What began as a four-person (myself, Aaron, Luke and Kristof) trip to Zagreb, Croatia ended as just Kristof and I in Bratislava, Slovakia, getting perhaps the most authentic tourist experience possible, short of staying in a home-stay. I should mention that before I got there, my sole knowledge of Bratislava had come from Eurotrip (not a very accurate portrayal)
Our journey started on Thursday night with telephone calls around to see if anyone was still interested in going somewhere this weekend. Croatia had fallen through due to costs and Fraser not being able to make it up to the capital and interest in traveling had waned. The only person from the original group still up for an adventure was Kristof. There were trains to Bratislava leaving Keleti Pályaudvar at 9:50, 11:45, 13:50, 16:15, 16:45 and 19:45, so we agreed to meet at the international ticket office at noon to buy tickets for the 13:50 train.
The next morning I did the last bit of planning for the trip: finding a hostel for the two of us. I don’t have internet at my flat, so I called Mihály to ask him the huge favor of looking up hostels on the internet. A quick Google search yielded several results, so I just wrote down directions and price quotes to the first two. The more promising (read: cheaper) of the results was the Hostel Star, at somewhere in the neighborhood of €12-15.
Kristof and I met at noon as planned and got in line for our tickets. We weren’t sure how much the tickets would cost, but had been told that train fare to Bratislava was pretty darn cheapo. We didn’t realize just how cheapo that was. We got to the front of the line and I asked for a round trip ticket to Bratislava. Since there were two of us standing in front of her, the ticket seller asked us if we wanted a two-person ticket. I was about to say “No” when Kristof said, “Yes”. The line was long, the people working the windows were slow, and it would be easy enough for him to pay me back later so I agreed that yes, we wanted a two-person ticket. And how much was the grand total for two round trip tickets to the capital of Slovakia? 7800 HUF, (about $40).
We were done buying our ticket by 12:40 and our train wasn’t set to leave for over an hour so I asked Kristof if he wanted to find a cup of coffee somewhere, a question I really didn’t need to ask since the boy loves coffee even more than I do. For those of you who think it’s gross that I occasionally enjoy a coffee from Starbucks, you’ll really cringe at where we ended up: the McCafé across the street from the train station. We enjoyed our coffees, talked about David Sedaris (side note: From reading this blog, my dad says I’m going to be the next David Sedaris. Too bad I’m not male, gay or Greek. Or nearly as hilarious), and took advantage of the free WCs. At 13:45 we boarded the train departing Keleti bound for Bratislava en route to Prague. Since the train was originating in Budapest we found a compartment to ourselves, no problem. As we sat in our seats across from eachother talking, a head poked in the door. A head belonging to Rob Hildebrand, another BSM student who was attracted by the American voices (but had no idea they were going to be attached to people he knew) and wanted to say hi instead of studying for the GRE he was traveling to Prague to take. He quickly gathered his things and joined us in our compartment for the duration of our shared time on the train.
When Kristof and I said goodbye to Rob and got off the train it was approximately 16:30 and due to daylight savings time the sun was already set. We followed the directions to Hostel Star Mihály had read to me from the website, buying tickets and taking the 61 bus and getting off at the Slowackcho stop. Too bad once we got off the bus, turned to Beckovska st. and walked approximately 50 meters as the directions told us to, the hostel was nowhere in sight. We wandered the neighborhood for a good half an hour before we finally found the hostel, another bus stop beyond the one we had gotten off at, and on another section of Beckovsa st. The neighborhood was far sketchier than we had expected and the people we found at the hostel were not the young crowd we were expecting from all of the stories of hostels we had heard before. This was not, in fact, a hostel but a hotel, and from the looks of it a fairly seedy one. We had to show our passports to get a room and the clerk was surprised, almost offended, that we had Hungarian visas but no Slovakian visa. He, thankfully, still gave us a key and we got a room for the two of us for the night for 580 Sk (about $27).
We let ourselves into our room, put down our non-valuables, and left in search of dinner and the night’s entertainment (making sure to keep our valuables on our persons due to the sketchy nature of our accommodations). Our hostel was located about as far from city center as possible while still being technically within Bratislava city limits so we weren’t sure where to go. We found a large, ritzy mall nearby that we wandered around in first. The mall featured, not only an ice skating rink, but also a life-sized chessboard, ping-pong tables, a bouncy castle and a small track for big-wheels. We decided not to settle for food court food, but to instead find some more authentic Slovakian cuisine. Let me tell you, we found it.
Down the road from the mall, about three quarters of a mile away, was a restaurant called Sunny. We’d already poked our heads in a few other restaurants/pubs and this seemed the least offensive of them all so we asked for a table for two. The host spoke no English, but asked if we spoke German. “Kleine” (a little), Kristof replied. I asked “Beszel Magyarul?” (Do you speak Hungarian?) “No”. He led us to our table and spoke short sentences to Kristof in German (his Deutch knowledge was limited to what he had learned in high school, and he and I are both currently seniors in college, if that gives an idea). We read the menu (which was all in Slovakian) until a waitress came up to us speaking Hungarian. Hooray! A language we recognized! …but didn’t really understand. I asked her in stilted Hungarian if there was an English menu? No. Her Hungarian was better than mine, but I am almost certain she wasn’t fluent. Next she called over a girl who was another Sunny waitress, on break I’m almost certain. This girl spoke English quite well and was able to take our orders. Kristof asked for a chicken dinner and I asked if they had something with beef. “Biftek?” Ok, sure, whatever you think is good. Then she asked for our drink orders. We both ordered beer and she asked us if we wanted 10 or 12%. “Whaaa?” Yes, that’s right -- 10 or 12% alcohol. In Slovakia that’s something you can choose. We each ordered a pint of 10%.
We sat sipping our ridiculously alcoholic beers, getting quite giggly on a third of a glass each due to our empty stomachs. Then the food arrived. Fries for me, ok. Chicken for Kristof, sure. Two salads and a plate of toast… ok, not sure who ordered the toast. And then a dish was placed in front of me. In the center of it was a pile of raw, not-quite-ground beef with what appeared to be a raw egg cracked on top of it. Surrounding the lump of everything-you’re-not-supposed-to-eat-raw were piles of ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, whole cloves of garlic, and sliced raw onions.
We stared at the monstrosity before me, unsure of what to do next. We giggled, not sure whether I was supposed to mix it up and send it back to be cooked, a sort of make-your-own meat loaf, or if I should just send it back. Before I had a chance to make up my mind a woman who saw my incredulous expression from several tables away rushed up to our table, patted me on the back, and went to work on my plate. She expertly mixed the beef and egg with the surrounding ingredients, taking larger amounts of mustard and ketchup with my fork and knife, mixing them with the beef and smaller amounts of salt and pepper, and then adding more mustard until the glop was some sort of consistency she was pleased with. “Ok,” we thought, “this is when she takes the plate back to the kitchen and they cook this mixture and bring me back meatloaf.”
No.
She picked up one of the pieces of toast, spread a thick layer of meat-goo on the bread and handed it to me and then did the same for Kristof. We panicked. Unsure of what else to do, we each took a bite. Egeségedre.
Together we finished the “oh crap we’re not supposed to be eating this” dish, and sat talking while we worked on the rest of our meals. I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the meal once my beer was gone. When I returned there was a full beer in its place. “Kristof… is that another beer?” Kristof explained, giggling apologetically, that the German speaking waiter had come up while I was gone and said “Zwei?” Kristof had half nodded, acknowledging that he understood a word in German, and the waiter had returned minutes later with zwei more 10% pints. Oh lord.
Once we had finished our meal and our beers we decided we had had enough excitement for one night and that we didn’t really need to do more exploring before we went back to the hotel and to sleep. We paid the bill, walked back to the hotel, talked for a while, giggled more about what we had put in our stomachs at Sunny, braved the corridors with old men in boxer shorts to go to the bathroom to brush our teeth, and then finally went to sleep before midnight.
The beds weren’t the most comfortable, but we both slept fine, and woke up around 8:00 am. We were supposed to be out by 10, but ended up packed up and ready to go by 9-ish. There was a restaurant attached to the hotel, so after we checked out we wandered down to the (virtually deserted) restaurant. A hostess seated us and we ordered coffees then took a look at the menu, which thankfully was complete with pictures.
After breakfast we bought bus tickets from the hotel clerk and took the bus back to the train station to find out when the trains would be going to Budapest. 11:45, 12:44, 15:45 and 19:45. We decided to go for the 19:45 train, since it would still get us back to Budapest before the metro curfew, acquired a free map from tourist information, then set out to explore. The time was about 11:30 am.
We spent the day aimlessly wandering around Bratislava, stopping around 14:00 for lunch in a café where the staff thankfully spoke English (no biftek repeats). We saw the castle, bought a few souvenirs, discovered that the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is actually in Bratislava (which I’m sure says something about the city itself), witnessed lots and lots of tourists, took pictures and had quite a fantastic, relaxing day. I became very glad it was just the two of us, since we had no plan or agenda. The more people, the harder it becomes to make spur of the moment decisions like, “let’s go here for lunch,” “my stomach doesn’t feel so good, I think the biftek is catching up with me… let’s go into that hotel and use the bathroom”, or “well I think the biftek is mostly out of my system, but let’s aimlessly wander in the direction of a drugstore for some ‘happy belly’ drugs” (side note: we found no open drugstores, thus no happy belly drugs, so I settled on a remedy Éva would have approved of: dark chocolate).
After the sun went down we sat in a park eating yogurt and cookies
and talking, then did more wandering. We eventually found our way back to a recognizable area of town where we took advantage of another upscale hotel’s bathroom, then worked our way back up north to the train station. We got there with a little less than an hour to spare, wandered the train station in search of ways to spend my left over Slovak currency, ate grapefruit and waited for our train.
The train back to Budapest was entirely uneventful. We didn’t get a cabin this time and instead sat in general second-class seating. We listened to music, Kristof wrote postcards, I drew pictures and then we settled down to reading (Malcom X for Kristof, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for me). We got back to Budapest at almost exactly 22:30, boarded the M2, hugged goodbye and thanked eachother for the fantastic adventure, then parted ways when he got off 4 stops before me.
Our journey started on Thursday night with telephone calls around to see if anyone was still interested in going somewhere this weekend. Croatia had fallen through due to costs and Fraser not being able to make it up to the capital and interest in traveling had waned. The only person from the original group still up for an adventure was Kristof. There were trains to Bratislava leaving Keleti Pályaudvar at 9:50, 11:45, 13:50, 16:15, 16:45 and 19:45, so we agreed to meet at the international ticket office at noon to buy tickets for the 13:50 train.
The next morning I did the last bit of planning for the trip: finding a hostel for the two of us. I don’t have internet at my flat, so I called Mihály to ask him the huge favor of looking up hostels on the internet. A quick Google search yielded several results, so I just wrote down directions and price quotes to the first two. The more promising (read: cheaper) of the results was the Hostel Star, at somewhere in the neighborhood of €12-15.
Kristof and I met at noon as planned and got in line for our tickets. We weren’t sure how much the tickets would cost, but had been told that train fare to Bratislava was pretty darn cheapo. We didn’t realize just how cheapo that was. We got to the front of the line and I asked for a round trip ticket to Bratislava. Since there were two of us standing in front of her, the ticket seller asked us if we wanted a two-person ticket. I was about to say “No” when Kristof said, “Yes”. The line was long, the people working the windows were slow, and it would be easy enough for him to pay me back later so I agreed that yes, we wanted a two-person ticket. And how much was the grand total for two round trip tickets to the capital of Slovakia? 7800 HUF, (about $40).
We were done buying our ticket by 12:40 and our train wasn’t set to leave for over an hour so I asked Kristof if he wanted to find a cup of coffee somewhere, a question I really didn’t need to ask since the boy loves coffee even more than I do. For those of you who think it’s gross that I occasionally enjoy a coffee from Starbucks, you’ll really cringe at where we ended up: the McCafé across the street from the train station. We enjoyed our coffees, talked about David Sedaris (side note: From reading this blog, my dad says I’m going to be the next David Sedaris. Too bad I’m not male, gay or Greek. Or nearly as hilarious), and took advantage of the free WCs. At 13:45 we boarded the train departing Keleti bound for Bratislava en route to Prague. Since the train was originating in Budapest we found a compartment to ourselves, no problem. As we sat in our seats across from eachother talking, a head poked in the door. A head belonging to Rob Hildebrand, another BSM student who was attracted by the American voices (but had no idea they were going to be attached to people he knew) and wanted to say hi instead of studying for the GRE he was traveling to Prague to take. He quickly gathered his things and joined us in our compartment for the duration of our shared time on the train.
When Kristof and I said goodbye to Rob and got off the train it was approximately 16:30 and due to daylight savings time the sun was already set. We followed the directions to Hostel Star Mihály had read to me from the website, buying tickets and taking the 61 bus and getting off at the Slowackcho stop. Too bad once we got off the bus, turned to Beckovska st. and walked approximately 50 meters as the directions told us to, the hostel was nowhere in sight. We wandered the neighborhood for a good half an hour before we finally found the hostel, another bus stop beyond the one we had gotten off at, and on another section of Beckovsa st. The neighborhood was far sketchier than we had expected and the people we found at the hostel were not the young crowd we were expecting from all of the stories of hostels we had heard before. This was not, in fact, a hostel but a hotel, and from the looks of it a fairly seedy one. We had to show our passports to get a room and the clerk was surprised, almost offended, that we had Hungarian visas but no Slovakian visa. He, thankfully, still gave us a key and we got a room for the two of us for the night for 580 Sk (about $27).
We let ourselves into our room, put down our non-valuables, and left in search of dinner and the night’s entertainment (making sure to keep our valuables on our persons due to the sketchy nature of our accommodations). Our hostel was located about as far from city center as possible while still being technically within Bratislava city limits so we weren’t sure where to go. We found a large, ritzy mall nearby that we wandered around in first. The mall featured, not only an ice skating rink, but also a life-sized chessboard, ping-pong tables, a bouncy castle and a small track for big-wheels. We decided not to settle for food court food, but to instead find some more authentic Slovakian cuisine. Let me tell you, we found it.
Down the road from the mall, about three quarters of a mile away, was a restaurant called Sunny. We’d already poked our heads in a few other restaurants/pubs and this seemed the least offensive of them all so we asked for a table for two. The host spoke no English, but asked if we spoke German. “Kleine” (a little), Kristof replied. I asked “Beszel Magyarul?” (Do you speak Hungarian?) “No”. He led us to our table and spoke short sentences to Kristof in German (his Deutch knowledge was limited to what he had learned in high school, and he and I are both currently seniors in college, if that gives an idea). We read the menu (which was all in Slovakian) until a waitress came up to us speaking Hungarian. Hooray! A language we recognized! …but didn’t really understand. I asked her in stilted Hungarian if there was an English menu? No. Her Hungarian was better than mine, but I am almost certain she wasn’t fluent. Next she called over a girl who was another Sunny waitress, on break I’m almost certain. This girl spoke English quite well and was able to take our orders. Kristof asked for a chicken dinner and I asked if they had something with beef. “Biftek?” Ok, sure, whatever you think is good. Then she asked for our drink orders. We both ordered beer and she asked us if we wanted 10 or 12%. “Whaaa?” Yes, that’s right -- 10 or 12% alcohol. In Slovakia that’s something you can choose. We each ordered a pint of 10%.
We sat sipping our ridiculously alcoholic beers, getting quite giggly on a third of a glass each due to our empty stomachs. Then the food arrived. Fries for me, ok. Chicken for Kristof, sure. Two salads and a plate of toast… ok, not sure who ordered the toast. And then a dish was placed in front of me. In the center of it was a pile of raw, not-quite-ground beef with what appeared to be a raw egg cracked on top of it. Surrounding the lump of everything-you’re-not-supposed-to-eat-raw were piles of ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, whole cloves of garlic, and sliced raw onions.
We stared at the monstrosity before me, unsure of what to do next. We giggled, not sure whether I was supposed to mix it up and send it back to be cooked, a sort of make-your-own meat loaf, or if I should just send it back. Before I had a chance to make up my mind a woman who saw my incredulous expression from several tables away rushed up to our table, patted me on the back, and went to work on my plate. She expertly mixed the beef and egg with the surrounding ingredients, taking larger amounts of mustard and ketchup with my fork and knife, mixing them with the beef and smaller amounts of salt and pepper, and then adding more mustard until the glop was some sort of consistency she was pleased with. “Ok,” we thought, “this is when she takes the plate back to the kitchen and they cook this mixture and bring me back meatloaf.”
No.
She picked up one of the pieces of toast, spread a thick layer of meat-goo on the bread and handed it to me and then did the same for Kristof. We panicked. Unsure of what else to do, we each took a bite. Egeségedre.
Together we finished the “oh crap we’re not supposed to be eating this” dish, and sat talking while we worked on the rest of our meals. I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the meal once my beer was gone. When I returned there was a full beer in its place. “Kristof… is that another beer?” Kristof explained, giggling apologetically, that the German speaking waiter had come up while I was gone and said “Zwei?” Kristof had half nodded, acknowledging that he understood a word in German, and the waiter had returned minutes later with zwei more 10% pints. Oh lord.
Once we had finished our meal and our beers we decided we had had enough excitement for one night and that we didn’t really need to do more exploring before we went back to the hotel and to sleep. We paid the bill, walked back to the hotel, talked for a while, giggled more about what we had put in our stomachs at Sunny, braved the corridors with old men in boxer shorts to go to the bathroom to brush our teeth, and then finally went to sleep before midnight.
The beds weren’t the most comfortable, but we both slept fine, and woke up around 8:00 am. We were supposed to be out by 10, but ended up packed up and ready to go by 9-ish. There was a restaurant attached to the hotel, so after we checked out we wandered down to the (virtually deserted) restaurant. A hostess seated us and we ordered coffees then took a look at the menu, which thankfully was complete with pictures.
After breakfast we bought bus tickets from the hotel clerk and took the bus back to the train station to find out when the trains would be going to Budapest. 11:45, 12:44, 15:45 and 19:45. We decided to go for the 19:45 train, since it would still get us back to Budapest before the metro curfew, acquired a free map from tourist information, then set out to explore. The time was about 11:30 am.
We spent the day aimlessly wandering around Bratislava, stopping around 14:00 for lunch in a café where the staff thankfully spoke English (no biftek repeats). We saw the castle, bought a few souvenirs, discovered that the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is actually in Bratislava (which I’m sure says something about the city itself), witnessed lots and lots of tourists, took pictures and had quite a fantastic, relaxing day. I became very glad it was just the two of us, since we had no plan or agenda. The more people, the harder it becomes to make spur of the moment decisions like, “let’s go here for lunch,” “my stomach doesn’t feel so good, I think the biftek is catching up with me… let’s go into that hotel and use the bathroom”, or “well I think the biftek is mostly out of my system, but let’s aimlessly wander in the direction of a drugstore for some ‘happy belly’ drugs” (side note: we found no open drugstores, thus no happy belly drugs, so I settled on a remedy Éva would have approved of: dark chocolate).
After the sun went down we sat in a park eating yogurt and cookies
and talking, then did more wandering. We eventually found our way back to a recognizable area of town where we took advantage of another upscale hotel’s bathroom, then worked our way back up north to the train station. We got there with a little less than an hour to spare, wandered the train station in search of ways to spend my left over Slovak currency, ate grapefruit and waited for our train.
The train back to Budapest was entirely uneventful. We didn’t get a cabin this time and instead sat in general second-class seating. We listened to music, Kristof wrote postcards, I drew pictures and then we settled down to reading (Malcom X for Kristof, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for me). We got back to Budapest at almost exactly 22:30, boarded the M2, hugged goodbye and thanked eachother for the fantastic adventure, then parted ways when he got off 4 stops before me.
Kristof on the train
Rob on the train. The three of us were sitting talking after the train got going when we heard some American voices yelling "Omigaw! It was cah-RAZY! Omigaw, like, omigaw!". Rob turned to us and told us that he wouldn't have investigated those American voices.
Welcome to Bratislava!
Mommy, you raised me good, you would barely let me eat raw cookie dough and you overcooked my steaks my whole life... so why did I eat this?
The view from our hotel window. Remember the view from BJ's in Prague?
Kristof looking kind of sketchy in our sketchy room.
No wonder we got lost trying to find the hotel.
Cows in tophats on a billboard
Dried up fountain in the palace garden.
Who knew it was in Bratislava? (Glad to see that Slovakians love Douglas Adams, too)
Kristof and I in front of the Restaurant at the End of the Galaxy (Universe)
The windows on the left were painted with a Van Gogh theme. The building on the right was a huge, beautiful church.
Empty back-street in Bratislava.
The view of the other side of the Danube from the castle wall. In the distance to the right you can barely make out windmills.
I tried to take a picture of me and Kristof with Bratislava behind us, but I had the zoom on, and then my camera ran out of batteries, so this is the best we've got.Now it's Sunday. This morning my flat got invaded by Éva's son in law, nephew, nephew's wife and 5 little boys. It was a very noisy, tiring morning.
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