Slovakia is a country I knew relatively little about until this weekend. All I knew was that it used to part of Czechoslovakia and the company I used to work for had a call center there once. I was meant to go to the capital, Bratislava (or Presburg for zee Germans) about 6 weeks ago but had to abort the trip due to hangover related illness.
Last week I was out at a bar with some friends when I was telling them the story about how I never made it to Bratislava. My friend Kati is actually from Slovakia. Well, she was born there, grew up there and has citizenship there but still considers herself Hungarian – more on this later in the post. She was going there at the weekend to visit her parents and invited me along. Being exceptionally impulsive when it comes to travel, as I am, I instantly said yes.
My trip started at 7am on Saturday morning with a large mug of tea. Another friend of mine was kind enough to show me how to get to the bus stop – thanks B 
. This was pretty useful since I was not travelling from the main bus station. Instead, I had found a return ticket for around €8 return on a student bus service. This was less than I would pay in Asia! After stocking up on the necessary Haribo and Diet Coke, the bus arrived and I stepped on.
I was surprised how nice the bus was. Plenty of space, even for me, and free drinks/newspapers as well as LCD TVs showing movies. No silly paper tickets on anything here, just a confirmation number and no ID check. In fact, I didn’t even need my passport on this trip due to the Schengen agreement which effectively removed borders from many European countries.
Upon arriving in Bratislava, I noted how crap the bus station is. That being said, I do not know of a single bus station in the world that is not awful. Maybe Tokyo would have one, but I can’t think of anywhere else. I met my friend Kati at the bus stop and we walked towards the pub for some lunch. Just walking around for 5 minutes, I got a pretty good impression about the country. It is so much more modern than Budapest or Prague and there is a lot of development going on, which is a good thing for this small country. The pavements were clean. Not just free of rubbish, but they looked like they had all be cleaned with a power hose recently. Impressive.
Lunch consisted of a local Slovakian favourite – dumplings with goats cheese and bacon. To be honest it tasted a little bit like Macaroni and Cheese but it was much more appealing to me than Hungarian Goulash. To be washed down, of course, with a couple of local beers. I don’t have much of a taste pallet when it comes to beer but it was more than satisfactory.
Next it was time to try and catch a walking tour of the city. Unfortunately nobody had booked the tour so they had cancelled it for today. Kati and I had a walk around the old part of the city, stopping to pick up some hot mulled wine. It was the coldest day this year for me. The downside was that, despite being told to, I did not bring my jacket. The upside was that is gave me an excuse to drink hot wine all afternoon.
The Christmas market had started and surrounding a giant Christmas tree were dozens of stalls selling all sorts of Christmas gifts and local foods. Having spent last Christmas in Malaysia, this was the first time in a long time that I properly “felt” the Holiday season – no that is not the wine talking!
A few people I know have been to Bratislava before and everyone has the same goofy photos with the various statues around the town. I can see why as they really are quite quirky and inspire all sorts of strange poses. If you want to see all my photos, check them out on the Pro Nomad Facebook page. Here is one of the statues I was talking about:
Shortly afterwards, we came across this cool looking bus/shuttle type thing that takes you around town. It was €10 for the one hour trip and included audio commentary, which was quite interesting. For example the architect that designed the tallest building in the city made a few mistakes and the building had to be lowered by a few floors. The architect didn’t like this so committed suicide!
We stopped at the castle for 10 minutes to take some photos. The castle itself reminded me a lot of Budapest and Prague castles. However it is currently closed until 2011 for renovations. I think Slovakia sees itself as an emerging tourist destination and is upgrading its facilities accordingly. Rightly so, since the country is cheap but has very high standards in terms of cleanliness. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Iceland and Switzerland when I walked around. Everything is very clean and just kinda look snazzy.
I think this attitude encases the whole country, or at least Bratislava. Where Hungary and Czech Republic seem to be constantly look back, Slovakia is very much looking forward. Being a relatively new country, I guess this is to be expected. It did surprise me since this is such a stark difference from Hungary. You can barely go a day in Budapest without encountering the subject of Hungary loosing a lot of its territory a long time ago. Now, nothing this bad has ever happened to Scotland so I can’t really judge this. All I would say is that I felt like in 10 years Slovakia will be much closer to Western Europe than Hungary will be. The level of change is evident everywhere you go. The next few years will be a good time to visit as prices haven’t really risen much. A beer is still just over €1 in many bars for example.
It started to get dark around 4pm and it wasn’t quite dinner time so we went to an art gallery. I’m not a huge fan of art, but this one was kinda cool. There was a photography exhibition on with lots of old photos from the 1940s and from Africa during the 1970s. The highlight for me was the room with lots of books on each wall and mirrors everywhere. This creates a strange effect where it felt like you were in a narrow walkway in a massive library, hundreds of meters high.
After some dinner, we hit the Christmas Market again for some more mulled wine. Everyone was standing around drinking and it actually made the temperature a few degrees warmer (the people, not the alcohol). It really felt like Christmas, standing in the cold next to the tree with the Christmas music in the background. After this, we went to a few bars and ended up in a place called Sub Club. This is basically a club under the castle which reminds me a lot of a bomb shelter. It had been a long day so we called it a night pretty early.
Kati’s place was in the suburbs but, like everything in Bratislava, that wasn’t so far away. After some much needed water, I got a pretty good nights sleep. Her mum made Slovakian breakfast in the morning – bread, cheese, eggs and vegetables. They had this weird cheese that reminded me of cheese strings except much saltier. Her parents didn’t speak much English but were super nice – her dad gave me some chocolate before I left in the morning!!
The bus back to Budapest was pretty uneventful. There are no borders any more and the old crossing resembles an abandoned toll booth.
Most people I have spoken to don’t really rate Bratislava. While it is true that one day is enough to see everything, I thought it was worth going just to see how different it is from is neighbours. I have no doubt that this little country will become pretty prosperous in the years to come. I’m glad I saw it when I did and it would be interesting to come back in 5 or 10 years to see how it has changed. Thanks again to my wonderful host and tour guide who made the trip for me!
