James & Heather Travelogues

After Slovenia, we stopped off in Bratislava in Slovakia for a couple of days. We caught the train from Slovenia to Vienna, and then from Vienna to Bratislava, taking about 6 hours all up and arriving on Sunday afternoon.

First impressions were not favourable, we were in this dump of a city with no local currency, no where to change any of the Euros we had and our bank account would not let us draw out any money. Never mind, it was only a ten minute walk to the place we were staying, our so we thought. Unbeknownst to us, there are 2 stations at Bratislava and we had exited at the border stop of Petrajelka, miles away from the main station where we were meant to get off. After yomping around for 20 minutes, we decided enough was enough and flagged a cab down and convinced him to take payment in Euros.

We arrived at our apartment, having a brief conversation with the person that was going to let us in via the taxi driver as their English was better than our Slovakian, but not enough for us to explain where we were. Our apartment was in the old part of Bratislava, which is a beautiful city in central European style and much better than the rows upon rows of ugly housing estates that were constructed during the Communist era. Things were looking up, already...

Our second day was spent waiting for Australia to play their first World Cup match in 34 years, with Heather getting more and more anxious as kick off approached. When the final whistle blew, I had an elated Heather to deal with and we celebrated with a little bit more beer (at $1.50 Australian for half a litre, you can imagine how much more was consumed .

Our third and last full day (today) was spent wandering around the old town, which is dominated by a Gothic castle, until a thunderstorm set in. It was pretty cool walking around a central European castle with thunder and lightning, pity it wasn't night and there were no werewolves out.

Tomorrow, it is back on a train for a trip to Prague and a couple more football matches.