Monthly Archives: July 2007

One day in Bratislava

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I woke up silly early – before Thomas had to rise for work – and let myself out to catch the 8:00am bus to Bratislava. This was a hugely busy bus, so if you’re going to make this trip ensure you book in advance. A lot of people do Bratislava as a day-trip from Vienna, so the first and last buses of the day are often full.

The guard who checked our passports at the border kindly stamped mine when I asked so I have another one for the collection. I disembarked at Novy Most (the new bridge, also called the UFO bridge because of the flying-saucer like structure on the top of it). I’m not sure if this was the stop I should have got off at, but the old area of Bratislava is small enough so I decided to explore a bit and try to find my hostel.

Wandering around, I discovered a nice little town on the whole. There’s a lot of history here and it’s very old-looking in a nice way. Cobbled streets, old well-maintained buildings, statues and so on. I passed by the St Martins Cathedral where numerous European kings were crowned for a few centuries and straight across the town centre before locating my hostel almost by chance.

This was their first day and they had literally just opened, so I dumped my stuff, grabbed a map, asked for some information and went on my merry way. I was informed that KFC didn’t have a branch (yay!) so I settled on McD’s for brunch (boo!) as it was actually one of the cheapest options in the area.

I found some of the main attractions such as the mayor’s office / town hall (with free wireless in the square outside) and the manhole man statue (complete with person dressed as the statue next to it accepting money) as I walked back to the bus station with the intention of catching a local coach to Devin castle. Only I found out there are no buses between 10:30 and 13:30. Beware therefore if you go there yourself and catch an early bus – you’ll likely get stranded until after lunch!

Instead, I walked up to the local castle up on the hill for a lovely view of… some flats. The nice stuff nearby isn’t easy to see from the top and instead you catch a sight of the newer parts of the city, which is a shame. The bridges over the Danube are nice, however. I’d like to point out, though, that the Danube certainly isn’t blue any more. Maybe it was when Mr Strauss penned his little ditty (the main music for the Elite game for all you geeks) but now it’s a rather murky brown colour.

Back at ground level, I returned to the bus station and waited for the Devin Castle bus. Which didn’t show. And there was no mention of it on the “arriving / departing soon” list. As such I stopped trusting the timetable and decided to skip the castle. A shame, but as it worked out it was a fortunate decision to make.

As I walked back into the town centre, I saw a bit of a gathering around what I think was the British embassy. A handful of consular cars with flags flying were outside and a gentleman in a suit collared me when he saw my Toon shirt. It turned out he was Brian Binley, the MP for Northampton South and he was there for some function or other. We talked for two minutes and I mentioned The Walk as I do. Without hesitation, he pulled a 1000 SKK note from his wallet and asked if that would help. It most certainly would! It’s roughly £20 or $40 and would pay for 6 months’ education for one of the Blue Dragon kids. I’ve already posted about this on the Walk page, but again I would like to publicly thank Brian for his generosity.

From there, on a bit of a high, I walked to the train station which is a bit of a hike. The heavens opened for a few minutes which was a relief from the heat to start with then far too much water to put up with within 5 minutes. It petered out and I reached the station in around twenty minutes where I enquired about my ticket for Budapest the next day. Note that the windows you see when you enter the station all have big “I” signs which will make you assume they provide information. They don’t. You have to go down a passage at the back to a specific office where they’ll print you off a timetable, but can’t give you prices. Then back to the front of the building to enquire on the money involved and purchase the tickets. What a palaver. Bizarrely, the quickest train was 40% of the price of the slower one so I picked that ticket.

At the hostel I repacked and showered then had a huge pizza and a Slovak beer (10% *hiccup*) for around £2.50. As it was cheap, I opted to walk the 30 minutes to a “nearby” cinema over the UFO bridge to see Zodiac which I thoroughly enjoyed. Even better, it was “bargain night” so even less than I was expecting. I also like the way you can reserve tickets online without paying for them, so no booking fee. Just turn up at least 30 mins before the performance. And Slovaks don’t talk in the theatre unlike the Brits.

The walk back was pleasant on almost empty streets with many of the buildings lit up. My dorm was full when I returned with a family from Brazil settling in. I said hello, goodnight and tucked myself in.

More Viennese hospitality

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Just like in Prague, the sounds of construction woke us but this time the noises were from inside the building. I think some of Thomas’ meighbours were adding a new wall! Still, we’d slept well and it was a late morning. I finished the pizza from the previous night, and the girls and I left at around 10:00. If I remember correctly, they were heading for Spain.

I, however, picked up a day pass for the public transport (EUR5.70 – good value) and walked around the city centre grabbing snaps of the places I didn’t see the day bafore. The Anchor clock was an accidental discovery. I spotted a crowd gathering looking upwards at slightly before midday so they had to be waiting for a clock to do something. On the hour, a progression of historical characters parade past as bells chime.

Nearby I managed to find the Holocaust Memorial to all the Austrian Jews killed during the war. It’s a strange sculpture – a crypt covered with books, their spines facing inwards. The square in which it is situated is lovely, with narrowm winding streets and traditional wood-fronted buildings wending away in all directions.

There’s an area with many (expensive) museums which is worth a visit for a few photographs and I got some snaps of Karlsplatz, including a handful of drunk students walking through the large fountain… and one falling over on his backside. Whoops.

The KFC challenge arose and with the help of a nice lady at tourist information who thought I was mad, located the only one in Vienna – a train ride away in an out-of-centre mall. I swung by Thomas’ place for a shower then back into town to meet Anita and her friend Agnes (a Polish import!) for more walking around.

Anita showed me a couple of things I would have missed, such as the Gaudi-inspired Hundertwasserhaus and the garbage-burning factory remodelled by the same artist/architect. Utterly weird, but still pleasing on the eye. Somehow. We then headed back to Anita’s where a rather nice spicy pasta dish and chocolate was consumed, washed down with a pretty decent Austrian beer. Anita – thank you for your hospitality! And letting me play with the cat!

Agnes made sure I got on the right bus for the city centre where I walked around the outer ring again, getting some decent (I hope) night snaps of the city. Back at Thomas’ we chatted until far too late and I collapsed in bed – another coach to catch early the next morning.

Viennese whirl

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I managed a long lie in until the heady time if 7:00 before getting up for a rather awful McD’s breakfast and to jump on my coach to Vienna. As the Czech Republic is an Eastern European nation, we had to stop at passport control on the way out and two girls managed to get their passports stamped – I should have thought of that! The border guard quoted them 5 Euros per stamp and they were quite taken aback until he said he was kidding.

The coach dropped everyone off on the outer ring road, but it took a while to figure out where I was as there are three Eurolines stops in Vienna. I managed to wander up to the East train station in the sweltering heat only to find that half of their left luggage lockers were “kapput” and the other half were in use. Great. So I lugged my bags around with me all day.

This included a walk to the Eurolines office I would be leaving from in two days time, to colletc my ticket and to figure out where it was. I’m glad I checked as Lonely Planet has the correct address, but the dot on the map is around 4km away from where it should be. An underground ticket is a much better way of getting there than shoe leather.

I walked around a fair bit of the centre then spent an hour trying to locate a payphone to call my couchsurfing host, Thomas. I finally did and we arranged to meet just after 5pm at one of the underground stops.

Vienna does “grand” the same way Prague does “fairy tale” with some of the most impressive buildings I’ve ever seen. The parliament building is done in Greek style, the town hall more gothic (though I didn’t get any photos as some muppet had decided to put a summer festival up in front of it so I couldn’t see the thing), the music halls as good as anything in London or Paris… simply breathtaking.

Unfortunately, it’s also really expensive like those cities. Within the centre, at least, expect the internet to hit 5-6 Euros an hour. I wolfed down a Burger King before hopping on a tube to Ottakring, out to the west, where Thomas was waiting for me. His flat was only a short walk away and we were there in minutes where he got me settled in, provided me with slippers and showed me the ropes.

While at Thomas’ I managed to get in touch with Anita, another local couchsurfer and arranged to meet her the next night for some sightseeing and dinner. It chucked it down that night as I was trying to locate a pizza shop – quite a change from the bright sunshine earlier in the day.

I slept on the floor this first night as Jamie and Hanni from Singapore had decided to stay another night and they had first dibs on the couch. Thomas offered me a camp bed but I wanted to get used to my sleeping mats.

Swords and torture instruments

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No, I didn’t head back to the restaurant from last night. Though the thought did cross my mind.

Early doors and before checkout, we moved my bags back to the Apple hostel where I’d booked another night. Viv was due at the airport by around 1:30 so we walked around aimlessly in the sunshine just trying to find places we’d missed before. In the Old Square, a medieval event was being set up with people walking around with swords and roasting dead animals on spits. All very interesting. We sat, ate cherries and watched the world go by. In helmets and chainmail.

The time came for Viv’s checkin and we took the quick journey up to the airport. Again, it was lovely to see her and have someone else to appreciate Prague with. I’m sure I’ll catch up again once I get back to the UK!

Back in the city I had a rather tasty Subway for lunch (with incredibly lovely staff to serve me – certain higher-class eateries could learn from these people). Then the Torture Museum just off the east side of the Charles Bridge. This was pretty cool, though small. I knew about virtually all the exhibits (my scary book collection is safe in my parents’ basement) but it was pretty impressive to see them close up. The comments book on the first floor seemed to vary between “this is cool and I want one of those pointy things for my ex-wife” to “you people are sick” – which is a bizarre thing to put in a book for a museum you’ve paid money to enter.

As I walked out, I bumped into Phil the bald Scotsman from the other night and we arranged a time for dinner. They’d got “stuck” in Prague, basically getting very very drunk for several nights and he looked like death on a slow roast.

9pm after I spent a fair amount of time online and… no show from Dom and Phil. Not to worry, they were probably being ill somewhere so I went exploring so I knew where the bus station was for the morning. In doing so, I found a host of cheap places to get food which I should have discovered several days ago. Ah well, I’ll know for next time.

Food. Room. Book. Bed.

I thought Parisians were supposed to be rude?

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I’ll get to the title bit later…

We woke fairly early and went for another walk around. There was a street market not too far away where Viv bought a huge punnet of cherries and some souvenirs for the folks back home. We also stopped at a nearby coffee shop so she could fuel up for the day.

The long walk to the castle was worth it as we caught the changing of the guard, again in amazing sunshine. How those guys can stand there in that kind of heat I don’t know.

Locating one of the cheaper restaurants nearby, we sat down for a pleasant lunch with a lovely view and a cute kid entertaining himself at a table while his parents ate. Until he got confused and followed the wrong woman out of the restaurant and his mother went mental when she caught up with him. Whoops.

In a bid to enjoy a protracted period of air conditioning, we bought two tickets for Die Hard 4 and also managed to find a bar / restaurant selling rosé wine so Viv could actually have a drink of something other than Sprite. The film was enjoyable but a little silly. I still think the first one is by far and away the best.

As the light started to dim, we walked down near the river and found an excellent second hand book store. I picked up a 4-volume Alex Rider collection for a shade over two pounds (a lot of train and bus journeys coming up) and a publisher’s proof edition of an Eoin Colfer novel which may find its way onto eBay when I get home.

We hopped onto a boat for a chilly one-hour river cruise. 7:30 in the evening is a good time as you get to see the city by night for the first half, and lighting up for the second. All very pleasant.

And then. The rude waiter. The restaurant we picked looked cheap, had great food and – I think – is recommended by Lonely Planet. It’s the Restaurace U Vejvodu on Jilska 4 and you should avoid it like the plague. No, I’ll be fair – you should avoid the bald waiter.

He looked utterly distracted when he took the order, staring around the restaurant while we chose our orders. Then he brought me two beers instead of one, and gave Viv a Sprite with no peach schnapps. And brought another unasked when she finished it. I ordered a beef steak in pepper sauce and when it arrived it looked both delicious… and remarkably like turkey. I checked. There was also a turkey steak on the menu which was 220 Crowns less in price.

After ten minutes of trying to get the waiter’s attention and failing, I thought “sod it” and ate the thing. It was delicious, but arguing the bill when it arrived was fun. The waiter refused to understand us, so he called over another guy whose English was much better. He was polite, understanding and genuinely attempted to help – exactly unlike his colleague.

Still, though, when they went to talk to the chef and came back to tell me it was “impossible” that I’d been given turkey, I was somewhat annoyed. When they then tried to tell me that the beef steak can look a pink/white colour I – frankly – lost it a bit. I’m 33. I’m pretty much a carnivore. I know “pink” beef and I know turkey. The texture, colour, taste, shape and amount of blood that squishes out is utterly different. I was not to be fooled though someone really needs to take their chef to one side and explain that the one that goes “moo” is the one that should be labeled beef.

Eventually, the bald man came back and literally threw the menu at us so I could point out what I had and the relevant price. He stormed off, dropped a handful of change on the table then suddenly stopped and pointed at a rack on the table. “Two pretzel” he announced, and pinched some of the change back with a manic look of pathetic triumph in his eye.

So there’s a lesson for you. Don’t assume that the pretzels on the table are free. And don’t forget the service charge which I really wanted to withhold. Waiting staff should be on a tip system. Frankly, I’d have given this moron’s tip to the guy with the long hair who’d actually tried to help.

Regardless, it didn’t spoil our evening but it did mean that there was no way we were ordering desert there. A good job there are so many ice cream shops in Prague! I went for a very nice slice of cherry pie from one of them and managed to eat most of it without dropping it on the pavement.

And so back to the room to watch the news and sleep soundly while my stomach digested the feathered beef steak.