Where the f@€k Is Bratislava?

So we arrived in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia (formerly part of Czechoslovakia and small player behind the Iron Curtain for those that are following us on an outdated map!) taking a short train trip from Vienna. For those following in our footsteps may I recommend the infinitely more fun ferry down the Danube. The train trip only takes an hour and costs bugger all but the entrance from Bratislava Train Station is not as interesting as the entrance into the city via the river. The train station is St Kilda / Hindley Street at its worst ... plenty of junkies, distinct smell of urine and more graffiti than the Berlin Wall, where as the entrance via the river displays the best and worst of communist architecture and building, with no smell of urine!!

So Bratislava is as loopy as Prague, if not loopier. They are really self deprecating, tease themselves a lot by saying no one knows where it is (literally the most common souvenir t-shirt says “Where the fuck is Bratislava”!!) and say the only tourists they get are English blokes out on a bucks night! Which incidentally we did see some English blokes out on a bucks night! But it does have things to see. It has a castle (like all good European cities), it has statues (like all great cultural hubs), it has architecture (like all anywhere with a long heritage) and it has some strange stories (like everywhere if you look hard enough!).

Soooo the castle, everywhere has a castle, I know why but it still has to be said that there are a lot of castles going round. Anyway what’s special about this castle? Well aside from the fair stroll to the top of the hill the castle was burnt down in the war, communist invasion or some drunken night pick one because I am not particularly sure which is the responsible event. All I know is that it burnt down and they, at some stage in recent memory, decided to rebuild their castle. So did they rebuild it the way it was? Not in this day and age where the building industry the world over looks at something complex, breathes in heavily and says "well... you see it's just not that easy. That’s gonna cost ya!" I should know I've said those words. What they did was where there was a part of the building ok they rendered up to it, so you could see that it was there, they put some older style bricking up, put some brand new tinted windows in and made it a simple square. So you have these strange walls with old style corners, walls with half a window frame jutting out but modern plaster hiding where the window was and half a column sliding up the wall. It doesn't do anything but its there nonetheless. It's true. Ask Melissah if you don't believe me!

The kind of rebuit castle!

An example of the windows!

Onto it's classic statues. Do they have statues of religious significance? No. Do they have statues remembering national heroes? No. Do they have statues at all? Yes. The statues they have are a little strange. They have one called "the watcher" a guy that is half out a man hole looking into the street. They have one called "the paparazzi" "a guy leaning around the corner with a big camera. Then they have one called "the Frenchman" and instead of him being a cheese eating surrender monkey (which is how I would have identified him as French and is that from the Simpson’s? I don't have time to check my references these days.) it's actually a French soldier leaning over a park bench. Then they have a weird guy that looks like the little bloke from monopoly but some one has snapped half his hand off to steal his hat and a guy that looks like David Bowie having a cup of tea and a biscuit. Strange but not the strangest we saw.

The Watcher

The Paparazzi

The strangest by far was in the grounds of the castle, 15 naked metal men. All bolted together, like some one had molded someone’s arm, someone’s face, someone’s ear etc etc and then bolted them all together to make some strange looking army looking down on the town! Some had their knobs missing, one had it’s ass missing … but that didn't stop Melissah taking photos of these poor naked statues manhood. It was cold that day to so everything would be smaller (someone has to stick up for them!). There was a sign in Slovakian explaining what the naked statues were about, but with neither of us being fluent in Slovakian, we are none the wiser about these weird men.

Now the architecture... Like Prague it had some Art Nouveau, some Gothic and some Renaissance but most of that was in the city square, what Bratislava had the most of was 1950's communist architecture. Slabs of concrete straight up. Just straight up. I took 15 photos of a skyline from the castle and they are all the same. (Mel’s note: actually it’s closer to 50 photos, but who’s counting) I dunno how they get home on a Saturday night pissed. I have a hard enough time in Southbank and those buildings are different. I think you would try twenty flat number 10's before your key worked and you hit the right one. This is the first place it really stood out. They just put buildings up with pace, no regard to the surrounds. I don't think you realise how little the communists cared about the small details when they were in power. Just house the people. So what if its ugly, so what if you have to destroy an old old old church for it. Just do it (not implying anything about the company whose slogan that is)

As far as the eye can see concrete slabs

Did you just say destroy a church? Yes I said destroy a church. Why? Well they wanted to join their brand new concrete jungle with the old town. They had a space age new bridge with a fancy space age tower that needed to go in and well those communists didn't really rate religion that much did they! So they just knocked down half a church, put the road through it and bricked up the church again. The church basically halved in size in a day. You can still see where the walls were, where the road goes through and where the windows were.

The Church

The highway / bridge

The bridge

Unfortunately we couldn't spend an evening in Bratislava and follow the English buck (dressed up as Daffyd from Little Britain) around. We had to do the train back to Vienna and spend the last night in Vienna as the train to Krakow left form there and not Bratislava. But if your going to do a bit more research than our standard none, I think this place has a shit load to offer. The one day here was brilliant, probably not long enough, but not a waste either. If you do come here may I also recommend going to Michaels (maybe saint) Gate and under it or next to it is an Italian restaurant. Can't remember what its called but its orange and its out the back in a big beer garden. Anyway don't look at the menu just order the calzone. Brilliant. So brilliant in fact that Melissah has instituted a pizza/calzone ban on me. It hurts but hopefully I can have it reversed by Italy.. Peace!