Bratislava

Bratislava...

Let me just start by saying that it had its ups and downs. I'm amazed that a place so close to the splendor of Vienna could be so strange and clearly Eastern European. That said, the Old Town of Bratislava is unassuming and ancient! No real splendor apart from the fact that it was so obviously old.

I took about 100 photos in 2 days. The strangest thing I've seen in ages was that city from the castle on the hill (which is pointless to visit). There is the beautiful (albeit small) Old Town with the brilliant Michalská Brána (tower above) dominating the landscape and myriad spires crammed into the area directly below and then the sprawling New Town with literally 100's of massive apartment blocks on the other side of the river (Danube). There is this huge and very weird tower at the edge of New Town, which you can see from Old Town.

Bratislava is worth a visit for sure, but we met these Americans who live there and the wife was less than impressed (to say the least) with it as a place to call home. I can't imagine living there, but worth a look for the Old Town.

We visited a place they call the Primate's Palace (The Czechs and Slovaks call their top man the Primator) where in 1805 Napoleon and the Emperor of Austria signed a peace treaty in the Hall of Mirrors. It was lavishly decorated with massive chandeliers and 15-century English tapestries and paintings from all over. The inside was great, but the square and courtyard surrounding the place were quite stunning.

There were fantastic buildings of all different colors and shapes as well as beautiful light fixtures and ironwork adorning each one. Two of the buildings had massive clocks atop their towers. Long story short it was a good place to sit and rest, take a deep breath and take it all in.

Then we ambled through the rest of the cobbled (extremely!) streets of Old Town up to the church of the Clarissine Order, which was having work done. That didn't deter us, though, from ogling over the ornately carved spire that climbed from the narrow derelict streets of Old Town towards the heavens. Much of the oldest stuff in Bratislava had VERY Gothic features, which I dig! There was this building with grotesque little gargoyles making rude faces to the people on the street. I loved it! Anyhow, just near this church was a wee brewpub where the monks routinely made beer beginning in 14-something! From there we walked downhill towards the absolutely massive (I mean it!) St. Martin's Cathedral, where (among others) Maximilian, Ferdinand, Leopold, Joseph and Maria Theresa were crowned! The late Pope actually recognized the church as a world religious treasure before he died! There was a crypt underneath where many of bishops, etc. were entombed and/or laid in brilliant coffins made of wood or stone. The spire of this church is topped with a huge golden crown that sits upon a velvet pillow! You can see it if pretty clearly if you climb the hills behind the city going towards the ancient church of St. Nicholas. Which, once we reached the top of the hill were stopped dead in our tracks in the doorway by the dozens and dozens of images of Christ and Mary surrounded by 100's of burning candles, not to mention the sounds of a choir belting out hymns/spirituals in Slovak from the high balcony where we couldn't see them!

That was Saturday, Sunday we got out of town a bit to Devín Castle! This place was great! Perched atop a rocky bluff at the confluence of the Morava and Danube Rivers this once seriously imposing castle is now just a ruin due to Naploeon's forces blasting it from across the river in Austria (guess that was before the treay, eh?). Too bad really because the castle survived numerous attacks by Turkish forces. It was rather chilly and very foggy when we arrived, but just as we ascended the top of the bluff the fog burned off and the sun shined down like a spotlight on the castle.

The sleepy little village of Devín was eerily quiet as we pulled in at 26 minutes past 10am, possibly attributable to the thich layer of fog hanging just above the road and clinging to rooftops. But the castle was alive and very inviting. It was inexplicably vigorous wandering around the place. I felt like there had been so much action on that site in decades past. Well centuries actually as the Romans initially used the site an outpost of their ever-growing empire during the ealry part of the millenium. The mini-musuems on the property include exhibits housing artifacts from as far back as the 1st century and all the way up to the early 1920's when a contingent of Czech nationalists destroyed a monument (80 meters high) erected by Slovaks proclaiming the site as a place of great cultural importance to the Slovak people.

The two little bastions halfway down the rocky face of the bluff above the river were quite cool. I could just imagine myself armed with a longbow watching the river below and waiting for French or Turkish troops to approach in the night.