Bratislava: chapter 1 ~ First impression

Hey my people! How are you doing? So, something new to the blog, not so much nail polish/beauty related. As some of you know, I started my student exchange experience this month and moved to Bratislava. Hopefully I shall stay here until February and I decided I'll keep writing about it on this blog (and consequently in English). For those of you who are not interested in this spectre of my blog (although my travelling label has been well visited :)), you can skip the posts that start with Bratislava. I will of course post some beauty stuff here and there as well, I have a review coming up and a guest post regarding nail polish as well, so it won't be just Bratislava from now on. And for those, that are interested only in my Erasmus posts, again, I shall label them with Bratislava and put them into chapters. :) 

So yeah. What to write. :) At this moment, I am still regarding this as holidays, I do not think I will consider it a few months experience until I start with the classes and get everything in order regarding documentations and such. It is my first time in Bratislava, I visited Slovakia before, but the east and some of the north, I also wrote about it on the blog. I live in a flat that is great, also on a very good location (at least I find it so) and have a great flatmate, a very lovely girl. So far I am loving it. I walked through the Old Town of Bratislava (called Staré mesto) and it is lovely, I love old city centers. I haven't gone to any sightseeing per se, I have time for that, I just wanted to see how far it is everything if I walk. Bratislava is not a very big city, but it is larger than Ljubljana. For the first time in my life, I am interested in geography, comparing cities and such, so here are some numbers, if you care to know:

Bratislava: approx. 368 km2, population:  432 800;

Ljubljana: weird enough, I got two numbers: 164 and 275 m2, I have no idea what's up with that. Perhaps 164 is like the main part of Ljubljana, while 275 are the border parts as well or something. Population 282 990.

So I moved to a bigger city, that still justifies its nickname of Little Big City. :) I like the fact that, if you like to walk, you can still get to a lot of places on foot, but they also have a good public transportation system (buses, trams, trolleybuses), so I do not think moving around should be a problem. I will also learn Slovak language, which I find as a mixture of Slovene, other Balkan languages with an extra pinch of something, to make it Slovak. :) Most of the time it sounds really familiar and I can guess often what the contents are, but sometimes the words differ completely. For instance: thank you in Slovene: hvala, Croatish/Bosnian/Sebrish: hvala, Slovak: d'akujem; yes in Slovene: da, C/B/S: da, in Slovak: ano; but town in Slovene: mesto; the expression I always use on Balkan: grad (I know there is more than one and it probably differs from country to country) and in Slovak: mesto. Of course there is much more, but it is more of a feeling than actual knowledge from my part. :)

Location of Bratislava is known to be really perfect, right in the centre of Europe, around the corner from Vienna (approx. 60 km separate them, making them the closest two capitals in Europe), close to Czech Republic (which I love as well) and all in all makes a perfect start of any journey. I will travel mostly around Slovakia, at least I plan to do so, but the closeness of Vienna and all the concerts and other events happening there will probably come in handy as well. :) 

Ok, I am writing too much, again. How about some pictures? First, I needed to take a photo of this accident, internet child as I am. This is how my packing started, with a broken mini O.P.I. Since this is Sanugine I wasn't particularly happy about it, but hey, what can you do. 

And now for some pictures of my first walk around Bratislava, Old Town. Mind you, I am not a professional photographer, actually I am not a very good amateur in photography neither and my battery pocket keeps opening up on the camera so I am not really prone to taking photos everywhere I go, since I want to smash the camera on the floor half of the time. :) But still, a couple of photos I took on my first tour. :)

 Comenius University, where I will study.

 Šafarikovo Namestie, a park right across the University. I find the fountain particularly cute due to the expression of the boy holding the goose. :D

 We have the right to know what really happened in ROSWELL FORTYSEVEEEEN! (Actually called SNP (Slovenského národného povstania) or Novy most, often also UFO, for obvious reasons. But they can't fool me, I know what's going on here.)

 Danube river

 Slovak National Gallery has an open pavilion of some sort during the Summer (until end of September), I love the coffee stand on the left, and the fact that you can drink it a cosy beach chair. There are many games and activities you can do here too, I say a painting board in the corner as well. Lovely. 

 My first real crush in Bratislava is probably Hviezdoslavovo namestie. I love it. I will probably write more about it. Lovely square.

 Eh, it's such a bad picture, I have to find a better position for taking photos of this thing, I want to capture the expressions of gargoyles. Yeah, the things sticking out of the tower? Those are gargoyles.

 This is close to the Bratislava Castle. I haven't visited the castle yet, I'm planing to this week. 

Another street that really made a good first impression is Obchodna street. They have a bookshop there with coffee shop inside. So you go there and read books while you drink coffee. Heaven! When I was there a girl was playing live music on the piano, and I just caught Nothing Else Matters, piano version. Wonderful. I can see myself going there on regular basis, although Bratislava is full of coffee shops, so my search is not done yet. ;) 

I think this will be enough for the first chapter. :) Let me know what do you think of the idea. :)

Thank you for reading and commenting!