Another photo-less post, I’m afraid, no way to download my Bratislava photos. I’m typing this out on the iPod Touch so will likely be a shortish placeholder and the rest filled in later.
Vienna-Bratislava was by high-speed catamaran and more reasonably-priced than it sounds (28 euros, weekday pricing, 30 euros on weekends). Would definitely do that again, as the opportunity to travel this way between capital cities is rare. It was announced as a 75-minute journey, but point-to-point turned out to take only an hour.
Bratislava’s historic quarter is charming and worth more than the 10 minutes Radovan claimed it would take to walk through it (hyperbole aside). He recommended checking out the UFO-like restaurant gracing the one end of a bridge, and I have a zillion photos of it.
“You can’t miss it,” he said, which is absolutely right unless you never look up.
I left my bag at the bus station all afternoon until around 8 o’clock when the left luggage attendant knocked off for the day and my host Matej got home. In that time I walked to the Old Town and around Hrad Castle, which is sheathed in construction material. Fantastic views of the city from up there and the parliament building, though, so it’s still worth the uphill trek (’cause castles are always situated above the city).
When I arrived at Matej’s place a little after 8pm (once I learned the hard way to use the farebox/automat and not try shoving a coin into the ticket validater), he greeted me with a birthday cake that he baked himself! I shot a little video of Matej playing a tiny instrument called something like a “juice flute” in English, which I’ll post after I get home. It was HIS birthday on Tuesday, so it was a joint birthday cake, actually. It went down nicely with the Niagara icewine I brought with me.
After a late dinner we had the choice of going to a local pub (local pubs are always a form of entertainment — or, should I say the patrons are) or check out a panoramic view of the city night lights at a semi-secret spot high up in the wooded peaks between people’s homes. We chose the latter.
Matej only discovered this place very recently, himself, and he’s a local. There’s no way any tourists like Nell or I would find it, since there are no signposts and at times it felt like we were trespassing people’s driveways when dogs would start barking. My powerful LED flashlight came in very handy, since parts of the unofficial trail were unlit.
[insert longish-exposure night shot here]
We came down off the peak so late it would’ve meant waiting an hour for another bus, so we took a taxi home and I tried to shoot a video of crossing the new bridge with the “space ship” on the south end, but I don’t think it came out well, we’ll see.
And now it’s crash-time, and the official start of my birthday! Thanks for all the birthday well-wishes!
Next stop: ROME
–in the afternoon, which means I have a bit more time to check out Bratislava before my Air Berlin flight from Vienna Airport.