Bratislava, Slovakia

We hopped on the train and in only an hour we made the trip from Vienna to Bratislava, Slovakia. I'm starting to learn that you cannot judge a city by it's train station. No matter what city you are in, the train and/or bus station will be the worst place in town. Bratislava was a good example. Once we caught a bus into the old town, we found a beautiful cobblestone center, a "mini-Prague" as the guidebooks would say.

This bridge is known locally as the "UFO Bridge" due to the revolving restuarant at the top of the span. It crosses the Danube and divides the picturesque old town from the massive soviet style apartment blocks of the new town. Bratislava became the capital of the newly independent Slovakia in 1993, following their "Velvet Divorce" from the Czech Republic.

We had an adventure finding our lodging here. We opted to rent a private apartment for the first time. We found the building easy enough, but the front door was locked with a big panel of buzzer buttons next to it. We had no idea what button was the one, so we tried several. We got a few polite "wrong number" smiles, and finally one old lady really chewed us out for dragging her out of her apartment. We sat on the stoop in dejection and were about to give up, when I noticed a button off of the main panel in big letters APARTMENT MUZEJNA. We got in and the place was excellent.

We had a fun night in some of Bratislava's pubs and found the cheapest beer of the trip; 97 cents for Budvar.