Bratislava In One Day

While planning this leg of the trip, we weren’t sure if we should bother going to Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Republic.  Most people don’t have much to say about it, other than the fact that it’s really cheap.  If you remember the movie Euro Trip (which totally doesn’t depict Europe correctly at all but was humorous nonetheless), Bratislava is the run down, dump city where they ended up with only $1.83 while trying to hitchhike to Berlin, but managed to live like kings thanks to the conversion rate.  Since it’s only an hour by train from Vienna, we decided to come spend 2 nights and see for ourselves what it’s really like…

So first things first, Bratislava looks nothing like what they show in Euro Trip (granted, that movie was made in 2004, but still…)  The buildings outside of city center are a bit drab (just large square stone structures without any elaborate carving or decoration), but it’s not really run down like in Euro Trip and city center is actually quite pleasant with a medieval feel.  According to Rick Steves, who included a section in his Rick Steves Vienna book about Bratislava since it’s so close by, the City of Bratislava has put painstaking amounts of effort in recent years to restore the buildings of city center back to their pre-communism splendor.  While I can’t say it’s the nicest city center we’ve been to, you can tell that they’ve done some restoration and there are some nice things to see.

Today we followed Rick’s walking guide (I copied the path down from his book before returning it to the hostel in Vienna), and went from St. Michael’s Gate, the last surviving tower of the city wall, to Venturska street to try a restaurant called Flowers he recommended in his book.  Although it was a really pricey for Bratislava (about 20 euros per main course), it was the best food we’ve had in a while, reminiscent of what we would get back home if we went out for a nice meal (I had the Rib Eye steak and Paul got the lamb shank).  Combine this with the yummy meal we had last night at 1 Slovak Pub (authenic Slovak food made with products from the pub’s own farm), where main courses were only 5-10 euros, and we’re glad we stopped in Bratislava just for the food!  Except we’re not a fan of the signature Slovak dish, Bryndzové halušky, small spaetzle-like dumplings made with goat cheese, because we don’t like the taste of the goat cheese…

I won’t bore you by reciting Rick’s walking guide, but I will mention that the highlight for me was seeing the various statues of different characters they have around town.  Each one represents something and I’m glad I read about them all in Rick’s book before I saw them so I knew why they were there.  To walk around all of city center and see the sights Rick highlighted took us about two hours, without going into any museums, churches, or castles.  Considering the fact that Prague castle didn’t really impress us, Bratislava castle didn’t really appeal to us.  The only thing I wish we had a chance to do but couldn’t is see the renowned Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra play. 

Although we enjoyed our time here, I have to agree with Rick that Bratislava is better done as a daytrip from nearby Vienna because our hostel, the Hostel Possonium, wasn’t the greatest.  It was significantly more expensive than the hostel in Vienna (although we got a private room so that’s part of the reason), city center was almost 2 km away and we didn’t understand their tram system so we got lost walking, the walls are quite thin and we heard the guys in the dorm next to us talking all night last night, the Wi-Fi crawled because the guy at reception (who wasn’t very helpful) was streaming video on YouTube all the time, and I was really choked by the fact that I didn’t have hot water when I showered this afternoon!  If you’re thinking about visiting Bratislava, do what Rick says and daytrip from Vienna…