TheTraveler

 
April in Bratislava
By Michael Logan

Maybe I was just suffering from old town fatigue after having spent too much time travelling around Europe, but when I first arrived in Bratislava on a dull April day, the Slovakian capital’s old town left me a little cold. Yes, it was pretty and had all the necessary elements: intricate fountains, colourful old buildings, winding alleyways and a nice clock tower, but I just couldn’t warm to it. While Warsaw’s old town has the added spice of having been rebuilt after almost complete wartime destruction, Brussels’ has the grandeur of tall spires reaching to the sky and Ljubljana’s has a quiet charm and a great view of the mountains, Bratislava’s old town seemed to lack that extra element to lift it out of the ordinary.

I wasn’t the only one who seemed to think so. After several unsatisfying hours wandering around the streets, I sipped a hot chocolate in a café at in the town square and people watched. Groups of octogenarian tourists tottered back and forth, following tour guides who rather bizarrely identified themselves by waving enormous colour-coded foam hands in the air. The tourists displayed a distinct lack of enthusiasm as they took pictures, and a thrill of excitement only passed through them when they saw a workman disappear down a manhole beside the fountain. A crowd gathered to peer down into the mysterious depths, and the poor workman almost had a heart attack when he popped his head up to find his hole surrounded by an encircling gaggle of blue rinses. It’s a damning indictment when a hole in the ground is considered more interesting than the town itself.

As entertaining as the manhole was, I decided to take in some culture in the hope it would provide more of a feel for the place. Considering Bratislava has a fascinating history and is one of the few cities that have the distinction of having been the capital of two countries – in this case, Hungary and Slovakia – I was expecting something quite interesting from the Municipal Museum in the town square.

What I discovered was a massive monument to tat, lovingly collected from flea markets across the country and thrown into the museum in a haphazard manner. For some reason though the security guard seemed to think the displays were valuable, and followed me around the empty museum in case I decided to steal a glued-together ceramic pot, a scabby 19th century doll or one of the many keys on display. Yes, it was that exciting.

However, the homage to torture in the cellar more than justified the 50SKK (EUR 1.3) entrance fee. Slovaks, it would seem, used to excel in torture. The various instruments designed to inflict screaming agony on hapless dissidents – hand crushers, genital mashers and who knows what else – combined with the dank cells and rusting chains to send a chill up my spine. However, the real kicker came with the many stylised renditions on the walls of people being hacked, maimed and brutalized. A particularly repellent painting, which sums up the tone of the place, depicted a naked and spread-eagled man tied upside down between two trees being sawn in half through the anus. Frankly, his two torturers looked as though they were enjoying the process far too much. If I were an Iraqi insurgent languishing in the custody of the American forces, I would be praying that George Bush didn’t visit these chambers during his recent state visit to Bratislava. It might have given him some ideas.

When I emerged from this charming little display, I climbed the clock tower in search of some fresh air and was rewarded with a nice panorama of the city. Perhaps it was the fact that the sun peeked out from behind the clouds as I looked over the russet-red rooftops toward the sparklingly modern bridge over the Danube, or perhaps it was because I was just glad to be out of the cellar with my buttocks still reassuringly pressed together, but I started to feel more kindly disposed toward Bratislava. After all, it wasn’t its fault that there are more old towns in Europe than you can shake a stick at.

My mood picked up even further when I emerged from the tower in time to watch a crowd of pretty young girls and athletic young men bring some life to the day. They were dressed in traditional clothing – all floppy caps and flowing white fabric – and carried a stuffed guy that they brandished on a stick. This, a helpful local explained to me, was a traditional way of saying farewell to winter. The troupe led a merry procession around the streets, singing all the while and occasionally stopping to dance, although that may have been a tactic to let the following crowd of zombie-like pensioners keep up. The girls whirled in giddy formations the Red Arrows would have been proud of while the boys artfully twirled their sticks and performed gravity defying jumps to click their heels in mid air.

Watching people exercise always makes me hungry, so I adjourned to Prašná bašta (on Zámocnicka 11), where I scoffed down some traditional fare of sheep cheese gnocchi and potato pancakes for just a few Euros. Prašná bašta may be one of the cheaper establishments in town, but Bratislava still remains considerably less expensive than nearby Vienna and Budapest.
Ultimately, although Bratislava may not be the most exciting town you will ever visit, there is certainly more than enough of interest to make it worth a day trip. Who knows, you may even be lucky enough to see an open manhole cover.

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