Bratislava Blog

I felt very proud of myself when I left the hostel in Olomouc, to go to the train station. I was supposed to go by tram no. 4 but, upon reaching the track, I had a suspicion that I would have to get to the station by some other means because there was a team of men fixing the overhead wires. That indicated no trams. I deduced that they must have put on buses in their place so went up to the main road and actually found the right bus! This may not sound a big deal but the language here has not even the minutest similarity to English, French, Italian or Spanish. And, besides that, almost no-one speaks English so, for me, it was a big deal. 

It was only 2.5 hours to reach Bratislava, in Slovakia. This is the great thing about traveling in Europe, everything is quick to get to. Night buses are a thing of the past! I was interested to see what Bratislava was like because people say that it's like the baby version of Prague. I'm not so sure of that. It's certainly tiny but lacks the charm. I did the walking tour, which was excellent and I learnt a lot, dating back to the time when it was part of the Austro/Hungarian empire. Slovakia has split and got back together with the Czech Republic about 3 times but joined the EU 8 years ago and is definitely now a thriving country. It's tax rate is a flat 16% on everything, including salaries so this makes it a sought after location for many large manufacturing businesses. Apparently they're soon to be the largest car manufacturer in the world.

You can walk around the old city in about an hour and, apart from that, there's not a lot else to do here. I'd booked to stay for 3 nights but, to any future visitors, you can get away with 1. It's always nice to have a rest though, and the hostel was very nice, so I was happy sitting in a comfy chair and catching up with some reading. Particularly as it rained all day on my last day here. I'm now off to Budapest, which I'm looking forward to. Everyone who I've met, that have travelled here, says it's a wonderful city. I'm just hoping that the weather will start to warm up soon. My legs have forgotten what it feels like to be exposed to the sun!