Bratislava, Slovakia

Lucy, Mel and I arrived with a round of applause in Bratislava, courtesy of a rather turbulent Ryanair flight. I was a bit surprised we even made it onto the plane, considering the mammoth size of Lucy’s bag. We took the bus from the airport, and then another bus from the station, and generally struggled to find our hostel. It was worth the wait: free drinks, a café breakfast, remarkably persistent Slovenian guys… everything an Aussie girl could ask for.

And then Mel’s bed started collapsing onto my legs.

Having survived the night, we got up, ate breakfast surrounded by Stalin at the little socialist café down the road, and commenced wandering the streets. They were fairly empty. Fairly grey and unattractive. Possibly to balance out the sheer monumental blueness of the church that we found on a walking tour that afternoon.

The tour guide provided a rather interesting perspective on the profits and advantages gained by Slovakia during World War II. I’m sure she didn’t mean to make it sound like the country’s alliance with Hitler was Springtime for Slovakia, but that’s how it came out.

It turns out that Bratislava is the city of upskirting statues. The city centre was peppered with random statues performing various feats.

Oh, and Lucy went cycling. Wish I had a photo of her trying to get down from this thing…

Another amazing Bratislava moment occurred at dinner, when my traditional garlic soup was delivered within an enormous bread roll. Lucy and Mel were pretty jealous of me, I can tell you that. While they ate their schnitzel, I gorged myself on garlicky bread, and rounded things off with some strange sheep-cheese dumplings.

We woke late the next day and headed up to the local castle, climbing millions of stairs, bringing back vivid memories of Montmartre. The castle delivered fantastic views of three countries (apparently).

Dinner was a slightly less exciting affair as our local was bereft of garlic soup buns. We got cuppa-soup noodles, bread and chocolate from the supermarket instead, along with a truly incomprehensible bottle of alcoholic something. It had a pear on it. We started our New Year’s celebrations at the hostel with our Slovenian friends. I broke a glass. We left, having somehow extricated ourselves from the Slovenians. And then we were dancing in the streets, avoiding unofficial fireworks by the riverfront, and moving from town square to town square with the celebrating hordes.

A very excellent way to bring in the new year.