He Shoots ... He Scores!: Day 40 - Vienna to Bratislava - Get It While It Lasts... A Big Loop Through Europe 2017

September 16, 2017

He Shoots ... He Scores!: Day 40 - Vienna to Bratislava

We got a sense that we were going to like this place when after just crossing the old Iron Curtain, we saw a hockey net (with the plywood goalie attached to it) stacked up against one of the old border buildings.

There ain't no Prada or LV in Bratislava, or at least we didn't see any, but there's a lot of fun real life stuff happening here.

The riding today was pretty pedestrian. Flat straight bike paths through fields mostly, overcast, and a decent headwind. We were however somewhat excited that we were going to be going into our first (for us) new country on this trip.

Our initial impressions weren't great. Like most cities, when you enter them you go through either industrial areas or the newly built areas. In Brataslava's case this meant riding through some of the old run down Soviet era apartment blocks and warehouses. Even though it was Saturday, not much appeared to be going on and there were very few people about. As we rode along the river and approached the Old Town, things picked up a bit (and a tour boat docked ... incoming! run for cover!) but it was still pretty quiet compared to Vienna. It was also a little run down compared to Vienna.

We checked into our hotel which was about 1 km out of the Old Town, got cleaned up and headed back into town to check it out and get some dinner.

With each step and new street we started to like this place. Yeah, it was a little rougher than Vienna and yeah there were lots of tourists here, but everyone was enjoying themselves and it felt really good.

We had our post ride beer (a really good German Oktoberfest seasonal brew) ouside on the patio of a cool bistro and watched he world go by. We thought about eating where we were, sort of a hipster bistro (the food looked good) but K had read about a Thai fusion place a few blocks away. We wandered off to check it out and are we ever glad we did. It was still pretty early and we were the second table in the place. It turned out to be one of the best all round meals we've had on the trip. The food was excellent, the restaurant beautiful and the staff were very friendly, accommodating and professional. If you're in Bratislava, go there.

After dinner we almost immediately stumbled upon Glenn and Steve, the two Kiwi guys we've been playing cycle tour hop scotch with for over a month. This meant we had to sit down with them and have another beer and swap stories of the last week or so since we've seen them. We're both headed to Budapest in the next few days so we made a plan to hook up with them there.

As we continued our wanders, we heard music coming from the pedestrian area down by the river. When we cycled through here earlier in the afternoon there was some event going on with a stage set up.

Well the stage was now in use by a local performer (don't know if he's well known throughout Slovakia but all the folks here seemed to know and like him). In short, he was great. A few original (? or at least Slovak) tunes and lots of covers .. everyone was singing along and quite a few folks were dancing.

One particularly young guy (about 3 maybe) was really getting into it, jumping, dancing, singing ... the performer came off the stage and into the crowd to dance around with him ... it was great. The song the kid liked the most ... Summer of 69 by the Canadian kid Bryan Adams. We knew that goalie net was an omen!

Once the concert was over we started heading back to our hotel. To top the evening off, we stumbled upon an older guy playing a .... get this .... homemade theremin. A what? Yes, a theremin.

Just about everyone has heard one of these before in Sci Fi movies (weird oscillating pitches) or most famously, the vibrations in the Beach Boy's classic Good Vibrations.

I've heard theremin's before but I've never seen one played live. This is a cool place. And it's cool not because of the centuries old buildings (sure it's got those) but because of the people that are here right now, Tomorrow might be different, but we're here now and we're glad we are.

Heart

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Song of the Day...

Summer of 69 - covered by the Slovak guy we saw tonignt ... the Bryan Adams live version will have to do here
cause I didn't get a video of tonight!