I felt this blurry too
The grouchy conductor who had taken our tickets the night before woke us politely the next morning in time to arrive at Bratislava and gave us our tickets back. We jumped off the train (we were the only ones getting off) onto the tracks. I tried to get a photo and almost got run over by a freight train going through. My conclusions so far are that train travel is much more private and comfortable than planes if you have the time. However, it’s nerve wracking sometimes if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I need to explain why we were going to Bratislava in the first place. Originally we were going to meet some US friends there and then travel together to Budapest and on to the tour through Croatia.
town square at 6 am
Bratislava was just to be the meeting point after they flew into Vienna. They had made the apartment rentals for Bratislava and Budapest for all of us and I hadn’t really paid much attention. They’re fun to travel with and wherever they wanted to stay was fine with my husband and me. Then the other couple had back problems and the trip just wasn’t feasible for them. I scurried around and booked trains but left the apartments as had already been arranged. I did downgrade from 2 bedroom 2 bath places to 1 bedroom 1 bath where possible. However, it never occurred to me to question the original decision to go to Bratislava.
Now here we were at 5:30 am in the Bratislava station, not meeting anybody and the apartment wouldn’t be ready until 11 am.
our apartment building
We got a taxi to the apartment, just to know where it was, took a look at the building and wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into this time. It was a Soviet architecture building and it hadn’t aged well. Posters had been put up and torn off the walls, kids had tagged the building. You know the look.
We retreated to the main square and went to the only place open at 7 am - McDonalds. Over a verrrrry leisurely breakfast (4 hours worth) we sat surrounded by our luggage while I worked on this blog. After a while a young man at the next table stood up, took the vase of artificial flowers off his table (to make room for food) and offered them to me. I laughed and accepted them. Over the next few hours, he kept presenting me with flowers from the surrounding tables until I had all the flowers in the room.
this is for my daughter-in-law who wanted a photo of the Sewer Spy last time I was here
As he left McDonalds, he said to my husband, “I love your wife.” My husband replied with a smile, “So do I”. No wonder I’ve been with this man for 44 years.
Anyway, back to the apartment building at 11 am and standing there surrounded by luggage while we waited to see the lodging. The owner, Maria arrived and showed us a very nice apartment on the second floor. It was clean, modern and had lots of space. What a change from what we were expecting after seeing the outside of the building. Wait until our friends hear about this rental!!!!
Maria was friendly, funny and full of suggestions of things to see in Bratislava.
a lobster on the sign for a pharmacy museum? Am I missing something?
We talked to Maria for awhile, had a short nap to recover from the 5 am arrival and walked around town for 5 hours. We’d been here before so this was more of getting reacquainted than actual tourist-go-see-the-sights. This is a great town to walk around because there a lots of surprises in unexpected places. You never know where you're going to discover another peice of street art. I took photos of course and then we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant. (See my previous blog from 2006) I had garlic soup, roast goose (never again - way too greasy) and beer. And that was Bratislava.
