting because they had this communism and fashion exhibition on at the time. You forget that all these countries were behind the iron curtain after World War II so this fashion exhibit was weird for someone from the west. Even the clothes everyone wore were part of their grand communism plan. They didn't want to encourage individualism. As well as the SNG we also saw tapestries in the town hall, Gothic art, modern art and the coolest conceptual installation I think I've ever seen. Called the passage, its a room with books for walls, the floor and ceiling is all mirrors and with a narrow walkway in the middle. Even though you know you are walking on the ground it feels like you are suspended in a room full of books.

Slovakia seemed like a cool little country, I don't think many people spend long here. Perhaps because it seems like kind of a peaceful country. The Czech Republic and Slovakia decided to peacefully dissolve Czechoslovakia on the same day to form the separate countries, that seems rare for country formation. It seemed that one of the important reasons why Slovakia ended up being it's own country is that they kept their language alive. Hungary was so massive and dominated a lot of regions, but it seemed you really needed the separate language to have a hope of forming your own country at some point. You wonder how many other regions in Hungary used to have their own language at some point, and if they had kept speaking it, would Hungary be a lot smaller now that it is.

The Danube and communist apartment blocks

One other cool thing about Bratislava that I didn't know is that it was the coronation town for Hungarian royalty for 300 years. Impressive for a town that is now another country's capital city.  I also didn't appreciate how close it is to Austria, from the castle hill you are basically looking straight into Austria.