Kevin Runs Europe: Day 37

Recovery Day

The first part of the day was dedicated to deciding where to go and actually getting there. We only have a handful of days now before we need to be in Prague to meet up with my mom and sister. Our options were to either take a long grueling bus ride up to Krakow, Poland, which we both really wanted to see, or to take a much shorter train trip to Bratislava, Slovakia where we’d make a one-night stop before heading to Vienna, Austria. For the sake of convenience, we chose Bratislava and Vienna. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to visit Krakow at some point later in life.

Bratislava is a city of stark contrasts. Visitors arriving at the train station, like us, will get the immediate impression of a small, run-down Eastern European city filled with oppressive and dilapidated communist-era buildings. However, you only need to walk ten minutes to the city center to have that first impression shattered. Bratislava’s Old Town is lovely and is a bit like a tiny Prague. Also, newer high-rise office buildings in the surrounding area showcase the rebirth of Slovakia’s economy since the Velvet Revolution that brought down Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The revolution, contrary to popular belief, started in Bratislava, not Prague, then it spread across the country. The Czech Republic and Slovakia split up in 1993. Though it still struggles with unemployment, Slovakia is better off than most other countries across Eastern and Southern Europe. Fun fact: Slovakia produces more cars per capita than any country in the world!

Unfortunately, Americans’ impressions of Bratislava come mostly from the movies Eurotrip and Hostel. In Eurotrip, Bratislava is a hellish landscape of graffitied, broken-windowed Communist apartment blocks. Hostel is apparently much worse, though I haven’t seen it. According to that movie, staying in a Bratislava hostel will end very poorly, with your body thoroughly sliced up into quite a few pieces.

Thankfully our hostel was nothing like the movie Hostel, and Bratislava (at least most of it) is much more charming than depicted in Eurotrip. We began our stay in Bratislava by walking up to the castle, then came back down through the Old Town, stopping to sample some wines at the yearly wine festival that happened to be going on. I got 3 glasses for 2 Euros - not a bad deal. As we were finishing our last glass, we heard the sound of drums approaching, and before you knew it, a grand procession of the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his court, and regiments of soldiers from all his various lands came marching through the square. Of course, it wasn’t really the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. We were witnessing the main event of Bratislava’s annual celebration of its Hapsburg heritage. Bratislava (called Pressburg at the time) was the capital of the Hungarian portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for about 250 years, and the Austrian royalty were crowned kings and queens of Hungary within Bratislava (Budapest didn't become the most important Hungarian city until the late 1700s). Unbeknownst to us, we had arrived in Bratislava during the biggest day of the biggest festival of the year!

We retired to the hostel for the evening, and I got a tremendous amount of laundry done.

Communist architecture in what used to be part of the Old Town before they flattened 70% of it to make room for more tragically ugly buildings like this one.

Square where the wine festival took place

View over the Old Town on the way up to the castle

The Castle - rebuilt in the late 50s and 60s long after it burned down in 1811.

Overlooking the Danube, the "UFO Bridge" (left), and the concrete jungle - hundreds of communist-era apartment blocks now spiced up with colorful paint.