We said our goodbyes to friends on Sunday night and Monday. We had a lovely boat ride down the Danube (or Donai as it’s called here) on a high-speed catamaran. We briefly went outside to the upper deck and indeed we were moving quickly….managed to avoid losing a baseball hat in the wind.
The first thing we did in Bratislava was walk up, up, and up some more to our lodging. It was over 1km, over 50 stairs, and some other uphill walking while wearing our travel backpacks. We’d arrived so early that we couldn’t check in yet, but at least we could store our luggage and start exploring. We’d consulted our tourist info and noted that “walking around old town” was the main goal….and of course that included finding some geocaches. Bratislava has a wonderful statue of a worker peering out of a manhole cover — if one didn’t see the large group of tourists that regularly appeared around it one could easily miss it since it’s less than 2 feet tall as one sees the worker’s head and upper back but not as far down as his waist. Needless to say there are two(!) geocaches there — one traditional and one virtual, the trick being to find the traditional while someone takes the picture needed for the virtual.
We’d done some exploring and caching and had even “made a booking” for dinner before stopping at a cafe where we dined al fresco on spaghetti Bolognese (it’s a fine go-to while traveling — readily available, tasty, quick and generally inexpensive). At this point we planned to join the somewhat kitschy tourist train that explores Old Town after lunch. Then Jeff got a notification that Andreas had arrived — we hadn’t expected him.
Soon Andreas (our friend from Germany who attended Champoeg in 2015) arrived with Christina and Andre (friends from UK and South Africa). They were planning a complicated “whereigo” cache that toured Old Town so we joined the party.
It would be wrong not to mention the amazing sorbet we indulged in to fortify us for the upcoming walk. Everyone except Jeff partook, and each of us had 2 scoops. My chocolate sorbet was to die for, and the strawberry was also quite good. Interestingly, the sorbet vendor seemed to be vowel-deprived. I’m not aware of ever seeing a word or a business name that starts with 6 consecutive consonants: Zmrzlina (and the i was an ice cream cone, so it was spelled with had only a single vowel). No, I don't have a clue how to pronounce it, nor did I make any attempt to do so. I was, however, proud that the proprietor seemed to think my pronunciation of jahoda (strawberry) was acceptable: Yah-hoe-dah. (An interesting, though not entirely practical word for my only Slovak vocabulary)
Satiated with sugar, we then walked, walked, and walked some more covering most of the route to our lodging, all of the places we’d already seen, and a whole bunch more. I don’t have evidence to confirm or refute this, but it certainly felt that we saw every square inch of old town, or at least that anything we somehow missed wasn’t worth seeing. I’m pleased to report that we were successful with the whereigo, though we were unable to find a puzzle cache that we’d solved en route. (For those keeping score at home, we’ve found traditionals, multicaches, virtuals [new and old], earthcaches, an event and now a whereigo….guess we should try for a puzzle in Hungary.)
Our international team split up after finding the cache. Andreas returned to the train station to head back to Vienna — after we concluded that we’ve been together (and found caches together) in 6 countries: Germany, England, USA, Finland, Austria and Slovakia. Yes, Andreas is the one who tasted tar with Jeff in Finland.
We went off to select a souvenir shot glass. Christina and Andre went back to the cafe we’d found, sat at the same table, and ordered some spaghetti bolognese….and it was amusing to see them there as we walked by.
They day ended with a nice steak dinner and then some of the delicious chocolate that our Belgian friends Koen and Anja gave us in Austria. Yes, Koen, Belgian chocolate is probably the best chocolate we’ve eaten. Next on the agenda, a train to Budapest, Hungary.
Fun!
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