Eastern Europe trip Day 3 (Sept 2006)
Prague to Bratislava to Budapest
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This day consisted of a lot of time on the bus. The main goal was to get from Prague to Budapest, but the tour stopped in Bratislava for a couple of hours to grab some lunch.
Here are a couple of shots of Prague from the window of the bus. The big ugly thing in the background of the third and fourth pic is a TV tower.
I think this is a train station... Prague had some pretty cool architecture. Going out of prague was pretty scenic for the first bit. It was nice and hilly with lots
of trees. After a while it flattened out and switched over to farmland.
So, here's the deal with Slovakia. Czechoslovakia existed from 1918 to 1938 and 1945 to 1993. When the communists fell out of power in 1989, the two regions of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic separated into two countries. They are still pretty closely aligned, but it seemed that the Czechs got the best of the deal. They seem to have a better economy and nicer land as well.
We stopped for a couple of hours in Bratislava, which is the capital of Slovakia. It was kind of a dreary town compared to Prague. There was an incredible amount of graffiti on almost every building. Lots of the buildings looked nice from a distance, but up close you can see them falling into disrepair. This was especially true of the cathedral.
This was also the first time on the trip where someone tried to pickpocket me. 10-year old kid with a coat over his arm on a very warm day and an uncrowded street "accidentally" bumps into me. Luckily I had all my stuff in a travel wallet, so nothing was taken. That still put a damper on what little enthusiasm I had for this town.
The only redeeming feature of this stop was lunch. I ate at a place called Akkon, where I got this sort of shishkebab thing on a miniature sword. Pretty tasty. I'm sure there's other good points about Bratislava, but it's the only place from this trip that I'm not in a hurry to get back to.
So, below are some pictures from Bratislava, including the castle, museum, cathedral, river, and some nice graffiti.
We arrived in Budapest pretty close to sunset. If you want to see some very shaky video of the drive, check out the movies below. They also show some of the giant clusters of apartment blocks in Bratislava, and the houses built into the hills on the outskirts of Budapest. The first is 10MB, the second is 30MB. As in Prague, our tour guide took us from our hotel to the downtown on the metro system, where a bunch of us had dinner at a wine bar. I had some goulash and paprika chicken that wasn't too bad. After dinner, some of us took a walk around the city to see it all lit up at night. It was very scenic, but I didn't have my camera...
The next installment will have much more from Budapest....
