Exploring the great Bratislava

We landed in Vienna and picked up our wheels at Sixt. Blazing across Austria at 95mph while listening to Old Dirty Bastard, we approached Bratislava.  What is Bratislava?  I really had not thought about it much before.

It ended up being one of the coolest cities we have ever visited.  It is a very quirky place with bizarre statues and people dressed in odd costumes amidst an old town center that fells perfectly preserved.  Several partiers lined the streets of old town.  The town was well stocked in  bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, and drunk goons watching Dortmund-Bayern square off in the Champions League final - on fact, it was as though all of old town was one big party.

Bratislava castle and the best chicken ever

The gates

These guys - Bratislava

Passed out in the park after a rough night

The old Slovakian mining town of Banská Štiavnica

The past whispers of grandeur have faded on the streets of Banska Stiavnica.  Heavily mined since the 3rd century BC, the Slovakian town of was once a hotbed for innovation and mineral wealth.  A massive source of gold and silver for Europe in the middle ages, the mining town was home to  a number of firsts.  It was the first mine to use gunpowder and the town housed the first technical school in the world.  Today, the old town is mined out and exists simply as a perfectly preserved medieval town, left as it was in its heyday.

Granted Unesco status in the early 90's, the old city square surrounds a gigantic plague column that looks like a strange art deco version of the eye of Sauron.  So what to do in such a place?  Wander.  Aimlessly.

We loved exploring this strange town and its surroundings, and, we had some bad pizza while watching 30 seconds to Mars videos in a little pastry/pizza shop.

Cumil the watcher, the missing paparazzi, and other weird statues in Bratislava

Bratislava has a number of strange statues.  There is this guy peeking out a manhole.  Another is a French soldier resembling Napoleon on a park bench.  There is also a guy tipping his hat commemorating an old Bratislava resident.  One of the most famous statues - The Paparazzi - was missing when we visited.  After looking for about an hour, we found some evidence of where he once stood, but we never figured out where he went.