Bratislava, Slovakia. August 15 and 16

I'm finally getting around to writing about Slovakia, about two months after experiencing it, and after looking through the photos, I'm realizing that these are maybe some of my favorite memories of the trip.  We left Budapest for the relatively short drive to Bratislava, and we had to get off the freeway in order to spend the rest of our Hungarian Forints.  After hitting a little small town grocery store, we proceeded into Slovakia through an old, hollowed out border crossing.  It always amazes me to see abandoned borders due to the historical nature of building them, taking them down, and then hopefully never building them again.  Heading into Bratislava, I missed a turn and we ended up on perhaps the worst driving experience yet of aimlessly navigating city streets, jockeying with trams, one way roads, and construction.  I estimate that ordeal took about an hour before I finally found our hotel, actually Botel.  It was a boat docked on the Danube.  Actually a very cool experience as we enjoyed watching barges head up river and cruise ships heading down river.  We were right under what is called the UFO, a famous socialist landmark in Bratislava, though kind of reminded me of the Seattle Space Needle and certainly no one would refer to that as socialist!  Perhaps it's more a hallmark of early 1960s architecture than anything else.  An interesting side note is that local Bratislavans were not allowed to go to the top of the UFO because they would be able to see into Austria, and local communist officials feared people would see that capitalist life was better.  Anyway, why did I like Bratislava so much?  Well, I think there are several reasons.  For one, I had wanted to go there for 20 years.  I had several talks and vague plans of going to Bratislava with my friends back in 1994-95 and we just never followed through on those plans, so this was cool to finally go there.  I also liked how, while Bratislava is definitely nice and pleasant, it is not a tourist trap and remains decidedly off the beaten path for most American visitors.  And finally, I loved the various activities we participated in while in and around the area.  So, many of my pictures are from the Old Town area and the castle.  We spent a few hours around the castle walking the grounds and touring the museum.  The castle was only recently refurbished and quite beautiful, so our timing was good!   (It would not have been so beautiful back in 1995.)  We then headed back into the Old Town area and took a tourist train around some of the highlights, we also visited the President's palace and his garden.  It felt odd to be so close to a President's home, yet people were picnicking and enjoying the summer's modern art installation.  Another fun find was a children's museum where Gunnar dressed up like Mozart (who did spend some time in Bratislava, Germans/Austrians called the city Pressburg, and Hungarians called it Pozsony.)  The Hungarian history of the town was evident and I came to have more respect for the Hungarian loss of territory after World War One.  This was a major Hungarian town that was given to Czechoslovakia, because the Czechs and Slovaks fought on the winning side.  Hungary still has not recovered from its loss of territory and the previously mentioned Hungarian Prime Minister makes these sentiments very clear nearly 100 years after the events. Food in Slovakia was also excellent.  We enjoyed hearty cheese dumplings, meat dishes with rich sauces and berry compotes, and Phoebe loved garlic soup in a bread bowl.   The next day, looking back, may have been the most active and adventuresome day of our entire 23 day trip.  We got up, enjoyed our buffet breakfast in the Botel.  And we then headed out in search of some of the late 1930s era bunkers that were built to defend the city from the Nazis.  Again, the idea of historical respect hit me pretty hard!  Through the 1930s, the Czechoslovak government watched Hitler's rise to power with much wariness.  In response, they spent the equivalent of billions of today's dollars to fortify the country.  Today, dozens of these bunkers still remain in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  The sad irony of the massive Czechoslovak effort is that the small country fell victim to big power politics and was simply "given" to Hitler by Neville Chamberlain et al during the Munich Conference when he famously said that he had created "Peace in our Time,"  I felt a sense of sadness when touring these bunkers, because they tried so hard to preserve their country, but none of their efforts mattered.  We went to one bunker right outside Bratislava, near the Austrian border.  It was an actual museum, but it was closed and we were the only ones there so it felt like our own little adventure.  We then headed a bit north from town to Devin Castle.  Phoebe in particular was completely done with castles by this point in time, but I forced them to visit it, and I don't think they were scarred for life.  They both got to shoot arrows, so it was an interactive, cool experience.  There were Renaissance Festival-type reenactors there and a little festival thing set up, so they liked that.  The castle itself was very impressive with its perch above the Morava and Danube rivers.  It had been inhabited since Neolithic times and continually reinforced throughout history.  It changed hands several times, but its heyday may have been the 15th century when the Hungarians reinforced it as a fortification against the Ottomans.  The watchtower hanging out over the river is one of the major symbols of Slovakia, and a highlight of Slovakian tourism.  It was very cool, but the kids started complaining so we didn't spent a ton of time there.  Perhaps one benefit of their lack of patience is that we can squeeze a lot of varying activities into one day!  Following this, we continued north on the Slovakian side of the river and planned to head directly into Austria on our way to Znojmo, Czech Rep, when, near the side of the road, I saw another bunker.  We stopped and actually went into this bunker,  and noticed one further down the forested path and went into this one as well.  This felt like even more of an adventure because there was no museum  or anything with these two bunkers, they were just sitting by the side of a path.  The kids really liked the excitement of going into the narrow, dark, cobwebbed passages and we really felt that we were doing something very cool and unique.  Following this unexpected detour (aren't the unexpected things always the best?) we headed across the peace bridge (last photo) into Austria.  I think we crossed the Iron Curtain seven times on this trip partly because we went in and out of Austria so much.  It's so amazing to think that just 25 years ago, it would not have been possible.  I guess this (very long) entry ends the way it began with talk of open borders, that hopefully will remain as such, though the long reach of history and nationalist sentiment does indeed remain very strong in this region.