Bratislava

Slovakia's tourist motto is, "A part of Europe worth visiting." That sounded so pathetic (as in, "Gee, we'd love for you to visit us but we don't really expect you to") that I actually laughed out loud. Even my guidebook didn't sound too enthusiastic about Bratislava. But hey, how often can you claim to have been in Slovakia? So I planned on spending a single night here.

Wow. And 1 night is all you need. Even my hostel receptionist said that the city isn't that interesting. Sure, you have all the pretty European buildings, but nothing overly magnificent, and they're less upkept than other European countries I've been to.

The historical centre is there, but there aren't many museums (even my guidebook only lists 1). The rest of it is full of restaurants (mainly non-Slovakian food - I saw a zillion Mexican restos) and stores like Swarvoski, Body Shop, etc. It was rather sad actually! Even their huge castle is closed due to renovations! So after arriving at 11:30 AM an walking around until 2:30, I had pretty much seen everything there was to see.

I ended up eating at a tourist "pub" and I tried the Slovakian version of a perogy and a tomato salad. Okay - the tomato salad was good, except for the excessive onions... but the perogy made with sour goat's milk cheese? Umm, I'm not a hater, but I'm not a fan of it either I doubt I would ever order it again. (Oh, and holy bacon grease Batman! The bacon bits that were a garnish were so NASTY!) Bleeeh! I should have gotten the national dish of dumplings instead. Hopefully I can redeem my palate in the next few days in Hungary - I'm looking ridiculously forward to Goulash!

By 4 PM I returned to my hostel. It turns out that most people have cancelled their reservations due to the volcano issues, so it's essentially me and 3 other people.

One of those people is a German guy. He came out on the patio where I was relaxing and started chatting, but his English was rather poor, so we couldn't really understand each other. (e.g. We'd both talk, get parts of the conversation, and smile and nod through the rest of the sentences because we were lost.) We also tried speaking in French, but his French wasn't much better than his English! I finally fled to the computers.

Unfortunately people are smoking down here (I'm in their basement bar) so I'm going to flee soon. Hopefully I'll be on the train to Budapest by tomorrow by 10 AM. Bye everyone!