A Little Big City

I'm writing from the lobby of our USSR-inspired hotel (yeah bling bling) Kyjev, where we found yesterday some vague rooms. We strolled around a handful of hostels, all with too inflated prices. Then we heard about this 1970's communist-feel budget hotel called Kyjev. Went & asked, they said they're full. Went to the net for the hunt & found on hotelbooking.com all these special offers for Kyjev. So we booked a double bedroom, and sneaked all us three in there. Price per person 15€. Buffet breakfast included, which was a real treat after clubbing till 6am. Looked more like a four star hotel judging by the vast buffet selection. On top of that, it's just a five minute walk from the historical city centre. The only negative side was the stuffy hotness in the room & this insane list of room damage penalties. "De-fumigation due to smoking in room-50 €, additional cleaning due to animal hairs-50€." Kind of worried about the last one because of our Chewbacca leg hairs. Anyway, to summarize Kyjev: No luxury, good value.


Looks like good old Viru hotel back in Tallinn, same eastern comfort


Worn-out retro lobby


The red wall-to-wall carpet was a cut & paste work-of-art


Plain is beautiful, no luxury, but good value


Even found a vintage Balkan nickers car sitting at the lobby of our 2-star-hotel

Bratislava is the little big capital of Slovakia, with a population in the same 500 000 class as Helsinki. The Danube river flows right through the city, bringing some breath & breeze into the 36-degree-celsius south-western capital. Its location on the borders with Austria and Hungary makes it the only national capital that borders two countries. The cityscape is characterized by medieval towers & back-in-the-USSR grandiose 20th-century buildings. There's also some recently-built, skyscraper-like, modern business spaces to mix the view. Like in most cities, the historical old town is the district with most character. Cobblestone streets, baroque palaces, adorned churches & cathedrals as well as cafes, restaurants & fashion boutiques. Go for a walk in there & in half an hour you know what I'm talking about. The Old Town is dominated by tourists, so be prepared to pay for your presso some extra pennies. The city kind of reminds of Tallinn, unless it wasn't for the gargantuan Bratislavsky Hrad, The Bratislava Castle. In the middle of green scenery & on top of a 15-minute-hike hill, the white castle looks ripped straight from a Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle. The nicest view yet was last night/early morning just sitting by the Danube river & admiring the illuminated castle, it looked imperial.


There's still one particularity I'd like to share with you guys. I've never seen so many police cars patrolling the streets, it seems that they are everywhere. Without any exaggeration I saw yesterday 20-30 cop cars, and some five speeding with whistles on the streets. Just a normal Thursday afternoon..I guess this just reminds everybody that the traces of communism are still visible & omnipresent in everyday life.













So last night I was positively surprised with the underground nightlife in here. We wanted to avoid by all means those lad-places where people go out with white shirts reading Rooney in their back. That is actually the only minus in this city. I got to face it, Bratislava is full of Czech, French & especially English stag-party booze-crews, so the offering of the nightlife is dominated by mainstream clubs & bars. There's even a bunch of English pubs in here! Fortunately we came across this literally underground club, just within pissing distance from the castle & Danube. I think besides of us, the club didn't have any foreigners, with the exception of two English guys. Well, they got beat up by this hammered bulldog-looking Slovak, for bumping in him in the narrow, rocky corridors. You got into the club via this sand road taking to you to the "terrace" resembling more like an African hut. We got past the two I-just-bench-pressed-200kg huge sitting bulls, Boris & Yevgeni, who where controlling the party crowd. The corridor leading to the bar & club zone was black-and-yellow-striped, causing nausea if you start looking more closely, just like in Vekkula. There was water dripping from the rocky ceiling; the place really looked like an abandoned mining space turned into a techno getaway for Bratislava party people. Beer 1,40, cigarettes three-a-pack. Free entry. Exhilarating music combining some classics into electro & techno, along with beautiful women & a pumping party crowd make a pretty fucking fantastic combination. Oh yeah, there was a table football too! Fuckin A. Best club in Balkan so far, hands down.






So now we're off to Belgrad, with the 19.53 night train, change in Budapest-Keleti station. Arrival at Belgrade, Serbia, around 6am, pity there wasn't an earlier train today, could've been in time for friday night. Although we've herd from locals that Saturday night fever is insane in Belgrade. Bring it on!