Bratislava welcomes you!

Saturday Becca and I got up an went to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. The train ride was hilarious. First there were about 20 or so hung over or exhausted (or both) people heading home from the Sziget’s music festival (going on in Budapest at the time). One guy was sleeping on the floor of his compartment….with his head in the hall…… Becca and I managed to get our own harry potter looking compartment and happily enjoyed it until we hit the Slovak border….at this point three grown men, and a kid about 7 years old, decided to join us…..based on their state of cleanliness, the amount of stuff they had, and well, their stench (to be blunt), they had just come from Camping. The kid was eating garlic chips, which apparently smelt (according to becca). I couldn’t smell anything but the mix of beer, people smell, and wood smoke that was radiating from the man beside me.

Sadly, as we can’t speak Slovak, and they couldn’t speak English, we smiled for a second or two, then well sort of ignored each other. They were chit chatting in Slovak and we were chit chatting in English. About 10 minutes after they arrived in our cabin the trolley came around. It was manned by an Italian man, who seemed to only speak Italian (except for the words ‘coffee sanVitches’), and yelled at the campers every time he walked by (the campers stuff, including a boat motor and paddle were in the hall way). Then at one point, in the middle of the Italian rant, we heard a crash….the trolley made an unexpected collision with something….after the crash came silence and we never saw the man again……

As we rode we all continued to chat (in our respected mother tongues)...but then the kid traveling with them start randomly saying English words. Becca and I gathered that the adults were 'testing' the kid on how much English he knew (the adults knew none)....it was funny for a while because amongst the millions of Slovak words we would hear things like 'blue', 'Red', 'tree', and 'Vi-o-let (he struggled with this colour)'.....actually when he started repeating vi-o-let (to practice his pronunciation I assume), both becca and I had the urge to turn around and say 'puuuurrrple'....I'm not sure why becca didn't say it, but I refrained because I thought it might freaked the kid out a bit...then he started to count. But got stuck at three….well…actually, he confused four with ‘twelve teen’….really…he said ‘voooone, twoooo, sztree, twelve-teen’. It was priceless……over and over again….

The English test FINALLY ended with the struggle between ‘happy home’ and ‘happy house’….to convey whatever Slovak word the adult were asking him to translate….truthfully I have no idea…but you could tell (and hear) that the kid was thinking hard about that one….after we left the train becca made the point that the odd sounding nature of ‘one, two, three, twelve-teen’ probably sounds similar when I attempt to speak Hungarian (mispronouncing words, or mis using words) and more specifically, how I count in Hungarian (I also struggle with the number four…)….I think she might be right on that one!

After a 1.5 hour ‘tree on the track’ delay we arrived in Bratislava (we learned of the tree through a charades act with one of the Slovak campers...the kids English didn't go past 'tree'..so to adult used his arm to mimic a falling tree and then say the work 'track'....we got the gist...).
When we got there we consulted RS, who, typical to form, did not give very good directions. We ended up walking the wrong way for about an hour, looking for an ‘onion shaped dome’…we weren’t sure what type of onion he meant…..

But in our ‘lost in Bratislava moment’ we witnessed a car crash! (well, one car side swiped another). No one was injured (which is good), but it was still a very interesting way to say hello to a city.

After walking around lost for an hour, and saying some unpleasant words to RS, we finally found the ‘large fountain’, and ‘onion shaped dome’ leading us through St. Micheal’s gate into the Old Town. (Before I go further, I must say that the first thing in Old Town is ‘Marzipan World!’. I was not impressed as the Marzipan Museum, back in Szentendre, said they were the only thing of it’s kind in the WHOLE world….tsk tsk…).

Oh well, the more the merrier I guess.
The Old Town of Bratislava is newly gentrified. During the Communist era, it was actually a rough and tumble dangerous area of the city that no one went to without a reason. However, the local government and some business investors decided to reinvent the area a couple of years ago, and it is now a cute place to spend the afternoon. Beyond the standard, pretty, town square, coffee house, souvenir parts bits (which are like all the rest), the town is known for the four fun statues that have been placed throughout the old town.
The city decided to put these comical statues in the old town to lure people back, and I think they did a pretty good job. One is of a Napoleonic Soldier leaning over a bench. One is on the ground looking like he is coming out of a sewer (with the sign ‘men at work’), and one is of a man hugging the corner of a building looking through a telescope. The last one is of a local man wearing a top hat. The story of this man is that he was a local shoe maker who used to walk around the city centre cheering people up (with the use of his top hat). All the statues were happy-go-lucky and really neat to see! We then walked to an open art exhibit, watched two guys play a game of chess using pieces the size of my leg (really the pawns came up to my knee), and then watched some street tai chi. It was a really nice, calm sort of thing just to stroll!

We strolled around for a bit longer then ventured to the Slovak Pub to have some traditional Slovak grub and beer before heading back on the train. We decided to get the ‘sampler plate’ and some Wiener Schnitzel (Becca wanted to try it). The sampler plate had home made perogi’s called Bryndzové pirohy (My favourite of the three, they were made with dill and sheep cheese!), these little potatoes dumplings with more sheep cheese and thick bacon ‘squares’ (which tasted like ‘macaroni and cheese’ made with sheep cheese (which is similar to goat cheese) called Bryndzové halušky), and Strapačky a form of sauerkraut with bacon and, MORE potato dumplings. We washed the carb comatose down with some local beer (Zlaty Bazant, a very light summer style beer). We took a picture, but, as the plate was filled with potatoes (in one form or another) and white sheep cheese, the photo made the white glob of food look kind of gross....and well we decided that the photo didn’t do the food justice…... We got through half the plate before admitting defeat, and decided to walk the 1 km to the train station….to uh…help with the digestion.

We arrived back in Budapest around 11 and proceeded to pass out for the night.