The A-Zs of my Favorite Travel Destinations — B is for Bratislava

Oh my god! They have my nose!

I’m telling you, this A to Z stuff is absolutely brutal. I mean, I chose Austria for A, but I could just as easily chosen many other places such as Arnhem or Amsterdam in Netherlands, or Antwerp in Belgium, or … argh!

Anyway, once we left Vienna by train, we stopped off in Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia while en route to Budapest. Yes, another B option that I had to drop off along with Belize and too many little towns and villages in Eastern Europe. Why? Well the truth is that we didn’t really have a good reason other than it would give us a quick snapshot of a small country through which we wouldn’t be walking for the European Peace Walk.

We arrived early in the morning, too early to check into our hotel for the night. That meant we would be carrying our backpacks for a few hours of wandering. I had picked up a city map at the train station upon our arrival.

Our first walking stop was to see a fountain that was just barely visible from the street we had been walking down. It was on the map which is why we were able to find it. The fountain was beautiful, but it was a busy place as a teacher had her class there, a field trip. As a retired educator, I didn’t begrudge sharing the fountain with them.

We were getting hungry. After walking into the old city centre through Michael’s Gate Tower [Michalská brána], we passed several small restaurants that were closed before finding one called Infiniti Rock Café. As we entered the restaurant, it started to rain, so we were more than happy to avoid getting our backpacks wet while we enjoyed coffee and a small breakfast.

The light shower ended and we began to get serious about discovering as much as possible about the city given that we didn’t have much time as we were taking a train to Budapest the next day. As we walked along the street, now filling with people, my wife almost shrieked in surprise saying, “They have noses just like me!”

She is a first generation Ukrainian Canadian. Her parents were born not far from Slovakia in the Carpathian region of western Ukraine. Her features are Slavic and she did indeed fit in as far as appearances are concerned. Now, back to our discoveries.

We covered a lot of ground, visiting a castle, seeing more sculptures and fountains, and then the blue church, the Church of Saint Elizabeth [Kostol svätej Alžbety]. By the time we finally said we had done enough walking and that it was time for another meal, the sun was going down. It was time to call it a day.