Howdy y’all. How’s it shaking?

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Last week I had lectures on monday/tuesday/thursday, so I stayed home later in the week as apposed to last week where I was done on wednesday. And I have definitely been bitten by the travel bug because I was itching to go somewhere for the weekend!

But I was a little uncertain if I should go anywhere, because this coming weekend I’ll be in Vienna again, and then I’ll be in Greece for a week. So I wasn’t sure if I should just relax and have a weekend where I wasn’t doing anything.

But I still felt like that would be a waste of time. And I came here with very specific intentions – to go anywhere and everywhere if possible. So I decided I would indeed go somewhere for the weekend.

Problem #2 – where do I go?

Problem #3 – who do I go with?

Both problems were resolved thursday evening. I messaged my Irish friends and asked them if they wanted to do a day trip or something for the weekend, and they said they also wanted to go somewhere, but they didn’t know where either.

So we decided to meet up and discuss some possible day trips we could do. The ESN students had been conducting a survey of the exchange students of possible city tours the students would like ESN organize, and they would pick the top 3. So we thought that we would choose a place that was low on the voting list, so we could save the top cities for the ESN tours.

We looked at a couple of small towns and cities in Austria, but we agreed that most of the places would be much nicer to see when the weather is warmer and everything is less brown and more green.

And then I tossed out the idea of going to Bratislava, Slovakia. Bratislava was only 3 hours away by train, and right on the Slovakia/Austria border. We did a little research into hostals and train times, and almost on a whim booked a 3 bed dorm in a hostal in Bratislava for the next day.

In the hour that we had met up for trip planning, we had booked a hostal in Slovakia for the next day and planned the next 2 days in Bratislava. It was kinda crazy – considering we initially only wanted to do a day trip.

Less than 12 hours later we were on the early train to Wien to transfer to Bratislava. The ticket cost us 22,50 euro, which is actually pretty good! We have a student-type card with OBB (the Austrian rail) so we get 50% off our tickets, which has been really handy to have, especially on these longer trips.

And three hours later, there we were. (Please excuse the ugly face in my selfie).

Our hostal was literally a 5 minute walk from the train station, so it was super easy to get there. We got to the hostal, unloaded our things, used the wifi for a few minutes, marked our map, and headed out.

The first and most noticable thing about Bratislava is that it is ABSOLUTELY COVERED in graffiti. It’s everywhere! On government buildings, stores, benches, everywhere. We walked through a park and every bench, lamppost, tile of the fountain and garbage can was spray painted. It was actually quite shocking to me. Most graffiti I see is hidden away in alleys or on the side of bridges or something. In Bratislava it was so out and open and all over the place – all three of us commented on how different it was.

In one of the pictures below, you can see there is a city worker scraping away paint on the fountain. We all laughed about it because he was definitely fighting a losing battle.

 

 

One of the fist places we saw that say was the Parliamentary Palace. Another thing we noticed is that Bratislava has A LOT of government buildings. So many stately-looking buildings had the Slovak flag with the EU flag, and the old royal symbol.

The Palace was right by our hostal, so we walked past it in the evening as well.

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We walked past another Palace-type government building. While we were there we saw people walking in and out, so we thought we would try to go in and see what it was. We were stopped as soon as we walked in by security people who didn’t speak english. After trying to ask if we could look around, the man shook his head pretty violently and started pushing us out the door while speaking very quickly in Slovak.

So I guess we weren’t allowed in.

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From there we started heading towards the Blue Church, but got sidetracked when we spotted church spires in the distance.

I’m not sure what church this is, and we couldn’t get inside because all the doors were locked. But we sure looked silly I’m sure as we wandered around it and pulled/pushed on all the doors.

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On our way to the Blue Church we also walked past another church – this one was open! It was also in a giant graveyard. I personally really like looking through old cemeteries – some of the old gravestones are kind of cool.

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FINALLY we get to the Blue Church, and I’ll be honest that it was not what I was expecting. I had never seen any pictures of it, but I assumed from the name “The Blue Church” (St. Elizabeth’s Church) that it had some sort of blue accent that made it stand it out – a blue roof or statue outside or something.

Nope.

The whole thing is bright baby blue. When I thought blue, I thought more of a navy or more stately color – it’s a church, after all!

Nope, everything from the doors to the pews are bright baby blue. It was kind of crazy!!

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From St. Elizabeth’s we headed into the main part of the city where most of the sites are, as well as places where we could stop for lunch, because by then it was getting close to 3 o’clock, and we were getting hungry.

Please don’t think I am unpatriotic when I say that Canadian cities have got the structure all wrong. It is so NICE to have a central square or plaza in the core of the city. It makes it SO MUCH EASIER to navigate, much easier to find places to eat, souvineers, sites, etc. Downtown areas in our cities are okay, but they’re too big and too confusing.

Here, there’s maybe 3-4 main streets that all connect  the main plaza and squares, and it’s so nice.

See? Look how great that is.

Seriously, we need to get it together.

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We got lunch just off the main street at a small Slovak restaurant. Since it was one of the few things on the menu that I recognized, I ordered the Wiener Schnizel.

Frankly I didn’t feel bad about consuming breaded porkchops and fries because I would be working off those calories pretty quickly anyways.

Since we were practically on the square, we walked around the main central area for a while. We went to the Town Hall and church, the Primates Palace, and walked to find more churches and a war memorial for the  Slovak revolution (I believe).

ALSO this area has some tourist-famous statues that we had to stop and take pictures with 🙂

ALSO we took a couple selfies. It’s whatever.

ALSO something I found humorous is that It seems like Bratislava has it’s own sacred special tree like they do in LOTR.

NOBODY COME WITHIN 3 FEET OF THE TREE.

I just find that humorous.

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We eventually came upon the big ticket item – St. Martin’s  Cathedral.

And may I just say, this thing is MASSIVE.

This is a picture of me standing on the step of the Cathedral:

It’s one of the bigger cathedrals Ii’ve been in thus far. And they never cease to amaze me. These churches were built hundreds of years ago with limited funds and technology, yet they are so vast and impressive! It’s pretty humbling to see what people with so little can do.

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As it got later, we walked towards the river and along it towards the Slovak National Gallery, the Slovak National Museum, and the Slovak National Theatre. At the theatre we were hoping to get tickets for the ballet that night – it was a random ballet I wasn’t familiar with, but it would have been a cool experience. Unfortunately the tickets were all sold out when we got there, so we couldn’t go. But that’s okay – better luck next time!

 

Another big site here in Bratislava can been seen in a couple of the previous pictures: the UFO that is “flying” above the Danube. It’s kind of a weird modern site that sticks out in the middle of the historic old town. Also, the pronounce it like its 1 word, not an acronym. Like “oo-foh”, not “U.F.O”. I found that odd.

You can pay to go up the tower to the top to the observation deck, but there is also a restaurant and bar inside – it’s similar to the Calgary Tower, for those who are familiar with that. By this time it was really dark, and the wind had really picked up. I took a short video that you can watch here.

It was actually a little scary to be up there with the wind – it may not seem like it from the video, but I was a little nervous. It was way cool though, I’m telling you.

You could see almost the whole city from up there – it was awesome. My hair can clearly demonstrate the wind conditions ontop of the tower.

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After the UFO we wandered around some more, and grabbed some cheesecake from the “Giraffe Cafe and Music Bar” on the square. I will say that for a friday night in the capital city, the streets were dead. We thought this place would have been busy, but we were the only ones in there. Crazy.

Since it was pretty dark, and everything was closed we ended up going back to the hostal a little earlier than we had planned, but we stayed up past midnight chatting anyways, so it was all good. These Irish ladies are sure fun to spend time with.

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The next morning was full of hiking. We got an early start and headed off to the Slavin War Memorial. It was actually only 5-7 blocks from the hostal, so we thought it would be easy to get to.

WRONG.

it was uphill BOTH WAYS. And we got a little lost because the monument is surrounded by residential streets. We climbed WAY TOO MANY STAIRS to get to the monument.

When we finally got there, its also ginormous. We saw it from the UFO the night before. The castle, St. Martins Cathedral, and this monument stand out easily among Bratislava’s skyline. It was actually a really nice monument to the soldiers of WW1 (I think). It’s sheer size was kind of surprising, but also kind of inspiring. There were other people there laying flowers on graves. Because its so high from the main city it’s pretty peaceful and quiet up there.

 

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Speaking of big sites, the castle was next. We had seen it from all over the city for the last couple days, but it was finally time to go see it!

The castle is also a hike to get to, which is clearly evident by it’s placement.

And this is a CASTLE. Other castles I have seen have been really big houses or palaces that they call a castle. But this thing is a REAL castle. Complete with walls and gates and defenses. It’s a fortress that clearly should not be messed with.

Once again you can tell how windy it was from how crazy my hair is. The gardens were undergoing construction, so we took a picture from a window inside the castle.

We payed 3,50 euro to go inside to see the museum, which is a bargain! And we got the student price – it pays to be a student when traveling, believe me. We get discounts on almost everything.

Inside we saw exhibits about the castle history, the history of Slovakia, of Bratislava, WW1 and WW2 involvement, as well as ancient art, modern art, archaeological finds, etc. It is a BIG castle, and we spent almost 3 hours inside.

One thing I find interesting about this castle is that it isn’t a square – it’s very slightly trianglular. I’m not sure if there is a reason for this, but I find it very funny to think about. Can you imagine an ancient engineer just blowing his head when he noticed that the architect didn’t measure straight – like “Give me a break Ferdinand, you had 1 job, and the castle wall isn’t even fricken straight!”

I dunno, I think it’s funny.

Inside the castle we could also climb the crown tower, and see the royal crown.  You could also climb inside one of the towers to the top of the castle, which was super cool. The view was amazing.

We also got to go into the music room of the castle. In this room was a massive painting and organ. In order to take pictures of the room you had to pay extra, which we obviously were not going to pay. But I wasn’t able to sneak a picture because the security lady was all over me the whole time. However, when we went to the next floor, there were windows into the music room. The picture quality isn’t super good, but I took them anyways as a statement to the crabby old lady downstairs.

 

The castle itself is not fully original – they restored it back in the 60s to what it looks like now. So there were parts of the museum with original stone work and paintings and such. The interior, while not original, was pretty beautiful. The goldwork was amazing. I took quite a few pictures of that! It really made it feel like a palace fit for royalty.

We tried to go down into the crypts of the castle but they were all locked and we couldn’t find a way down! I was super disappointed – sorry dad.

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After spending almost eternity at the castle, we needed food! Back in the central we went to a small pub and all got big burgers. This pub was funny because it played a combination of country and Christmas music. It was weird.

After lunch we went to the Slovak National Gallery to look at some art that we didn’t understand.

Instead the 2 exhibitions were both collections of ancient artworks. 1 was based on gothic and baraque style art and how it evolved through history, and the other was a collection of paintings from various time periods in the Netherlands.

Yes, I took a creepy picture of an old lady who I didn’t know. But I thought she looked cute with the art, so I did it. I’M SORRY.

We got into the gallery for free (yay student life) but the exhibitions were small, and so it didn’t take as much time as we thought it would. So we went back to the main square and decided to take a tour of the Primates Palace we saw yesterday.

We also got into this one for free 🙂

As we walked up the stairs, a grumpy old lady took our tickets and said “No touching, no photo!” and walked off.

So I took pictures out of spite.

There wasn’t much in the palace – mostly just period furniture. I thought it was comical how small the doors were in comparison to the decor. ALSO I will never understand why people feel they need giant houses. In this palace, most of the rooms were just random and empty. It seems like such a waste to me – maybe I’m too practical.

There was a chapel inside that we probably weren’t allowed to take pictures of either.

Spite.

There were a couple other big rooms – one was called “The Hall of Mirrors”, but we couldn’t go into it because there was a wedding! We caught a glimpse of the bride, and she looked beautiful. But we nearly walked into the ceremony! They didn’t have any rooms sectioned off or anything, and nobody was standing there to tell us we couldn’t go in. Thankfully the ceremony hadn’t started yet since the bride wasn’t in there yet.

So that museum was a bit of a bust too. But it was free, so I was okay with it.

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We still had time to kill before we needed to be at the train station, so we went to Billa (a small grocery store) and bought some food for the train ride back home. Then we made our way back to the hostal where we stored our backpacks for the day, and headed to the train station.

This was the part I was most anxious for.

In Austria, there is 1 rail company, and you can buy a multiple train-use ticket, meaning that it includes all th transfers in the price. We had used the OBB website and app to find out the trains we needed and the respective times. But at the Bratislava train station, there is no OBB ticket machine or booth like there is at the train stations in Austria. So we were forced to go to a ticket booth and try to explain what we wanted.

The lady behind the glass was fed up with me before I opened my mouth.

I asked for a ticket to Steyr, Austria. And she had no idea what I was talking about.

So that’s a good start.

She eventually passed a piece of paper through the slot and had me write down the name of the place. Which I did. She then began typing and such. And she kept talking to me in Slovak, which I obviously don’t understand. So I pulled up the route on my phone, along with the connections I wanted, and held it up to the glass to show the lady what I wanted. And she practically yelled at me.

She kept throwing her hands up and acting exasperated, like “What do you want?!”

She scared me.

Eventually she gave me the price of 37,50 euro. Tthat’s almost double what my OBB app said I would have to pay, and double what we paid to get to Bratislava in the first place. I tried to tell her that I had my student card so I got a reduced rate. She kept yelling at me and  freaking out like “Do you want the ticket or not?! Pay it and leave me alone!”.

In the end I had to swallow the cost and pay. I really wanted to get home.

If it didn’t work out, we could have always bought a ticket to Wien, and then from there it would have been easy to get back to Steyr. It would have been cheaper, but that would have meant we wouldn’t have made our connections and probably extended our journey for AT LEAST another hour. And I was ready to go home.

Next time, I’m either buying a return ticket at the beginning, or purchasing my ticket through the OBB website. My credit card hasn’t been working of late, so I couldn’t have purchased the ticket online.

I’ve learned my lesson, and I’ll know better for next time.

So I bought 3 tickets this weekend. And my wallet feels it, for sure.

To close, here’s a bunch of other random pictures from Bratislava.

Some additional notes:

• while wandering around, we rain into a spot where there were tons of security guards checking cars as they passed into a parkade. It was down behind a bunch of buildings just off the main square. We decided to turn back and loop around th front. When we got to the front, we foudn out that it was the USA embassy/consulate. All around the square were embassys and consulates from tons of countries (including Canada and Greece, holla!). The USAs consulate was the only one with security outside, and the only one with a fence. It was hilarious! Of course it would be the States that took it WAY TOO FAR compared to every other country.

• The Irish and Canadian embassies were right next to eachother! We thought this was fitting as the three of us were together in Bratislava too 🙂

• You can see it on a map, but from Bratislava Castle, the Austrian border is only 8 km away.

 

 

 

Bratislava was another exhausting but super fun travel weekend! And I got to travel with new people! How fun!

I think the craziest thing about this weekend was it was very “spur-of-the-moment”. We sort of just booked it and went, without thinking about it too much. And it was awesome! I feel so lucky that I have the opportunity to be able to do things like this whenever I want to. An impromptu weekend in Slovakia? Count me in!

Next weekend my Irish friends are going to be in Vienna all weekend, but I’m going to join them on sunday and stay with them overnight before going to the airport monday morning to fly to Athens. On sunday I’m planning on attending the english ward in Vienna as well, which I think will be wonderful since I have yet to attend church since I’ve been here. And it’ll be in my language, so that’ll be nice.

This week I’m going to be getting a head start on my homework since I’ll be out of town all next week. It’ll be kinda nice having a week where I get to relax at home without rushing around. It’ll be good prep for my crazy week in Greece. I get to go and see my new baby brother-ish! My host mom had a new baby a couple months ago, and I’m going to go visit him and my family and friends and I am BEYOND excited to see them.

And gyros man. I’ve been craving one for almost 3 years. Those things are legit. Y’all are missing out, I’m telling you.

I hope everyone had a good weekend! Happy Selection Sunday and a Merry March Madness to you all! Sending love your way!

emma.k