Finally Made It To Bratislava
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A funny thing happened on the way to Bratislava… we ended up on the wrong damn train (it seems to be our fate to take the wrong transportation in Eastern Europe). It’s not really that we’re incredibly dense – the train we got on did say “Bratislava” on it, but unlike every other country in the world, Slovakia puts the origin instead of the destination on the train. So – we ended up seeing almost all of Slovakia in one day – any further east and we would have been denied entry into the Ukraine. Interesting fact – it only takes 7 hours to travel from one end of Slovakia to the other (I can only make it half way to my parent’s house in that time!). That’s the last time we will take a second class train in Eastern Europe (A six person cabin with 10 people & a dog in it.). The last journey we had like that was in China with a chicken on my lap – but you do get close to the locals!
Anyways, we made it to Bratislava, and were rescued by a very friendly taxi driver at the train station who ferried us around to various pensions & hotels, all the while deftly dodging the oncoming traffic he was driving into while pointing out the major sights in town (Look – Palace!;There – Castle!) with a few intermittent horn blasts. We finally found a place to stay at the Hotel Ibis – a major splurge for us, as we have our own bathroom, and the hotel supplies towels! So, we’re staying here for a few days before moving on to Lubjlana (Slovenia).
We walked to the train station today and picked up tickets for Lubjlana (5200 K) for two first class tickets from Bratislava to the Austrian border and the Austrian border to Lubjlana (our Eurorail pass covers everything in between). We’d better not screw up on this train – we actually have reservations.
So far Bratislava is great – it has a real cafe society (great to relax in), interesting sites – the lady at the Primate Palace gave us armloads of free books on Bratislava. There’s huge castles and a beautiful old town center that plays host to a real artistic community. Tomorrow we conquer the castle (which is just behind our hotel) – the misadventure continues…
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