Europe 1.09 - Bratislava, Slovakia

Actual date of this event: 1 November

One of Luke's requests for the trip was to take a day trip from Vienna to Bratislava. He had read that Bratislava is what Prague was like years ago before it became popular. And apparently you can get a beer for about 1 Euro. So the day trip to Bratislava was planned for Thursday.

The hostel workers are great about helping their guests with directions of their daily plans. We asked what the best way to get to Bratislava was and they told us bus because the the train stations were in construction. They said train was possible, but it would be a little more confusing. We decided on the train since Luke and I had EuRail passes.

We were leaving from a smaller train station in Vienna than we had arrived... many European cities have more than one train station. We knew we were going to have about a 30 minute walk to this train station, so we left early just in case something went wrong. Plus, it was raining and that always complicates things even more. We arrive to what we thought was the train station, but turned out to be a tram station. The name of the station wasn't matching where we needed to be, but we saw no other station in sight. We stood for about 5 minutes before knowing we were 100% wrong in our current location. We walked about a quarter of a mile around the corner and the construction and finally saw where we needed to be. We literally got on the train 1 minute before it left! Phew!!

After an hour train ride to Bratislava (the town is about 1/2 mile from the Austrian border), we begin our walk. A long walk of 2.5 miles to Old Town. We walked along a highway. Then crossed another highway. Then through the mall. And we finally reached the DANUBE RIVER! That's right, I finally got the see the actual Danube River! Are you as excited as I am? No? Well, hmf.

Left: walking along a major road in the rain

Right: some of the communist government housing

Right: The Danube River!

As we reached Old Town, it was still raining... and it was November 1st, a National holiday, All Saint's Day. The town was pretty much empty. Our goal though was to see a less impressive and well-known town, and what it has to offer.

And then after we were done with seeing the town, our goal was to visit the Slovak Pub, which was highly recommended by a Slovakian girl at Clark's shoes (yes, random) and Trip Advisor. Luckily, the pub was open because many places were not.

Slovak Pub is ranked #23 as best bars in the WORLD

We had lunch.

And had a few drinks.

And Luke was right... the drinks were cheap! 16-0.5L beers for 28 Euros!! Yes, please!

Left: Our lunch bill... 20.80 Euro per person ($26.45) - we each had lunch, 5 beers, an absinthe and 2 Jaegar shots

After staying there for a couple of hours, we thought it was best to leave for the train station. We knew that we did NOT want to do that 2.5 mile walk again, so we opted for the bus. We bought some bus passes and hopped on a bus. While on the bus, Dave started chatting with a guy who mentioned that we were on the wrong bus. Ugh! We hopped off at the next stop and found the bus that guy told us to take. We hoped on another bus and luckily a fellow American was on the bus with us. A guy from Colorado, who moved to Bratislava a couple of years ago after loving the town because his brother decided to move there (total hippie), verified we were on the correct bus. We all got off together, and he pointed us in the direction of the train station. Yay!

We had about 30 minutes to wait for our train, so we found a corner store and grabbed a snack and some beers for our ride home. While waiting in the station, we ran into a new friend, Marshall... whom Luke insisted I mention in the blog.

Anyway, Luke and I relaxed with snacks and beer on the train ride home while Jen was not feeling well at all. After all of the smokey places in Vienna, her sinuses blew up. She was pretty miserable for the night! I guess Luke's remedy for colds (drink a ton of alcohol until you cant feel your sickness anymore) didn't work.

We arrived back to the hostel and had a really early night. On Friday morning, we had to wake up at 4am for our 7am flight... to Zurich!!

Why do I love Bratislava? It has  potential! Its a quaint town that is probably a pretty happenin' place when it isn't a National holiday. If you were a college student, the place would be awesome! And apparently, it is somewhat of a college town. It's always fun to feel like your back in those days :-)

RANDOM FACT:
The largest concentration of paneláks (communist government housing) in the former Czechoslovakia and central Europe can be found in Petržalka (population about 130,000 out of 460,000 total), a section of the Slovak capital of Bratislava. Source

-Debbie-

Europe 1.08 - Vienna, Austria

Actual date of this event: 30 October - 2 November

Our train from Salzburg to Vienna was around 11am and going to take about 3 hours. It was another busy train, but Dave and Jen got to sit together this time, and Luke and I went back up to first class again. Luke and I were actually the only ones in our car for a while which was nice. We thought our train from Innsbruck to Salzburg was high speed, going at 160km/h (99mph), but this train was even faster. The nice thing about these trains is they don't make as many stops, so they can go faster.

When we got to Vienna, we walked about a mile and a half to our Hostel to put our things down. We stayed at Wombats City Hostel Naschmarkt located at Rechte Wienzeile 35. Since this was my first experience in a real hostel, I am going to explain this in another blog later... stay tuned for that!

We walked through Naschmarkt which was right across the street from the Hostel. It had hundreds of vendors with a large variety of different foods, treats, meals, wines, souvenirs and more. We were pretty hungry, so we thought it was time to get a kebab since this market is supposed to have the best. You see, in America, the drunken food is Whataburger, Taco Bell, pizza, Lucky Dogs, anything fast food. In Europe, the drunken food is Kebabs. And in Bavaria, they are called Doner Kebabs or Kebaps. We weren't drunkenly wanting kebabs, but Luke had been talking about getting one since the start of the trip. It was finally his time!

We headed toward the Ringstraße which is a circular ring that surrounds the main tourist area of Vienna, and stayed along that path for a while looking at the architecture.

traffic on the ring streets made it difficult to get a good picture

 Opera House

National Library

 Left: the park at the library had some VERY strict rules... no dogs, no bikes, no skiing, no sledding

 Vienna is FULL of museums!

Right: the University of Vienna has some awesome architecture!

After a while, we thought it was time for a drink, so we began to search for a place to stop. Unfortunately, Vienna is a big smoking town, so everywhere we went we had to deal with the smoke.

It was getting close to dinner, so we took the advice of the Wombats (hostel) which said to go to the Bermuda Triangle which would have a few different bars and restaurants from which to choose. We ended up at Krau Krau for a few drinks and a light meal. Afterward, I found a yummy ice cream place... I finally got my fix!

We headed toward the Danube River... I finally got to see the Danube! <Running joke with Luke and me that the German word for river is Danube.> Anyway, we didn't exactly see the Danube because it was on the other side of town, but we did walk along the Danube Canal which is the same water, so okay, maybe it is the same thing!

We headed back toward the main area of town which is where St. Stephens Cathedral is. The thing is huge!!

We stopped at a few more yucky, smokey places before heading back to the Hostel. I hadn't really had a proper meal (just soup earlier), so I was in need of some food. Luckily, the Wombar (Wombat's Hostel  bar) had some food, so we hung out in there for a while eating some pizza and having a few drinks... one of which was a free welcome drink :-)

On Wednesday morning, we made use of the breakfast in the Hostel cafe. It was not free ,but it was cheap. Even though there were signs saying not to, we made sandwiches for lunch since they had all of the fixings. 

We decided to walk to Belvedere Palace which was more out of the way than any other site we wanted to see. It was actually much farther than we expected, but that is because Vienna is bigger than you would expect. We did not know where the entrance to the gardens was so we walked to the general area. We ended up at the top of the gardens and didn't see an entrance, so we walked along one side of the gardens until we reached the entrance. We couldn't see into the gardens because a giant wall encloses the gardens... frustrating because we walked for about 3/4 of a mile along this wall. And 3/4 mi isn't even the whole length of the gardens... it goes probably 1/2 mi longer! We entered the gardens and decide to purchase tickets into the Art Museum.

While we were inside the museum, the sun came out! Yay! Our plan is working perfectly (...coming soon...)!! After completing the art exhibit, we discovered that there was an entrance at the top of the gardens (where we started earlier), but it was around the corner which we didn't see. Anyway, we were able to walk through the gardens to leave. 

We stopped for a drink and went to St Stephens Cathedral which was our second plan for the day. We were hoping the sun would be out because we all wanted to climb one of the cathedral towers. And it was so yay!

 Left: Maria Magdalena Chapel used to be in that area but was destroyed

Right: Here is the daytime picture of the Cathedral. We didn't realize when we walked by the night before that it is covered in scaffolding. Can you see the scaffolding? They build scaffolding with the design of the building, so you can hardly tell.

After taking a look into the cathedral, we went around to the other side to start the climb.

Left: View of the Cathedral from Belvedere Gardens using the long camera lens. That tall tower is the one we climbed but we could only go as far as stopping right before the skinny part.

Right: We climbed 343 steps, 67 meters, in the tower. All in a spiral staircase.

Below: There were four windows to look out in the tower. 

Looking down at the square.

We all needed a little boost, so we stopped for some coffee before heading back to Naschmarkt for another kebab. Jen and I stuck around the market and had some wine while the boys went to the grocery store to pick up food to make for dinner. We ate our dinner and hung out in the cafe while we looked for a place to stay in Zurich, which is where we were headed two days later.

On Thursday morning, we woke up pretty early because we were taking a day trip out of town. We went down to breakfast at 7:30am and while purchasing out meal tickets from the front desk, we heard a bunch of yelling. Apparently, the Wombar never closed the night before with it being Halloween and all. So here we are, walking through the Wombar to get to the Cafe for breakfast and people are still in their Halloween get-up, smoking, drinking and still rowdy. At 7:30am. It was pretty funny :-)

Wombats' front desk

We made our breakfast and then left for the train station. Construction around the train station made it difficult to find our train... to Bratislava!

Why do I love Vienna? The town is more lively than other towns we visited. It would be a fun town to do a study abroad if you were in college. 

What surprised me about Vienna? Vienna is larger than the other towns we visited. Maybe, the sites are more spread out that the other towns, but there is quite a bit more traffic than any other town. The tram system is pretty large and useful, but there were still quite a bit of cars on the roads.

RANDOM FACT:
Vienna was the home to Sigmund Freud.
We bought 2 pitchers of beer and a glass of wine at the Wombar for 8 Euro (approx $10.15)!!

-Debbie-