(no subject)
So, people, how are you all? I have just returned from a short sojourn in Bratislava and Budapest, a trip which, due to temporal and monetary constraints should not have been attempted. However, it was jolly nice and I’m dashed glad I went.
Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia, so it is) is a nice wee place. I think the population is about the same as that of Edinburgh (400 and something thousand). It’s the kind of place I would describe as cute rather than beautiful, and the centre is mini indeed, but it’s rather nice nonetheless. I think about 3/5 of the population live in a huge council estate sort of area which is just behind the “New Bridge” (Nový Most). Actually, the bridge looks like something from a Gerry Anderson programme, especially since flatmate took a photo of it in sepia, which gives the impression it was built in the 70s and opened by a lot of men with NHS glasses and A-team haircuts. We managed to walk into a church just before mass began, meaning we had to sit and look pious until the priest and the rest of them had proceeded in before making a quick, if not entirely silent, exit. Anyway, we only stayed there for a day, which is pretty much plenty of time to see the joint. There’s a café there where I had probably the best hot chocolate of my life, with mascarpone cheese and raspberries in it. It was so damn good that if any of you ever go to Bratislava and do not go there, I shall call you a mechanically operated donkey bottom biter. Or something, it’s a while since I’ve seen the Holy Grail.
After that we went on to Budapest, which is really big. I think over 1.5m people live there, and it really seems it. It’s got a lot of pretty buildings and things, but the skyline in general is nowhere near as cool as Prague’s. It has the advantage of more boulevards but there’s less green space. It also had the advantage (like Bratislava) of being almost tourist free - I saw not one drunken stag party the whole time I was away. Budapest is slightly shabby - there are a lot of lovely buildings which need a bit of restoration work done - but I liked it. It has the second largest synagogue in the world (New York’s is bigger) but we couldn’t go in because it was randomly closed for 2 days. On the second night we were there we ended up going to a wine-tasting festival of some sort, where we ate the biggest sausage I have ever seen and drank some random Hungarian and other wine. It’s a good idea - you buy a glass and some vouchers and then go and get some wine and give the guy some vouchers depending on how expensive the wine is, but it means I now have a nice Budapest wine festival glass. Oh, and the city also has a nice bridge designed by an Englishman and engineered by a Scot. They name a little square after the Scot (Clark Ádám Ter, because the Hungarians write the surname first) but I didn’t see one after the Englishman, which is odd. And they have cool monuments and such, like many cities. Oh, and, like the Czechs they have come excellent spellings. I liked Busz and Szex (pronounced the same as in English). We went to the Statue park too, where they have some old statues, sculptures, frescoes and monuments from Communist times. They had a couple of pretty big Lenins there. Also, I had the most amazing sushi in a restaurant there, and because we were the only people there and he was closed the next day, the chef (who used to be the sushi chef at the Hilton) brought us lots of extra stuff, which was delicious, and then he gave us some photos of the restaurant and things. So you have to go there too, because the food was totally wonderful.
So then we came back on Monday. It took almost 8 hours, although that was with a train change. When we were going through Slovakia the conductor came and started talking to us. In Slovak. Fortunately Sarah’s Czech is better than ours because she has a Czech boyfriend and has been living with his family this year, but flatmate and I could understand some of what he was saying. So, we heard about his family, and how Czechoslovakia was economically better for Slovakia than independence, and how he loves whisky, and that his home town sort of rhymes with Skotsko, and he can speak Russian and used to know German but doesn’t really now, and also can’t speak English, and when we got off the train he gave us peapods from his garden and his address, and took photos of us with his phone and then showed us to the platform for our train (he’d finished work at that point), so that was all very nice.
OK, so I’m sure you’d heard enough quite a while ago, but I hardly ever write a lot and otherwise I’d forget to tell you. So there.
Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia, so it is) is a nice wee place. I think the population is about the same as that of Edinburgh (400 and something thousand). It’s the kind of place I would describe as cute rather than beautiful, and the centre is mini indeed, but it’s rather nice nonetheless. I think about 3/5 of the population live in a huge council estate sort of area which is just behind the “New Bridge” (Nový Most). Actually, the bridge looks like something from a Gerry Anderson programme, especially since flatmate took a photo of it in sepia, which gives the impression it was built in the 70s and opened by a lot of men with NHS glasses and A-team haircuts. We managed to walk into a church just before mass began, meaning we had to sit and look pious until the priest and the rest of them had proceeded in before making a quick, if not entirely silent, exit. Anyway, we only stayed there for a day, which is pretty much plenty of time to see the joint. There’s a café there where I had probably the best hot chocolate of my life, with mascarpone cheese and raspberries in it. It was so damn good that if any of you ever go to Bratislava and do not go there, I shall call you a mechanically operated donkey bottom biter. Or something, it’s a while since I’ve seen the Holy Grail.
After that we went on to Budapest, which is really big. I think over 1.5m people live there, and it really seems it. It’s got a lot of pretty buildings and things, but the skyline in general is nowhere near as cool as Prague’s. It has the advantage of more boulevards but there’s less green space. It also had the advantage (like Bratislava) of being almost tourist free - I saw not one drunken stag party the whole time I was away. Budapest is slightly shabby - there are a lot of lovely buildings which need a bit of restoration work done - but I liked it. It has the second largest synagogue in the world (New York’s is bigger) but we couldn’t go in because it was randomly closed for 2 days. On the second night we were there we ended up going to a wine-tasting festival of some sort, where we ate the biggest sausage I have ever seen and drank some random Hungarian and other wine. It’s a good idea - you buy a glass and some vouchers and then go and get some wine and give the guy some vouchers depending on how expensive the wine is, but it means I now have a nice Budapest wine festival glass. Oh, and the city also has a nice bridge designed by an Englishman and engineered by a Scot. They name a little square after the Scot (Clark Ádám Ter, because the Hungarians write the surname first) but I didn’t see one after the Englishman, which is odd. And they have cool monuments and such, like many cities. Oh, and, like the Czechs they have come excellent spellings. I liked Busz and Szex (pronounced the same as in English). We went to the Statue park too, where they have some old statues, sculptures, frescoes and monuments from Communist times. They had a couple of pretty big Lenins there. Also, I had the most amazing sushi in a restaurant there, and because we were the only people there and he was closed the next day, the chef (who used to be the sushi chef at the Hilton) brought us lots of extra stuff, which was delicious, and then he gave us some photos of the restaurant and things. So you have to go there too, because the food was totally wonderful.
So then we came back on Monday. It took almost 8 hours, although that was with a train change. When we were going through Slovakia the conductor came and started talking to us. In Slovak. Fortunately Sarah’s Czech is better than ours because she has a Czech boyfriend and has been living with his family this year, but flatmate and I could understand some of what he was saying. So, we heard about his family, and how Czechoslovakia was economically better for Slovakia than independence, and how he loves whisky, and that his home town sort of rhymes with Skotsko, and he can speak Russian and used to know German but doesn’t really now, and also can’t speak English, and when we got off the train he gave us peapods from his garden and his address, and took photos of us with his phone and then showed us to the platform for our train (he’d finished work at that point), so that was all very nice.
OK, so I’m sure you’d heard enough quite a while ago, but I hardly ever write a lot and otherwise I’d forget to tell you. So there.