Our trip today
A short night’s sleep. We got in at 2am yesterday after our caprioles with Brno and hotels, and midnight charging. What we found when we got back to our hotel room yesterday night (err, this morning) is that the room ended up being a double after all. This is an ironic touch to the hectic day, because the first hotel (the one with a walk-in) actually had a double room available with a king-sized bed, but we skipped because spooning ain’t our thing. However, this was a double with two single mattresses, so I manufactured a twin out of this room just before falling asleep. I slept on the tapestry bed cover as a sheet, and I slept wonderfully.
Our breakfast had a barista! And oh yes did I make use of this service, twice even, and the caffeine was lovely. Our toast with eggs and orange juice were okie-dokie and after consuming the morning calories, we jumped in Tessa (hey, look, 270km on the dial!) and punched in Bratislava, Slovakia. It’s not too far from here, and while Paul manoeuvres our vehicle through Brno one last time, I take to the laptop and write up yesterday’s blogpost (you’ll note, I’ve been somewhat slow these last few days, as our internet has been not too stellar and we have many pictures!).
I blink, and we write a bunch of words, some serious, most of them silly, into our log for September 13th. All of the sudden, Paul informs me that we’re arriving at the Bratislava supercharger, which is conveniently located at the mall. I quickly finish my last few sentences and insert pictures of our day, and git commit it all.
In the mall, we do the needful at the local water closet, and on the way over there we both notice a familiar sight: A Peak Performance shop! We are super curious to see if we got ripped off in Sundsvall, Sweden, when we both bought some waterproof, breathing, Gore-tex, professional (ahum) hiking jackets. But much to our surprise, we paid roughly 16% less in Sweden than here in Slovakia. Wow! We decide not to return our jackets, which is all the better, cuz they’re still in our car and we’re here.
Bratislava
After we charge “enough” to get to Wien tomorrow (enough is a relative term, I also tend to think we charged “enough” yesterday morning, and look where the day ended …), we look for a parkinglot and are delighted to learn that Bolt and Tier are also active here. Hey, that rhymes! We find a parkinglot or three right in city center, and while the first one is kinda full, we score on the second one and drop the car there. A few meters later, the Tiers are under our feet and we scoot off into the old town.
One thing I should’ve mentioned earlier, scooting in Old Townses is not pleasant. They have what the Dutch call Kinderkopjes on the roads (cobblestones in English) and when barreling over these on a scooter, your hands, wrists, and watch get really messed up. We try our best to avoid these kidhead-shaped cobblestones, but it’s not always avoidable. So while our wrists start to hate us with an ever growing passion, we see the following sites in Bratislava:
- Our first port of call is Čumil (The Working Man)
- Then, we go West to Pawerov dom (Pawera House)
- Only to go East from whence we came, to see Farský kostol sv. Alžbety (The Blue Church)
- But why stop here, when you can go West again, to pose with Napoleonský vojak (Napoleon’s Army Soldier)
- We stop here to eat some Rabbit, Pierogi and Garlic Soup at a local Slovak bistro
- And around the corner, take a look at a local celeb Schöner Náci
- But really what we want to see is the Hhhhhhhhhh-rad (ask Paul how to pronounce “Castle”), so we go there, to find the Jewish Memorial
- After scaling some steps (and logging a Geocache, my first in Slovakia!), we arrive at Národná rada Slovenskej republiky (National Council of The Slovak Republic), which is …
- … just a few steps away from the famous Bratislavský hrad (Bratislava Castle)
The castle is gorgeous, and I can see how the Slovak people are proud of this building. It’s pontifical, has beautiful statues along its sides, four solid towers, and a majestic statue of king Svatopluk on horseback at its entry. We walk the grounds, and I find and log one geocache on a little bridge near Viedenská brána (Vienna Gate), the second in Slovakia.
We also visit Bosorka (the Witch). According to the artist, the sculpture is supposed to be a monument to all the women who were accused of witchcraft and you know what the result was when that happens in medieval times. It looks like the sculpture is trying to subvert the traditional image of a witch by depicting the woman as attractive with a luscious head of hair and scantily dressed. Beside her are a number of birds all staring admiringly at her. Later, we found out that it’s common to sit on her lap and have somebody take a picture of you. If only we knew! Her lap is Pim- and Paul-less in our pictures, but we admire the artist and her work none the less!
I really don’t want another hotel-fiasco, so I choose wisely and (try to) select a nice hotel in Bratislava. Frustratingly, every hotel I see has either a King bed or a Queen, but none of them have twin rooms. I widen my search, and what catches my eye? A resort/spa in Hungary, just 20km or so away from here! Wellllll, I haven’t ever gotten a geocache in Hungary either, so it seems to me that we have a winner on our hands. I book the thing while Paul calls to confirm that indeed we can have a twin-room, which we can. The drive is schnell erledigt and we end up there at around 4pm.
This hotel is awesome. Our room is huge, we have a garden with a lake, spa access, including a luxury Finnish Sauna (heated to 100C temperature!), whirlpool, inside and outside swimming pool, the whole nine yards. Icing on the cake is that the 22kW Type2 charger on the parking lot is activated by our room key, no payment required. Excellent.
For dinner, we are suggested to go just 150m down the street, to Sári Csárda (also in Dunakiliti). It’s a traditional joint with lots of local dishes, some I’m not too much a fan of (brain stew, and some concoction with lungs), so we stay a bit on the classic side. With beef goulash soup you can’t go wrong, and we order it with “some bread” but they bring an entire loaf of freshly baked, still warm, sourdough bread. It’s an absolute joy to eat this stuff.
We walk back to our hotel and sit in the back yard a little bit, before turning in for the night. Tomorrow is our last day of the roadtrip, we plan to go to the tri-country point (Austria, Slovakia and Hungary), and get a few Hungarian geocaches to liven up Pim’s stats. Then, we’ll drive the short 80km or so to Vienna to visit the EuroBSD Conference in which Paul is involved.
