Our European Adventure

So our day started out pretty slow. We got up in the morning and went to Bratislava Castle which is now a museum. It had my 3 favorite things on exhibit, portraits, clothing, and furniture. The veiw from the castle was amazing as well. It's bizarre to see the stark contrast from quaint old town on one side of the Danube and the communist block housing on the other. We then walked into old town where there was a music fesitval going on with live slovak music. We ended up seeing two people from our hostel eating luch so we decided to join them. They are two guys from Ireland Russel and Euwin. After lunch there was a rumor about a really great art exhibit in the museum down the street we decided to check it out. The exhibit was an optical illusion using mirrors that made a wall of books on either side of you as you walked acros this path in this room appear to drop down into oblivion. It was very scary espcially since I am afraind of heights. Back at the hostel a bunch of Australians were organizing going out to a hockey game. We decided to tag along. It was fantastic! The tickets were only 3.50 each and beer was 0.75 US dollars. We saw HC Bratislava and play some other team I can't remember. Bratislava won 4 to 1. Hockey wasn't as violent as I remember it in the US. The refs were calling a lot of penalties and no fights broke out. Afterwards we all met up a the bar around the corner from the stadium and had dinner. It was fun there was about 15 of us mostly Australians and the two Irish guys. We walked back to the hostel to get ready to go out dancing. When we arrived we had a new roommate who I quickly discovered was from NJ and we had similar friends. Her name was Kim and she new Ryan and Karen North. That was crazy. Then 16 of us went out and ended up at this really dodgey techno club. It was crap but very amusing to see Slovak kids "raving". About half of us left and ended up at a rock bar instead. This was a bit better becuase we could actually get drinks and sit. The place was funny becuase all the Slovak rock kids were singing to the Beeastie boys and Rage against the Machine in english. I'm not sure they even understood what they were singing. So having a couple of beers I decided to drag one of the Irish guys onto the dance floor where we proceeded to "rock out". Beers later... we closed the bar and since it was 3am already Daniela and I decided to stay up all night a catch our train at 6 this morning. 7 of us were left and we continued to another after hours bar to wait it out until morning. It was 4 American, 2 Irish, 1 Australian. We drank some more and were pretty loaded by the end of it. At 5 we got kicked out of the bar and went back to the hostel to get our stuff. Russel and Euwin were kind enough to walk us to the station since it was still pretty dark out. We hopped on the train exhausted and a bit drunk. It was such a fun night we met so many great people. Russel and Euwin promised to email when the get into Prague tomorrow so that the party can continue...

So we left Vienna yesterday the town of Wienerschnitzle and Mozart and headed to the mother country Slovakia. We got on the train without a hitch and it was only an hour train ride. When we got off the train we realized we got off too early and were at another train station on the other side of the city. We hopped on a bus and were in our hostel by early afternoon. It was pouring rain all day so we didn't feel like doing much we pretty much hung around the hostel until dinner. We decided to go into the center to get a bite to eat. The old center of town is really nice from what I can tell in the dark. It's a pedestrian walkway full of shops and restaurants. Since this was our first night in Bratislava what did where did we decide to eat... yep you guessed it an Irish pub complete with American Music and Gaelic football on the TV. Let me tell you it was a complete Slovak cultural experience . This leads me to a couple of observations about the Europe in general... No matter were you go in Europe there are two and possibly three things that you are likely to find no matter what city you're in 1) McDonalds 2)an Irish Pub and 3) (I'm becoming more and more convinced of this one) Australian backpackers. I think our hostel is about 80% Australian here.

So last night we decided to grab a few beers in the common room. We ended up talking to a group of people that were good fun. They included two people from Australia, a German and a Korean. We also got to talking to the bartender who was an Italian from Rome studing music in Vienna. It was a good night and we went to bed ready for the coming morning. The next morning Daniela and I with the two Australians that we met Phil and Jimmy decided to go in and do some more sightseeing. I was hell bent on seeing the big ferris wheel at the other end of town. I was more concerened with seeing the fountain I remembered to be in front of it, a little boy peeing. After some looking around Jimmy finally asked a woman at the gift shop about it. She said the former owner of the park liked the fountain so much he took it with him and it is now sitting in his garden somewhere. I was very sad but we pressed on into the city. It was Daniela's turn to pick the place and she wanted to go to the house of Sigmund Freud. After some problems with the directions we finally got there. It wasn't too big or impressive. Just a bunch of stuff Sigmund Freud owned. It only took about a half hour to see. However I feel much more equiped now to psychoanalyze someone . We finally got back into the main square and we were so tired from walking we decided to sit and drink a couple of beers and people watch. I still love some of the outfits of europeans. They absolutely astonish me sometimes. We caught the metro back to the hostel and had a quiet evening drinking beer and shooting the shit. We're off to bed and ready for our trip into Bratislava tomorrow. It's kind of sad becuase once I get used to a place we have to pack up and leave.

Today we decided to visit the famous Shunbronn Palace. The Palace is only a 20 minute walk from our hostel and is known for it's zoo (the oldest in the world) as well as the botanical gardens. It was the summer palace of Austrain Royalty and has 1440 rooms. The weather was not as cooperative at we had hoped, it was overcast and threatened rain, but we decided to go anyway. The first thing we did is wander around the growns until we came upon the Zoo. Since it is the oldest in the world we decided to take a look. We were glad we did, it was just the right size that you got to see all the animals and were not exhausted from walking. The highlights included two Giant Pandas and Koalas. Unfortunately it started to pour but we're tough and walked through it. The palace grounds are great for me because I got to see beautiful plants and exotic animals all in one place. We did the tour through the private rooms of the royal family in the palace. It reminded me a lot of Versaille in Paris. I guess it was fitting since Marie Antionette, wife of Louis the XIV grew up here. That pretty much took up most of our day. The weather's been crappy so we decided to stick around the hostel and even made dinner. Tonight we are going to take it easy becuase we plan on doing a lot of walking tomorrow, hopefully with better weather. We are going to the north of the main square to the giant ferris wheel and then walk down back to our hostel. We may even go to one of the museums if we have time. Sorry we haven't posted pictures yet. We were going to do that today but I broke the machine that lets you download pictures opps . Hopfully tomorrow.

So we arrived early in the morning in the South trainstation. After an overnight train. It was wierd trying to sleep on a train. I wouldn't recommend it. When we arrived we got a little confused as to where we were supposed to go but we figured it out quick enough. After finding our hostel we decided to head out again and look around in the center of the city. The architecture is really nice here. It's less ornate than in Italy, but has a bigger feel to it. It's really hard to describe. We ended up at St. Stephen's Church. It's this massive church with a really ornate roof. I promise I'll post some pics ASAP. Inside was large and even more ornate than the roof. Daniela and I decided to take a tour of the catacombs. Our guide was really funny and ran around the place and tried to creep us out with the stories of who was buried under the church. We also wanted to take a tour of Mozart's house which is just around the corner from the church but we were out of luck becuase they were rennovating it. Heading back to our hostel we were very tired and very hungry. We stopped at this small restaurant just down the street from the hostel. It was very Austrian. I had a dumpling the size of my head there. Very filling. Tomorrow we plan on going to Shonbrun Palace for a day in the sun.