Scenes from Bratislava

Posted on March 27, 2018

I realised that I had a bunch of lovely photos from Bratislava that I couldn’t figure out how to work in to any of my other Bratislava posts without going into gratuitous photo overload. Bratislava has been one of my greatest travel surprises to date.

Everyone that I met was really friendly and helped me, even when I was incredibly lost and didn’t even remember a single word of Slovak (not even “thank you” or” hello”). The city was extremely affordable to visit and there was so much to do. Not to mention the fact that it was beautiful.

Ever since I started doing my solo trips last year, I never focused on traveling to places that were high up on my “to visit” list (with the exception of Copenhagen, which was every bit as wonderful as I had hoped). Instead I focused on places that I could travel to on a very strict budget; ideally for under £100 including flights, accommodation and food. And the result was that I ended up traveling to some places that had never been on my radar, like Gdansk and Bratislava. Because I had no expectations for the locations, I went with eyes completely open not knowing what to expect.

It’s been an incredible way to discover and fall in love with some new places. Part of me wishes that all travel could be like that – with no preconceived notions but I know that it’s impossible. And I still have a bucket list of places that I must visit in my life, sooner rather than later: like Rome, Iceland and India.

Or maybe I’m just a traveller who is easy to please. Travelling to me is such a privilege still that I’ve never visited a place and not found at least one thing about it that brought me joy. I grew up reasonably poor and a foreign family holiday was never an option. (Granted this is much more difficult/expensive in the US than in the UK). The first time I left America was when I went to Paris and then Amsterdam with my friend Robby during my spring break of my junior year. I didn’t travel out of the US for the first 20 years of my life. But my family traveled inside the US, my favourite family holiday is still a once in a lifetime trip that we took to Disney World when I was 12, but camping next to the Grand Canyon is a close second.

So I’m going to continue to budget travel. Not because I like ticking countries off my map trying to reach an “enviable” number that I’ve visited but because I love the joy of exploring a new place and the opportunity to whilst I can afford to.

It’s especially interesting to write about it now after the unrest that has been going on in Bratislava over the past few weeks. The unrest all started when a Slovakian journalist, who was investigating corruption in the government and ties to the Italian mafia, was murdered. There have been tens of thousands of protestors taking to the street to protest the government, even after the PM stepped down. It’s been the largest demonstration in the country since the fall of communism, but I wouldn’t let the current situation deter you from traveling, personally.

So here are some scenes from Bratislava.