WombatNation

Bratislava is a nice change of pace from Budapest and Prague. Therefore, it would have been better for us if we could have stopped in Bratislava after Prague and Budapest, but you can’t just go rearranging the geography to suit your itinerary. Bratislava is between Budapest and Prague on the train line, so that’s the order we took.

Bratislava is quite a bit smaller than Budapest and Prague. While the subway were vital to our seeing much of those cities, Bratislava doesn’t even have a subway. There are a couple tram lines, but you can walk to most things of interest. After not being able to figure out the tram information, which was only in Slovak, we took a taxi to the aprtment we had rented. The cab fare was 200 Slovak Korunas, or about US$6.5, which was pretty reasonable for the distance.

The main tourist destination is the Bratislava castle. It is up on a hill right next to the old town area and can be easily reached on foot. You get a very nice view of the city from the castle.

Even relative to Prague and Budapest, Bratislava was very inexpensive. If it hadn’t been so close to the beginning of our trip, we would have done more shopping there.

Unfortunately, it rained quite a bit while we were there. And it was cold. Very cold. I often went out in two shirts and two jackets. They were very lightweight shirts and jackets, but heck, it was June.

We did get to see the dedication of a status of Hans Christian Andersen. The Danish Embassy seemed to be organizing the event, and a girl was handing out Danish chocolates with marzipan to the dedicated members of the crowd standing in the rain. After some children sang and played musical instruments, some more children came running out with paper bags on their heads that appeared to have faces painted on them. Since everything was in Slovak and Danish, I’m really not sure what was going on, though I suspect it was related to one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales.

There were a surprisingly large number of large tourist groups winding their way through the city. Then again, it was quite inexpensive there and the city is interesting.

One unfortunate development is that Bratislava appears to be a prime destination of English bachelor parties. With beers costing 50-75 cents, you can guess the attraction. We ran across quite a few groups of 20 or so rowdy young Englishmen. They were mostly well behaved, and their loutishness was mostly being inflicted upon each other. The bachelor was usually forced to wear an outlandish dress, such as a pink ballet dress. One bachelor was in a full Superman outfit. We even saw a bachelorette group where the bachelorette was dressed up like a farm girl and was carrying a tray with a tea pot and cups.

We were fortunate that a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition was at one of the museums while we were there. The exhibition included many pages from the Codex Atlanticus. There were also wood reconstructions (or in some cases, wood constructions of things Leonardo likely could not have built) of objects in many of the drawings. One cool item was a circular tank. It looked more like a flying saucer than a tank.

So far, the weather had been cloudy and cool. Today we had a nice change with a bit of sun and warmth. Unfortunately, this was to be a rare combination over the next week or so. The first week of June was surprisingly cold in central Europe. Most days, the temperature didn’t cross 15 degrees C (about 60 F).

Our first journey was to Heroes’ Square. In a large plaza there’s a big statue in the middle and a semi-circle of statues around the edges of all the great Hungarian heroes. It’s worth a walk around if you are on your way to the big park behind the square or to the Museum of Fine Arts (Szépművészeti Múzeum) next to the square.

The museum is fantastic and totally worth a long visit. I could have easily spent the entire day there. We saw a special exhibition on Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, while we were there. I’m partial to the Flemish masters, and they have an excellent collection. Their 19th century French collection was also quite extensive. Of course, there were many works by great Hungarian artists that are rarely shown outside of Hungary.

The Museum of Fine Arts also had a great collection of Egyptian mummies. Not as extensive as the British Museum, of course, but still, nothing to shake a jar of embalming fluid at. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

My wife has a particular fascination with the works of Pieter Jans Saenredam, and the Museum of Fine Arts turned out to own one of his works. Saenredam was a Dutch painter working in the 17th century who was best know for his detailed architectural paintings. It all started with an article she read in the New York Times. Then we saw his painting Interior of St. James’ Church in Utrecht at the Alte Pinokethek in Munich a few years ago. Now it’s a quest to hunt down his paintings where ever we travel. Sadly, we did not see the exhibit at the Getty in LA a few years ago. That occurred just before the Saenredam obsession took root in her. Okay, it’s less an obsession than a string interest, but “obsession” makes it sound more exciting.

Next we headed over to the Opera house for a tour. I was very impressed by everything except the fact that they won’t let you take pictures inside. It was gorgeous, though. The sheer quantity of marble was overwhelming. Here we learned about Hungarian red marble, which really isn’t marble. It’s an amalgam of material that looks like marble. The Opera House had tons, and I means tons, of real marble, though. They were particularly proud of the original air conditioning system. They brought in blocks of ice below the seating area and blew air across the blocks with big fans. The seats had vents underneath them to allow the air to come up from below.

I should have known that if I didn’t immediately start writing blog posts about the trip, I would fall woefully behind. Now, it’s actually July 23rd and I’m nearly two months behind on backdating posts from our trip to more or less correspond when the events actually happened. Well, I’ll give it another try.