Bratislava and Wien

We left Big, Breathtaking, Budaful Budapest behind and headed for smaller Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. This was a short stop, just two nights, but ended up being quite pleasant.

The streets near our apartment were rather quiet, but we soon found that all of the tourists were in the Old Town, a short walk away, through Michael’s Gate. The Old Town isn’t huge, but it’s got that oh-so-European cuteness of cobblestones and a big square with cafes and an old church. Quite lovely on a summer’s evening. We treated ourselves to some delicious Slovak fare in what claimed to be one of the largest restaurants in Europe.

Not only do tourists visit Brati, but we discovered that people actually live there too! In fact, the city exudes a sense of livability that we really appreciated. I found some great (cycling) running paths along the Danube that were busy in the mornings; we picnicked among the locals in a beautiful park with a giant splash pad one warm evening; and we enjoyed some AC in the packed mall one afternoon. There was something of an “active-living for kids” festival going on just outside by the rive, so the the kids got to hop on some stationary bikes and pump up the watts to make their own smoothies.

Ah Vienna! We had four nights here, which allowed us to get a decent sense of the city, but it’s one spot where I could easily go back and spend more time. It doesn’t quite have the breathtaking geographical setting of Budapest or Prague. However, the city is clean and full of beautiful buildings everywhere you look, as well as lots of greenspace. At a certain point, I just had to stop taking pictures of everything.

We happened to be in town for the Austria vs. Argentina game, so we tried to find a spot to watch the game with locals, but it wasn’t easy! We first tried a public viewing space, but even a couple of hours before the game it had already reached capacity. We then wandered the streets, past innumerable bars that had no tables left, until we finally found a spot at the back of an Irish Pub. It was fun to get into the World Cup spirit among the crowd of red shirts.

Even though the school year is over, we decided that it’s still OK to learn stuff (right?). As you may remember, back in Turkey we visited the ruins of the Roman city of Ephesus. Well, the whole time that we were listening to our audioguide there, they kept going on and on about all of the wonderful artefacts that are now in the Ephesus Museum in Vienna. So we decided to stop in while we happened to be in town. It was very impressive to see all of the original statues, etc. and make the connection back to what we saw of the physical space at Ephesus. The museum also happened to be in an old Hapsburg palace, which made for a nice venue! (By the by, it’s worth mentioning that the Austrians did in fact have permission from the Ottomans to take all of those nice artefacts back to Vienna).

Some of our more astute readers have noticed that we haven’t been talking about food as much as we did while in Asia, and we don’t want to disappoint our fans. On the gastronomical side, I can say that the city does in fact have very decent viennoiseries (go figure), and I already miss the abundance of sausage stands were an easy option for lunch . We also took the kids to a chocolate making workshop, of which Ben will tell you more about in an upcoming post!