Bratislava

Apropos of nice cities that you wouldn't visit if you were just doing the typical European Toure, Bratislava. When we first planned to go to Budapest and Vienna, we wanted to finish off with a few days in Prague, another quite well known city. We couldn't find a particularly inexpensive way to do that, so we decided to hit up Bratislava instead, considering it's basically parallel with other destinations. Luckily, the Hungarian friend we were meeting in Budapest knew a few Slovakians of Hungarian descent who studied there, so we managed to get the local touch. It was, admittedly, good luck for us. Bratislava is quite pretty and very historical, but to the naked eye it is a pretty typical Central European Old City (TM). Without the benefit of a little native explanation we wouldn't have gotten quite as much out of it. Of course, that's true for any city, and I think for a day or a day and a half, Bratislava is a good place to spend a restful interlude in an otherwise pretty crazy holiday. The Castle is lovely and has a view into three countries, a must see, but otherwise, I would recommend just roaming around free and trying to find the myriad little knick-knacks that are hidden throughout the city, from the compass rose that gives the distance and direction to most major world cities to the random grid of tiles that chimes when you step on it. That's basically what we did for most of our little less than 24 hours in the capital of Slovakia.

The rest of the time, when we weren't sleeping, we spent in the pub. Our 'tour guides' were a pretty cool lot, and since we had lost about half of our group to shopping, we started and ended our day in the appropriately named Slovakian Pub as a meeting point. Even though it clearly intended to present a picture of 'traditional Slovakia' for the tourists- picture a smoke-filled room with long benches, winding further and further back into a tiny building, all next door to a McDonalds and surrounded by ten chain cafes and Kebab shops for a picture of the overly incongruous anachronism - we were assured that it was still basically a good pub, if a little pricey for students. We all tried each of the typical local drinks: a Slovakian beer, Kofola, the sarsparilla-like local competitor to Coke, and for protection against the February wind, a Tatarski Tea, a hard liquor whose strong taste polarized our guides and whose only resemblance to tea was the way it burned your gut if you drank it too quickly. It was a mark of the unpredictable differences in Purchasing Power Parity even between countries right near each other that in Slovakia we paid 4 Euros for these three drinks when we wandered back into the streets warm and slightly jollier than before, while in Vienna a single beer would have costed around or more than three Euros. It's something important to keep in mind while travelling; even apart from actual levels of poverty or wealth in a country, because Slovakia is by no means a poor country except by comparison to some of the most wealthy norther European countries, a dollar can go a lot further in some places than others. Remember that, and try to plan your trips around that contrast. A trip through Hungary, Slovakia and Austria can average out to be cheaper than just a few days in Scandinavia countries.