Antares Hotel Bratislava

... help planning ahead and having a time schedule. Now I am no longer military, and no longer good with schedules or time management. This showed today. Some things as I will explain, were out of my hands though.

First off, extremely tired. After having only about 4 hours sleep, I was up and on my way to the station. That was easy. The train in Prague was even on time. It all went pear shaped from there. The train was delayed on the line for about ...

... constructed over by communist houses - that is according to my book (which is very very much anti-communist, i kind of feel the need to get defensive here! :)). You will see on the photos.
The architecture here is of different styles, from Baroque to Gothic to Classical and beyond. I realized finally (although knew it all along deep inside) that my favorite is Gothic style. I can stare at it for hours, and i get so emotional at some of the most beautiful ...

... Europa como nunca havia imaginado, uma Europa cheia de contrastes e diversificada. A foto abaixo ilustra bem a minha Bratislava.Onde a vida é simples, sem luxos, sem riquezas, mas ainda assim vivida em uma maneira bela e toda única.

... ludzi i bawiac sie w "zgadnij po wygladzie, z jakiego on/ona jest kraju". Calkiem zabawne, jak nie tylko po rysach, ale tez strojach, wyrazie twarzy, nie mowiac juz o jezyku, mozna okreslic, jakiej ktos jest narodowosci. Na przyklad Polaka rozpoznam na kilometr! Przeszla jakas grupa mlodych ludzi i Marcin mowi "to sa Niemcy", a ja na to:"obstawiam, ze Austriacy". Nie wiem, skad mi sie wzielo. Za chwile slyszymy, mowia po niemiecku, ale z innym akcentem niz ...

Managed to stop off in Bratislava for a day trip on our way to Vienna. It definitely has signs of communism with plenty of towering residential blocks all the same colour. The city is pretty small in comparison to other European capitals...but none the less has plenty of character and a massive shopping centre! We caught a bus to the city centre...but missed the stop ...

... downtown. We weren't totally sure where we were going, but we had a pretty good idea. The outside of town where we were was a little shabby looking, but really not that much worse then some parts of Vienna. However, once we got to the downtown, the buildings all of the sudden got much prettier, and the views were very nice. The buildings looked very similar to what you would think of as a quaint European town, and were very well kept. Unfortunately I decided not to ...

... we thought it needed "reparating" (an attempt at renovating we assumed). We decided we were generally very impressed, but a little work on the exterior wouldn't do any harm. At the top of the castle we decided to put use to our left over bread roll by giving it eyes made from an apple sticker, a mouth made from a segment of tangerine and a toupet made from tangerine peel. We named the bread roll Max as the packet it came in was labelled "Diabet-Max". He is my new best friend ...

Started our train travel today by arriving at the wrong station. We rushed cross town to the other station and caught our first train. Crossing the border into Slovakia brought armed soldiers onto the train, eyeing everyone's passports with suspicion. No problems there ...

... during daylight hours. We had a taxi booked for the airport at 7.30am tommorow and we left our hotel this eve at 7.30 pm so despite our lack of time we went and had a great final night out the serious one had a little grump about the slovak bar staff here and there but they did come accross as a little odd to us we just did not have the time to have a good chat with them. ohh well back to blighty tommorow

... Sat in the lounge watching TV, something I've not done for months! Did some route planning and went to the sports hall to meet Peter, who had acted as translator when I first arrived. The music and screams I heard were not a pre teen disco, but a dance workshop. The Uno star dance club was based in Kosice and although Peter now lived and worked in Bratislava, he took a week off work to help run the event. Very charitable, and ...