Communisim at its Best

Some strange little statues thez had in Bratislava. Not very old, but still fun.
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So On another really hot day Michelle and I tried to get tickets to go to Slovakia via jet boat, but they were sold out.  This actually worked out for the best because we bought our return ticket via the river, and took a bus instead for 9 euros to Bratislava.  It's a very communist city in some parts of it, and then very European in other parts.  Basically, everything the Soviets did is hideous and everything left from before is great.  It's only been free 13 years.

We also didn't make reservations at a hostel, so finding a place to stay was a bit of work, but we ended up finding a place in the end after some footwork and some networking by the helpful people at a hostel.  Definately make reservations during the high seasons of traveling!

Pizza, beer, and a boring castle...

Another one.
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After we got our place, we did an enormous amount of walking.  I swear I'm losing weight here.  We walked up to the castle (1 hill over from our place), and like I said in the e-mail, it was a let down.  It was like they didn't really have the money or energy to make it the really amazing place that it could be.  Stupid communisim.

After that we found a nice place along a side street and had a really good pizza and beer on the side of the road, and spent a lot of time walking around the downtown area.  Then we went on another trek to the Slovak Pub, which was huge.  It had seating for 700 people!  The food was good and cheap, and we met some nice Americans and Finish people who let us sit with them and watch the Mexico-Angola world cup game.  Good times.

And Another.
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The next morning we got on the jet boat to go back to Austria.  The Slovaks apparently don't do breakfast, so we had to resort to (I know, I'm sorry) McDonalds.  Beautifully dependible American capitalism.  The Jet boat was a great ride, and on the way out we saw Devin Castle--some ruins of a once very important castle.  It looked so cool!  I want to go back to Bratislava just to see the castle.  It's too bad that we went to the boring castle and not the amazing, enormous ruins that we drove by.

Bratislava from its castle--if you look clse you can see the monotonous appartment block buildings created by the Soviets.
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That's it for Slovakia.  A fairly nice place that would have been much nicer if Stalin had been hit by a truck about 40 years before he actually died.  And on that note, good night.