wheels up: Bratislava, Slovakia

On one of our days in Vienna, we popped across Austria's eastern border to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. And, when I say day trip (to another country which is in itself hard for a non-Euro to grasp) it was in fact even briefer than that. Bratislava is only about 90 minutes by train from Vienna - we left mid morning and were back in the hotel in Vienna by 3pm.

Upon arrival in Bratislava, it didn't take any of us long to appreciate why we had only been given a few hours to explore the 'city' - basically, there's not a whole lot to see. We arrived at the maintrain station which, without any (or much) exaggeration, genuinely felt as if we had been thrown back to Slovakia's dark old days under communist rule. Dark, depressing and completely run down. Not much improved on the way through the city to the main square. As a whole, Bratislava carries many visible scars of communism. In that respect, as a tourist, it was interesting to tour a capital that really stands as an artifact of that era. However, since then I have also been to other former occupied cities (eg Krakow and Prague) and in each case they have been cleaned up. It's now been about 21 years since the the Soviets were removed and it just didn't seem as though Bratislava had taken a forward step since that time.

As for the points of interest, they were few and unfortunately not all that great. There is the main square in the picture below which I suppose is charming enough.

You may notice the black dot protruding from the wall of that church. They actually appear at various spots in the city at about 8 locations. It is a original canon ball which was fired on the city by Napoleon's advancing army. I have not idea how the 'ball' came to be lodged so perfectly in the wall but that is the story.

Beyond the square, there is a castle on top of the hill which provides nice a panorama of the city. Again, the original castle was destroyed (I think by fire) and was later rebuilt by the communists. The castle appeared brand new. Surely they could have done something to create an authentic look? Otherwise, it completely lacked character.