Day 2 – Bratislava

I didn’t know what to expect from the Slovakian capital but it would have completely changed anyway. It was beautiful! It was warm and sunny with no wind and already my mum’s suggestion to travel in jeans was a bad call. Aside from waiting 15mins to load us onto buses from the plane to the terminal, when the building was only a 5minute walk away (my girlfriend argues about this point passionately saying it was 30 seconds at the most) I couldn’t fault it.

My girlfriend took a tantrum when the officials wouldn’t stamp our passports, I pretended not to care, but I did. Where is the proof? Following the instructions we received from our hostel, we got on a warm, sweaty bus. It then became worse as the locals joined on the way into town; the builders going to the nearest Eastern European Subway shop and the soaking students who had just kicked a football for what looked like 3 hours. Between looking out the window (at mainly graffiti on the walls) and playing Tetris with the bus crowd, we missed our stop and had to walk back a whole block where we needed to get a tram this time, but with the same ticket (we don’t know, we didn’t buy another).

Our hostel was great, we got a private room to enjoy our first night and it was cute, with little fish wallpapers. The reception even offered us complementary beer/water. After settling into our ‘aquatic room’, we toured the city, taking in all the sights and finally decided on a restaurant (my girl is very picky). I couldn’t fault the city, we even tried our luck with the language and the locals loved that, I think. After dinner, we went home with a cheap bottle of wine (€0.80) and gave our feet a rest. I guess it was kind of a celebration for being out here. From experience, you should always pack a bottle opener. It is very time consuming trying to remove cork with keys and tweezers, or even banging it in your shoe against the wall. Luckily I got it open, and after a sip each, we decided not to finish the ‘piss’ and head to sleep. Suppose you get what you pay for.