Winter Break III (Bratislava)

The train station was something out of a soviet nightmare, packed with people smoking and staring up at the single arrivals and departures board, watching trains get delayed and waiting for platforms to be listed. But we found ours and got two decent seats and the ride was easy, though the views of Hungary’s small, snow-bound hamlets were depressing. We got into Bratislava (it’s in Slovakia, which I didn’t know until last week. Actually, I don’t know if I’d ever really heard of Bratislava until we decided to go there. Hmm) around 6, followed the instructions from the hostel and got on a tram, then arrived at the designated stop, exited, and could not find the street we were supposed to walk down (“Take the tram to ____, then walk down Marianska Lane to blahblah Street. We are in the courtyard on the left”). So we walked up and down random streets for an hour, then ended up at the Crown Plaza hotel and asked them directions to our cheap-ass hostel. They were able to direct us. All we had to do was find the huge Tesco and we’d find Patio Hostel. And we did. And we immediately visited the Tesco to buy frozen pizza and wine, because Patio Hostel advertised that it had kitchens on every floor. And when we got back to the hostel, we found that they did! …have a microwave and a hotplate on every floor. So we cooked our frozen pizza in a wok that we stole from another floor, because of course there were no pans of any kind in our “kitchen.” So I wasn’t in a great mood after being lost for an hour and then eating stir-fried frozen pizza. But then Rob arrived, and we were all cheered up by the familiar faces. As I said to Bill, I hadn’t seen Rob since August. I had to immediately follow that with the realization that the only time I’ve ever seen Rob was last August. But still. A familiar face in Bratislava.

We didn’t do much that night, as Bill wasn’t feeling so hot and all of the bars seemed to be closing early. So we came back to share our six-bed hostel room with three Italian men. So, if you’re reading this Kent, I spent two nights in a bedroom with five boys. But I survived. Except for coming back from the shower to see grotesquely long, hairy Italian legs extending from two butt cheeks hanging out of a pair of tiny briefs (horrifying, as for a second as I came through the door I thought they were Bill’s legs), nothing inappropriate happened.

The first morning in Bratislava, Bill, Rob and I walked down to Tesco where we miraculously found Honey Nut Cheerios. Like, the real thing. Can’t find that in Germany. Back to the hostel to eat breakfast, then out into the snow and onto the slushy, muddy streets to find out if Slovakia really was “Part of Europe Worth Seeing,” as the travel posters in the hostel common room proclaimed with terribly mediocrity. Bill found Maalox, and a pharmacist who offered to speak Slovak, German, Italian, or English, in the first place we entered. Germans don’t believe in heartburn, I guess, because we’ve never found any equivalent here, and not for lack of trying. We found the old section of town, with cute cobbled pedestrian streets, and followed signs pointing us to the castle, which sat on top of a cliff. That was a tough climb, especially as we decided to avoid stairs and wound our way up the gradual slopes of the neighborhood below the castle. Once we got to the top, we were able to see that the entire castle was shrouded in scaffolding and surrounded by chain link fences. And nothing besides the guest shop was open, except a bathroom I found with my superior observational skills. So we walked back down and found a coffee shop. Rob seriously changed the mood of the place by choosing Elton John and Queen on the jukebox, which replaced the metal-like music that had dominated when we came in. I don’t think the pair of cops eating fried chicken and drinking beer, guns at their waists, were too happy with his choice, but luckily for us they went back out on duty, having finished their 1pm beers, not long after. We soon followed, and went back to Tesco to buy sandwich stuff, including cheddar cheese (not cheap, but worth it), a cheese Germans have yet to discover. After lunch, I worked on some stuff for my classes, took a quiz in Gerontology, while Bill and Rob napped. We got up a few hours later to get ready for dinner, which was entirely motivated by the “Mexican” section we’d found in Tesco. Tortillas, salsa, taco seasoning, guacamole. It was bliss. And we were able to make our bliss entirely in the wok on the hotplate at the hostel. I did forget to mention that on each of these trips to Tesco, we had to stand in line at the register for a minimum of 15 minutes. The place was packed every time we went, with lines curling all through the aisles. It was insane. And so soviet. After we ate our tacos and showered, we were joined in the hostel room by the Italians.

Though Bill and Rob spent our initial time there talking shit about Italians, especially Italian travelers in Europe, on that second night the loud threesome became our friends, making an initial appeal by offering Bill and I vodka while they pregamed in the room. We had our own vodka, and got it to make drinks (it was about 8pm by this time. Nothing scandalous), and they waited until we mixed ours to toast with us and begin imbibing. And then came back an hour later to tell us about a club they’d heard of that was supposed to have good dancing. So dance we did.

But first we had to find the place. I asked at reception and the girl drew an X on my map in some white space (ie no roads) between the castle and the river. Hmm. So we made a few false starts trying to find our way across the snowy terrain. And unexpectedly came across a break in some fence that revealed an arch-shaped opening into the hill upon which the castle sat. We walked through a long tunnel, and came to another tunnel which opened onto huge arched rooms, one for smoking and sitting, the other for dancing. It was quite a scene. The music was excellent but the lights were very strobe-y, kind of too strobe-y. It was a little overwhelming. But fun. We left around 3am, as our next day was to be travel-filled. Got home, went to sleep, and were awakened by the Italians getting in and getting to bed around 5am. And then had to get up ourselves a few hours later to pack and eat breakfast and make our way back to the train station, where we bid farewell to Rob. As Bill and I sat down in a compartment on the train we thought was going back to Budapest, where we’d catch our plane, I turned to the girl sharing the compartment with us, to confirm that we were on the right train. It turned out that she was the one on the wrong train, and would have been taken hours out of her way if I hadn’t asked. And that meant that Bill and I got an empty compartment to read and sleep and eat in for the journey.