Bratislava

Our reservation at the cottage by the lake is from tomorrow and I wanted to see the capital city of the country we are visiting – it struck me as we were driving this morning that this is the 1st  time in about 10 years probably that I am visiting a country I  have never been to before – so here we are.

It is much like I suspected, with a couple of minor surprises.  Since the languages are so similar and it was, at one time, part of the Czech Republic, I expected Bratislava to be similar to Prague, and the 1st thing I noticed is that the trams are identical.

There were lots of cool statues in the center

We found our hotel after only  getting a little bit lost.  Nice, but good grief, the internet connection here is slow.  We took a bus into the center and discovered that kiosks near bus stops in Bratislava, like in Prague, don’t sell tickets, don’t give change and get snippy when you just buy  a bottle of water and pay for it with a 20 euro note.  Assholes.  Why do  you have a kiosk near a bus station if you don’t want to make change?

About the same amount of graffiti as in Prague, about the same mix of panelaks and really cool old buildings from the glory days of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  We went up to the castle, Isabel really  scared me  because she likes climbing up on  ledges and she got pissed off at me because I  yelled at her and she started crying but then we stopped for ice cream on  the  way back down the hill and everybody was fine.  It’s hot as hell and we all got a bit cranky.

In the center we stopped at the old town square where they had a  stage set up and  listened to a very mediocre rap band, saw some people soaking in the  fountain, watched some street artists and human statues, all those things which exist in the center of Prague, too, but we haven’t paid any attention to them  in years, because we live there.  It’s good to be a tourist.

Fewer homeless people and beggars than in Prague, but saw a couple.

I was quite impressed by the promenade between old town and the river, a long fountain in a trough that ran for several blocks and lots of statues, especially  the headless giants sitting on nests in trees, those were cool.

Danube, Vltava, it’s all water, but the riverside in Prague is more directly accessible, in Bratislava the sidewalk overlooks the river but you can’t get right down to it.  On the other hand, they’ve got a hovercraft, and that looked kind of awesome.

Prague is not the most ethnically diverse city in the world, certainly less so than Paris or London, but compared to Bratislava it might as well be New York.  This  is whitey Mcwhiteville here.

So, tomorrow morning we are off to the lake and as soon as we check in and get our bearings, I intend to spend the rest of the day in the water.  Because this heat is insane.