March 22, 2015
We only
had a few hours to spend in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, but it’s
such a small city that I felt we had enough time to see it. As with the other
cities we had a city tour, this time much shorter than the one in Budapest and
with a better tour guide. She was born and raised in Bratislava and her love of
her home city was evident through her tour, though I can’t say the history
of the city is the most interesting as little has happened there, especially after
everything we heard and saw in Vienna and Budapest.
Bratislava
is quainter than other cities I’ve visited, and its charm is in its size –
any bigger and it would feel gimmicky. The old city center has many old
buildings and sites, including the second thinnest apartment in Europe, which is now a kebab stand only open at
night. One of their favourite past events in their city square was George W.
Bush giving a speech there a few years ago. A bronze statue of a man sticking out of a
manhole is on the corner of a popular street and he now has his own “Man At
Work” sign (in English) because his head has been knocked off twice by people driving
their cars over him. Much of the town feels this way – short, slightly
ridiculous stories about each little site that gives the city a chance to stand
out from its much larger neighbours.
We only
had time for a quick look around the city and a stop to grab food. We ate at a
little place called Narnia Pub, loosely modeled off of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. The decorations
had lions in all the designs and the hallway to the bathroom had a mural of a
boat resembling the Dawn Treader. Needless to say, I had quite a childlike
excitement for the restaurant. I ordered Strapačky
s domácou slaninou a keyslou kapustou (gnocchi with bacon and sauerkraut),
which sounded like a strange flavour mixture but was actually delicious.
 |
| Narnia has alligators |
We met back up with our group at 6pm and left Slovakia for the horrendously long drive back to Germany. It was a fantastic weekend and I got to check three more countries off my list of places I've visited, but after being on the go constantly for three days I was ready for a few days of calmness in Mannheim before spring break started the following weekend.
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