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.