Falkensteiner Bratislava

... of St Elizabeth who was the daughter of a Hungarian King and famed for giving food and clothes away to the poor. Her in-laws were not impressed with her charitable nature and so when stopped and asked what she was hiding in her apron (bread for the poor) she lied and said roses. By a miracle (so the story goes) when forced to reveal the contents, roses appeared. A very peaceful and calm place to be. We ...

... wouldnt exists, sometimes that little circle in the top right would just spin and spin. We developed a strategy. Type your site in, sit down, watch TV, occassionally glance to see if the site had come up or not. But it didnt matter to much for me; after all, I was still on my facebook boycott. Of course, meet some beautiful aussie girl, and here sydney counterparts. They were as classy as most people expect sydners to be. Except one wasnt ...

... hill. Great, the castle was closed for some kind of convention on the one day I am here in town. With nothing else to do I walked up the hill and trust me, if I knew how to say the f word in Czech I would have shouted it from up there for all of Bratislava to hear. It dawned on me that exposition was her word for the walkway that overlooked the Danube and the old town, and I am now getting pretty good at mastering Slovakenglish by the way. That amazing view ...

... at least a hot country with people with no personal hygiene whatsoever, who think that it is ok to smell as if they've not washed for a week, whilst wearing clothes that smell as if they've been sat in a gym bag for a week after a heavy work out. I digress..... I managed to catch a little bit of shut-eye on the journey, but not as much as I had hoped. About 3 and a half hours into the journey we crossed the border from Hungary into Slovakia, and I realised ...

... dodgy German TV viewing on. Sai and Rob hopped and skipped there way to an adult entertainment place, where £50 was wasted. The thing is, neither of them really remember what happened as Sai spilt his coke everywhere and Rob can't remember handing his money over! A very good night, despite Bratislava being below par in terms of a place to go out! Probably the most alcohol conumed by far! Spreken de Deutsch?!! Final stop is Prague tomorrow.

... then we went a few km out of town this afternoon to Devin where they have a BIG but ruined castle on the border with Austria. Sun shining down from a blue sky still. Tonight we ate Chinese - first non-local meal since we had a pizza in Helsinki nearly a month ago. Tomorrow off to Budapest. No word of riots on the streets anymore so we think we will not be troubled. Cheers to all Cathy and Phil

... town, it is a deserted concrete block party and it is quite obvious the region is just awakening from some sort of economic slump. Also, the people are not so nice. In fact at three in the morning I heard some drunken punks breaking windows not too far from the hostel. So the only good thing to come from Bratislava was that going through reduced my total train fare to Budapest by some 300 Czech crowns.

... on our bus from Thailand didn't have a visa. The poor kid had to take a train to Germany and then wait for a new visa. After a night with in Slovakia with crazy men yelling at us to "shut flip up" we awoke the next day to final make our way home at 3am once again.

... have any space. If it's not dried or powdered, I don't have room for it, a common problem amongst all cycle tourers. Camped up and spent a pleasant evening with two girls from Prague. One an optician and the other studying to become a health officer. After food, wine, spirits and many laughs I plucked up the courage and invited Volecha back to my tent. Although not the point of the evening it would have been a nice way to finish ...

Left Vienna and after a 1 hour 20 minute train trip which included a passport check at Bratislava-Petrzalka station we arrived in Bratislava. Got out at Bratislava-Hl.St. Station and went in search of a toilet. No luck as they were pay toilets and the angry man in the booth didn't want to accept Euros as we had no chance to get some Slovakian money. Searched for an ATM to get some local money to no avail, ended up exchanging money in one of the seedy looking exchange booths. Walked out of ...