This morning marked the beginning of our day trip to a different country and a different capital city. We looked mournfully out the window, pulled on our warm clothes and packed shorts hopefully in our backpacks, just in case! We were soon all at the train station and catching a one hour train to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. I had planned to look at the countryside but ended up looking at an awful lot of the back of my eyelids (like most people, although apparently I didn’t miss much).
When we arrived we walked straight to the old town – to give an overview of Bratislava, most of the city is very ugly, run down and graffiti covered. In the middle of all of this is a very quaint, pretty, couple of blocks where things still remain intact and attractive. It doesn’t have anything too much of note – it is apparently the City of Fountains (there is over 50 in the city, although I only remember seeing one). There are also lots of very nifty metal statues, dotted around the place. Other than that, the architecture is very similar to Vienna. We wandered around here for a short time and then headed up to the castle on the hill which overlooks the city. Not too much to see up here either, except a view of the Danube and the bizarrely monotonous, uninform apartments dotting the skyline.
And that was pretty much Bratislava. After spending an hour or so wandering around we headed to the ‘Slovak Pub’ to sample the local cuisine. Pretty much all of use ordered the Bacova Kapsa (or ‘Shephard’s Bag’) on the recommendation of the tour guide. This was described as ‘spiced pork wrapped in a potato pancake’. The pork was very yummy with just the right amount of spice, although I don’t think many of us were too convinced with the grey potato pancake. The biggest drama of the lunch was having to wait and hour and fifteen minutes for our food to come out (due to a large group on the table next to us). This meant we missed our scheduled train back and needed to wait an extra hour – this was mostly spent on the steps of the train station with free wifi.
An hour trip again and then we were back in Vienna around 5pm. Julie and I had hoped to go to the Belvedere to see the big Klimt exhibition that is on there at the moment (including ‘The Kiss), but having to catch the train an hour later meant we had no time before it closed :( This was disappointing but as there was nothing we could do about it we both got over it quickly. Instead we wandered around looking at shoes (my shoes are dying a slow and painful death) and then headed to the restaurant under the Albertina for dinner with Marissa and Hamish. Here I had to order the giant sausages that once amused Julie and I so much. We also made our own susseweisse from almdudler and white whine and enjoyed the atmosphere of the restaurant (complete with accordion player).
We were all pretty keen for an early night, but not before another cake stop – this time I had a layered raspberry and vanilla cake. We will miss these cakes a lot I think, we got to try perhaps only a third of the menu! After dessert, back to the hotel for some packing and blogging. Overall, today was a bit more chilled then yesterday. Bratislava was nice but nothing special – however, I think we all got a kick out of taking a ‘day trip’ to Slovakia. New country tomorrow!
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