I had heard it was beautiful.
I had heard it was soul-less.
I had heard it was cultural.
I had heard it was concrete.
I was supposed to have gone throughout my inter-railing trip with my Cariad, however due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to head to Budapest a day later, and we fell in love with Budapest so much that we decided not to visit Bratislava.
Anyway, seeing as Prague is so close* and its very easy to travel around Europe from here, a friend and I decided (with the additional help of a plentiful amount of beer, of course) to book the bus and go to Bratislava!
*By close I mean, 4 hours on a bus.
Before we knew it, the little trip for the two of us became a trip for six of us. It was super fun travelling with new friends and sharing this experience of heading to a brand new country and city!
So we travelled by coach with a company called Student Agency. I know what you're thinking.... "ew, who wants to travel by coach?!" Well, I'll give you lots of reasons why:
- Free tea, coffee and hot chocolate
- TV screens with films/series in Czech and English
- .....It's super cheap! (And 10% extra off if you have an ISIC card!)
Seriously, I'm definitely going to be taking advantage of this company. They're so great.
So we arrived. And sure enough, the bus station was basically a concrete block plonked right in the middle of nowhere. As we were walking, it was full of concrete. There were no sign posts anywhere, so we wandered aimlessly, waiting for some sort of sign to show us the way to the centre.
After about 20 minutes, we found the historical centre. It was very very strange as it was as if somone had just placed an old historical Eastern European city centre in the middle of concrete blocks!
We spent the first day mainly wandering and exploring. We found our way up to the castle, however we didn't go in because not everyone was interested.
We wandered aimlessly around before stepping through a portal to World War II. Not really. But we did step through an arch to find a show of things from WWII, and people dressed up in costumes marching up and down. Very odd.
We headed out for dinner, and afterwards we decided to hit the pubs and clubs. One small issue, Bratislava isn't the best city for a night out. We had a good night, however it was expensive and there didn't seem to be much choice in where to go.
The next day, we were all feeling a little worse for wear. We decided on having a relaxing morning looking through the marketplace and visiting the museum. If you find yourself in Bratislava, I can highly recommend going to visit the City Museum in the Old Town hall. I got an insight into the complicated history of the city and country. We climbed to the top of the clock tower and there were some pretty fantastic views up there.
After a pancake lunch, it was almost time to catch our bus back to our home in Prague. So back we went to the concrete slab of a bus station, and basked in the sun before the 5 hour trip back home.
P.s. Sorry about the quality of some of the photos. Ironically, the ones with good quality were taken on my phone. I'm still figuring out how to use my FancyPants Camera.
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