Boys and girls, boys who love girls, girls who love boys and possibly even boys who love boys and girls who love girls; but thats all a bit silly if you ask me [Damon],
I'm in Bratislava, Claudio has gone to bed. We've enjoyed a nice meal this evening with a few beers. Tres tres cheap, but the food could have been from the tesco down the road for all I know. CNN is on in the background, the yankee style new reporting is getting on my nerves already. God bless the BBC.
Arrrggghh
Anyway, what have I been up to. Well yesterday was a bit lathargic, what with goin on a pub crawl the evening before and all. But in true andy jackson style I didnt even make it to the club [give me credit in the land where the liscence laws are lax, going to a club is around 2:30 am]. Gradually made it up to the castle in Prague yesterday, after much effort and stopping half way for various snacks and naps.
Chap next to me seems to be flicking thru the x rated channels on the local slovak satelite.... most distracting. oooh theres the euro news, in french - jeez.
Today didnt involve muche either to be honest. Weather was as equally pants but today instead of starting to rain it made me put my sweatshirt on for fear of a chilly wind. shocking! The bus on the way to Bratislava was ok but the guy driving it had the worst BO in the world. I mean it was hideous [©Mardinoli], truly truly awful. whats more, we were front row and so had to sit behind it for 6 hours, i had to have the aircon blasting in my face to breathe without grimacing. Gross.
Bratislava is very different to Prague. The latter seems to be the slighly upper middle class cousin; the member of teh family who has made it and doesnt mind showing the fact. Nice house, nice grounds, nice car, nice family just generally nice. Whereas the former still shows its working class roots, graffiti all over the place, crumbling masonry, evidence of its soviet past, god awful 50s and 60s concrete architecture, poorer people and just generally a slighlty grubbier, yet grittier past. And for that I like it more than Prague already. I seem to get the impression that Prague is the most touristy stop on our list so far. For most of the people there Praha was the first south east they were going, the rest of their trip consisted of stops in germany austria, spain, france and the rest of central and wesetern europe. For me and the whital, Prague was the most north western of our stops, from now on its a clockwise trip down and right. Accomodation may get mroe solitary and more expensive but i think the placesw we visit will be more realistic, more representative of eastern europe as a whole, not an ex-soviet block wanna be.
German news is on now, can just pick out words like "scotland yard" and pictures of red buses and the tower bridge.
Ah well. Stuff to come, look round bratislava tommorrow, an early start possibly. Day trip to Vienna day after and then onto Hungary for the likes of Budapest, Pecs [pronounced Piiiiitch], and another one i forget.
Dont forget you guys you can post comments by clicking teh link below.
All the best.
Andrew
5th August
Dear all,
You are most priveledged to have todays blog from my diary.....
Well I set my alarm for 9am this morning but I think that was wishful thinking. Eventually rose half an hour later and enjoyed[!] a very wuick cold shower. We both got ready and went downsatirs to wait for the internet. Tesco played host to breakfast this morning, offering us a fine selection of buns, pastries and doughnuts which we enjoyed with a latte from a coffee shop nearby. Although we - or ratehr Claudio - discovered that the Bratislavan weather woudl require a sweatshirt, which we picked up back at the hostel.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon involved running about town trying to figure out what to do about a daytrip to Vienna and getting to Budapest there after...
[cuts out loads of boring crap]
...After all that larking about we thought it best to see some fo Bratislava [otehr than the public transport terminals]. We wandered into and around the old town to begin with , which much to my suprise turned out to be beautifulk - an I felt - much more "eastern" than its Czech cousin. The streets were narrower, there were pokier alleyways, bends and hills played apart of several storey brightly coloured architecture. We walked by the the cathedral, the magistrates court....
... The castle grounds offered superb views of the Danube, the rest of teh city, far off wind mill farms, nearby woods and increasingly proximate japenese tourists. We hunga round the top for a while talking about digital cameras and briefly poked our nose rounds the main courtyard of the very box like 1811 mina building of the castle.
On the return leg of our journey - our jumpers well and truly off as the Slovak afternoon sun really made its presence felt - involved a stop by the town hall before finding a bar in the old town to sit down have a beer and watch the people pass us by. What we got in fact was that and more. Around three quarters of the way through my half litre several medievally dressed Slovaks walked into the square a little way down from where we were totty spotting. Some were drumming, one was waving a a chequered flag in a rather Grand Pris stylee , two carried pikes and two muskets. After the over enthusiastic F1 wannabe flag waving the latter two proceeded to let off a shot each - blanks - which shit both me and claudio up good and proper. Post scaring the loiving daylights out of me they packed up and drummed a way past me on into the old town - presumably to go and give some hamburg/bratwurst eating english/german tourists a couple of heartattacks.
We finsihed our drinks and went in search of some dinner, endning up at the solvak restaurant from the night before. It was a lot quieter tonight and everything was pretty prompt, so prompt in fact that after I had ordered the homemade goulash with some fries and a salad, claudio in a fit of indeterminacy proceeded to order the homemade goulash with some fries and a salad. When it arrived it was very different from teh goulash we had in Prague. It was thinner, had an inch layer of oil on the top, potatoes in it, visible peices of meat, a good kick, and was served in a bowl. Of course on seeing the potatoes amongst this concoct5ion childishh instincts came into play and the back of my fork was utilised for the prupose of mashing the tatties to "soak up the juice". I ate all of mine and was most contented after it; on the otherside of the tableClaudio choked on his and left his oil/juice.
On the way back to teh hostel we stopped for some icecream and then went to tescos for some headphones. It struck me that tesco have really captivated the market in solvakia - all of them! This tesco was like no other I'd seen before. It was a conventional supermarket plus a Boots, Homebase, Halfords, Primark and Walmart all thrown in for good measure over 5 floors. They even sold motor bikes!
Okay thats enough for now, getting some evil looks from the queue.
Ta ra
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