The next city I’ve visited was Bratislava, the Capital of Slovakia. It’s a nice enough city, definitely feels a little run down and Eastern European. My hostel was one of the better hostels I’ve stayed at, though I had a pretty sketchy looking dude in my room for the first two nights. Me and the rest of my room mates all slept with one eye open until he left.
I checked out Bratislava’s old town, it’s a bit smaller than most of the other old towns I’ve visited, I later learned that it used to be bigger but the entire outer ring was removed at one point in history.
Bratislava is still cheap, but not as cheap as Kraków or Budapest. Still I found a way to spend money, I took a chance to shoot some guns you can’t get access to in Canada. I’ve shot guns a number of times before, but this was still particularily exciting to me as one of the guns was one I’ve always thought was really cool, but I assumed they were so old you just couldn’t shoot them any more period. It was a nice surprise.
i did a walking tour to hear about he city’s history. They have a bridge with a restaraunt on top, it looks like a UFO and if you talk about the UFO bridge every knows what you mean. I checked out the castle, but it wasn’t as impressive as some I’ve seen. Eastern European castles seem more like big white buildings than traditional castles. I did do a day trip to the ruins of a much older castle. That was actually really neat, it’s high on a hill so you can see Hungary and Austria from the view, and the weather was amazing. The castle was in ruins because Napoleon blew it up, I thought that was kind of funny.
i figured when I was in Slovakia I would try to buy a team Slovakia hockey jersey, mabye with gaborik or demitra or halak on th back. I was surprised, I looked pretty hard but I couldn’t find one. Oh well.
Next up is Zagreb, Croatia. I’m making my way back west now, thinking I might do Croatia, Slovenia, quick stop in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, then back to London to go see the rest of the UK.
I have a bunch of pictures, but the wifi is being weird so I’ll have to upload them later.