Bratislava, Slowakia

I'd left the windows slightly open overnight (I'm starting to like this German obsession with fresh air) and woke up to the sounds of rain outside. It rained for a little bit into the morning but cleared up while our entire group was walking to the boat to Bratislava. We took a high-speed hydrofoil down the Danube River for 1,5 hours to reach Bratislava. When we boarded the boat, the Austrian officials stamped our passports no Slovakians seemed to care we were entering their country. The boat ride was pretty fun because you could actually step outside into a sheltered area on the side and try to stand up in the very fast winds. It was really hard to keep your eyes open facing into the wind and I was afraid I might lose my contacts... I've got some funny pictures from that.

Once in Bratislava, I went with Marion up to the Castle that dominated the skyline from a hill overlooking the city. We wandered around the grounds, took tons of photos and had a good time. On our way back into the city, we stopped at a Lebanese restaurant for lunch. We both ordered Slovak beers... and I gave half mine away because it was 12% alcohol with 1/2 L for about 1€--very, very cheap! Bratislava was very cheap, in general, and it seemed like the Slowakians were very excited to accept Euros as currency since Slowakia isn't a "Euro Land" state and it's official currency is the Slowak Kröner. The exchange rate was about 33 SK per 1€ ... and things were just very cheap in general!

As we were about to leave the restaurant, a terrible storm blew in and the waitress invited to stay and go back to our table, even though we'd already paid. The wind blew the rain sideways and I felt a little bad sitting in my comfortable, dry space while watching some other program participants running down the streets, getting soaked, while their umbrellas were flip-flopping and wrapping around on themselves.

Once the storm stopped, we left and wandered around a bit until we ran into our program leader, Dirk. He strongly recommended going to the "Hall of Mirrors" museum and we decided to go. Fortunately it was free! Once inside there were about 20 paintings of old leaders of Slowakia and maybe 20 other random paintings that were nice to look at briefly but not something to spend the afternoon on.

After that museum, we went to the Bratislava Municipal Museum because Marion had read in our information packet that it included the old torture chambers that the city used to use in the Middle Ages. We paid our 20 SK (about 60 Euro cents or 85 US cents) and went in. At first, it was just a bunch of old (like 6000 BC old) artifacts, labeled in English with such helpful labels as "Artefact from sand pit". We thought this museum was a bust until we moved on a little bit more... into some very cool rooms from the original city hall (Rathaus) that were designed/built/decorated in vastly different styles--neo-Gothic, neo-Renaissance, etc. Those rooms were a lot of fun to walk through until one of the museum attendants came up to me and started talking to me in Slowakian. I obviously had no idea what she was saying and kind of gave her that look but figured out she was trying to usher us out of there and finally said the word "tower". I just went were I was told and then she pointed at the clock tower that we were supposed to climb.

After climbing up several flights of steep, narrow winding staircases, we reached a door outside of the actual clock on the city hall. We spent several minutes out there (in a strong wind!) looking across and down on the city. I was really hoping we'd see someone from the program to call out to and to have them get pictures of us up there, but no one was to be found. After several minutes, one of the museum ladies started yelling at us from below and we thought we were in trouble for being there so long and hurried down.

Once we got down, more Slowakian was spoken at us until they said "prison" in English and pointed down some stairs. I took that as another clue like "tower" and went down the steps... several flights down and we were in the torture chambers/dungeon of the city. It still smelled very strongly of death and pain. There were a lot of original artifacts, including axes used for beheadings, masks used to torture people, ball-and-chains, finger presses and the grounds had many deep pits that I can only assume people were thrown in with God knows what else! There were also lots of images on the walls showing medieval drawings of the acts being carried out--people being sawed in half and rows of people waiting to be beheaded with the executioner just walking down the line with his ax. After about ten minutes, it got so creepy that I hurried back up to fresh air.

After the torture chambers, the museum moved on to show the way normal Bratislavan residents lived during the 1920s and 30s... basically an entire house of rooms preserved/setup in that historical period. This was possibly the best museum I went to, especially considering the price!

After that museum, we had some time to kill and Marion and I wandered around and came across an Antique shop. The shopkeepers were very, very nice and had some very interesting items for sale... Marion wound up buying a small bust of Franz Josef that was produced in the 1914-1916 years as "Patriotika" to stir up citizens' interests and pride in the military efforts of the First World War. I got a belt buckle of a WWII Luftwaffe crew person... that got carefully wrapped up and buried in my bag before returning to Berlin. (Think about it for a minute and you'll understand!!)

On the train back to Wien, most of my classmates were complaining about how boring Bratislava was and how they wished they hadn't gone. I couldn't really understand that other than they didn't realize just how incredible a "city history museum" could be!

Once back in Wien, we all went with our fearless leader Dirk to a wine tavern (Heurigen) on the northern edge of the city. I didn't stay very long because I was very tired but it was actually a lot of fun to be with the group (for a change!).