fabienne goes abroad: Holiday March 2014: Bratislava, Slovakia

Some facts about Bratislava for you!

- Bratislava is in the extreme southwest of Slovakia. It is the only capital city to border two neighbouring countries (Hungary, to the south, and Austria, to the west).

- The language and people in Slovakia are called Slovak; the language is very similar to Czech and can be understood by Polish speakers.

- The present-day Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia (the Velvet Divorce).

Day Six: Saturday, 8th March, 2014

We had to get up early to be out of our hostel by 10am and get to the coach by 10.30am. We got to Bratislava around noon and checked into the hostel (Hostel Blues) and put our stuff down in the room. The guy at the hostel who checked us in gave us loads of helpful information about what we can do and what we should eat. We first went to a place called Slovak Pub to try bryndzové halušky (dumplings with bryndza - a sheep's milk cheese made in Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine - and bacon and sour cream), bryndzové pirohy (pirogi with bryndza and bacon and sour cream), and kapustové strapačky (dumplings with cabbage). It was all nice but the cabbage had a fishy/smoky taste to it, and it was all very rich so it was a struggle to eat it all. After filling ourselves to the brim we went and did a free walking tour with a woman called Andy; she was a student and was very knowledgeable and fun and made Bratislava become more interesting that it would have been for us just walking around on our own. That evening we cooked for ourselves in the hostel; they had a Tesco in Bratislava and we decided to cook ourselves curry. It was so ridiculously cheap there, we got 450g of chicken for 2,25€ approximately, and with all the other ingredients plus breakfast for the next morning the total was less than 10€!!

1. The food we tried - in the order mentioned above.

2. K sat on a bike rack with penny farthings on the ends.

3. Statue of a man in a manhole - Bratislava has lots of random statues apparently; this one has no meaning, the artist just thought it'd be funny. It didn't used to have a sign next to it and lost it's head twice in car accidents, so now there's a specially made sign depicting this guy to warn the cars!

4. Statue of a man who used to wander the town talking to people, always wearing the same thing, so they made a statue of him!

5. The town hall - Apparently Napoleon came to visit for his birthday once and decided to bombard the town with cannon balls, so the black dot is a cannon ball that has been put in the side of the building as a sort of memorial.

6. Revolution Square.

7. St-Michael's Gate - The gate is part of the entrance to the Old Town and is therefore a sort of guard tower.

8. A plaque to commemorate the first hanging of a witch in Bratislava in 1602.

9. Me in front of the Blue Church.

10. The Blue Church.

Day Seven: Sunday, 9th March, 2014

We went and visited the Castle (slowly built and modified between the 9th and 18th centuries) but we didn't go in on the advice on Andy the tour guide who said it wasn't worth it. Then we went and got some food for the coach journey to Prague. We stopped by the Slovak Pub to try another delicacy, which was called Cesnaková polievka krémová v bochniku posypaná syrom (creamy garlic soup served in a loaf of home-made bread with cheese) and then went back to the hostel to make our sandwiches for the journey and then headed back to the coach station. We got on the coach to Vienna and then had to make our way to a different coach station to get the coach to Prague. It felt like quite a quick coach journey because there were films to watch and we both slept a little bit too.