Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is only an hour away from Vienna by train. We took a train from Simmering train station to Brastislava hl. st for only 15 Euros.
Upon arrival, we were clueless on how to get to the Old Town (where all the nearby attractions are). We managed to get directions from some cops who spoke broken English.
According to them, Bus X13 will bring us to the Old Town. Tickets can be purchased from a machine at the bus stop. Funnily, the bus tickets go by minutes. The cheapest is 70 cents which is only for 15 minutes. Taxis on the other hand seem expensive.
English is widely spoken by the younger Slovaks. Hence getting around is pretty easy.
The Old Town is filled cafes and restaurants. Each corner is serenaded with music played by violinists and guitarists. Our day consists of walking around the Main Square and its surroundings. Central European interests me a lot. Food is interesting. Lifestyle is laid back. Girls have big boobs.
Free WiFi is also ample. Most of the WiFi connections were provided by restaurants and cafes.
Most of the buildings of a street is individually built. That means each building is special on its own.
There are many small alleys to explore around this road. I wandered into some of the alleys to take pictures.
Stumbled upon this at one of the alleys
I found an eco shop at one of the alleys. It has a grapevine grown outside its premise.
Some of the obscure alleys had retail outlets and restaurants – I wonder how would their business survive considering that location of retail business is paramount. Speaking about location, there was one Chinese restaurant located at a busy junction. However, it had no customers and a waitress was seen sleeping outside the restaurant.
We walked to the Korzo, the pedestrian only zone of the historical city centre. It was filled with cafes and restaurants.
A cafe
We bought a painting made from aerosol spray cans. The artist signed his name on the artwork. I hope he becomes famous one day so that we can sell the painting for millions. In fact, while we were walking around the town, one street painter walked up to us and asked us who made the artwork!
We had lunch at a place called Slovenská Reštaurácia U Prasiatka. We chose this restaurant without doing any research about it. It has a huge statute of a pig with a crown. Any restaurant with a pig statue outside should be good!
I ordered the stuffed potato dumplings with smoked meat. It was awesome.
My wife ordered the trout. She loved it!
Awesome beer
Cool urinals!
No visit to Slovakia is complete without a visit to one of the castles. Hence, we headed to Bratislava Castle which is located up a hill. We walked from the city centre all the way to the Castle. A taxi driver said it will cost us 15 Euro to get there and it is far, far away.
We decided to walk and it only took us 15 minutes. Bloody conman.
The famous Cumil – Man at Work Statue. A symbol of reconstructed Korzo.
What da fak is this..
What da fak is this..!
Walkway up to the Bratislava Castle
We had to walk up some steep stairways to get up to the castle.
From the hill, we could see a panoramic view of the city. I couldn’t see a single skyscraper but medieval buildings, apartments and forests.
Danube River. Sounds like The Noob River.
The castle was almost empty as most of the exhibitions were closed. We walked into the castle to find a huge courtyard the castle. It looks like an ideal place for a rave!
After our trip up the castle, we had dinner at Modrá Hviezda at the foothill of the castle. There is a small cave inside the restaurant called Cave Igo. Their food is highly recommended by TripAdvisor but we were too full to have anything.
We had to rush back to the train station to catch the 2nd last train. If we miss this one, we will need to wait for 2 hours for the last train. After deciphering some Slovakian words, we found our bus X13 again to the train station. But before that, we were pretty worried that bus X13 wouldn’t show up!
I am told that there are many other beautiful castles outside the city. I wish I had more time to explore Bratislava. We will certainly go back to Slovakia again to see them!