Bratislava: Chapter 6 ~ Štúr, Uisce Beatha and 1st Slovak Pub

Hello everyone! So this is my last chapter about Bratislava, written in Bratislava. It feels weird. I haven't written anything in past two months simply because there was so much going on, friends visiting, having road trips around Slovakia, having exams (yeah, that too :P) ... I feel I am staring at the last weekend of my Erasmus exchange after being here for a ... month, maybe. It went by so so fast, and I know it is a cliche to say that, but that's just how I feel. My BF is coming today, we'll be here until Sunday, and then I'm back home in Ljubljana. I won't even go into how I feel about leaving, to put it shortly, I do not want to leave.

Today I went to Štúr, possibly for the last time (although I just might go on my own again tomorrow - my BF dislikes going out for coffee, you know, "why go out for a 2€ cup when you can cook coffee at home for couple of cents per cup" mentality), and remembered I really wanted to write about my favourite places for eating, drinking and, well, just be, with a book or some nice company. :) So if you're ever in Blava and want to go to a nice place, here are some ideas. 

source: http://www.asb.sk/architektura/interier/kaviarenska-terapia-sturom

Štúr is a cafe, essentially, with a vast offer of food, from soup of the day to delicious cakes. They have their own blend of coffee that is amazing and they also offer tea and smoothies and lemonade and ... well, just about everything really. There are located on three places, all in Staré Mesto or just about there, one on Štúrova (really close to Evrovea, University and Tesco, and maybe five minutes walk from Slovak national theatre), one on Panská (heart of Old Town, if you go from cathedral to Main Square, you pass it) and Obchodná (big shopping street of Bratislava, really close to 1st Slovak Pub too). My favourite is actually on Panská. The atmosphere in there is perfect, waiters are really nice, they also speak English really well. The prices are very decent, you always get a great product for it. Cappuccino is 2€ and in 5 months of being their regular customer I haven't gotten a bad cup of coffee. Plus the food is just yummy, sandwiches, salads, quiche, CAKES (cake is the language of love!!). I really recommend it. 

source: http://www.slovakpub.sk/fotogaleria

If you want to try some good, traditional Slovak food, 1st Slovak pub (1. slovenska krčma) is the place to go. Located on Obchodná, you can reach them in 10 minutes of walk from Michalska brana. They have 8 different rooms, each dedicated to some part of Slovak (or Slovan) history, from room of Slovak poets with poems written on the wall, to hall of Pribina's knights, with the knights' table. It is a little bit like a maze, but a cozy one. In room of Janošik you actually have a smal furnace and the smell of the fire can really make your lunch or dinner even better. :) The food is superb and comparing to other "tourist" traditional food restaurants really cheap (comparing to another restaurant near Hviezdoslavovo namestie: soup in Slovak pub is usually under 2 eur, in that restuarant around 5 or 6). You can get a really nice waiter or a bad one, in average I had 80% good experience with them, either speaking Slovak or English, so all in all is good. Read their entire menu as well, it is fun! They explain what brynza cheese is and have a special menu for poor student, or student, trying to impress his girlfriend. :) They also have an offer of half the portion for 70% of the price, which, trust me, can be a very good idea, because Slovak food is rather heavy and their portions enormous. If you are up for traditional Slovak food, I recommend the Slovak table for 2 persons, but bear in mind, 3 to 4 people can get full off that. Oh, the pub is separated to smoker and non-smoker rooms, the ones that look best are of course smoker rooms, which I do not like, but what can you do. The coffee, however, is not good, at least not for my taste, go up Obchodna to Štúr for an excellent one!

The menu in Uisce Beatha :)

Uisce Beatha is a small Irish pub in the heart of old city centre that I absolutely adore. It is hidden in a little street called Na Vršku and you will need to walk through a few small alleys before you get there (but it is rather close to Michalska brana, so it is near tourist spots). In this era of GPS I doubt you will have any trouble finding it even if it is your first time in Blava. You will not regret it. It is cozy, people working there are extremely nice and friendly. Obviously they speak good English, they have good and cheap beer (although they do not have many brands to offer, the ones they have are good!) and vast choice of whiskey. Oh, and their Irish coffee is actual Irish coffee, you can taste real whiskey in there, extra points! It is the pub I visit by far most often and I love it there. Sure am going to miss it. 

There is plenty of other places I like. Čierny pes is like a minute of walk away from Uisce Beatha and is a lovely place as well (they serve Bernard beer!), if you have a chance you need to visit Randal club, especially if there is a good rock/metal concert going on there, the bar is beyond awesome, great beer, great pizza (served any time of the night!). A lovely pub in city centre is also U Kozla, and another right under the castle called Zamocky pivovar (Castle brewery). Oh, another place I am forgetting is the La Putika cafe, that is amazing. There is three or four of them in Bratislava, I visited two, and they are great, I do recommend them as well. 

Naturally there is many more places to see and visit, but these are on my favourites list and I visit them most often. I am one of those people, you know, that find a place they love and they just stick to it. So I did not really visit every single cafe and pub in Blava, but those that I have and I like, are really amazing. 

Next time I will get back to you from Ljubljana, until then, have a lovely weekend!

Bratislava: Chapter 5 ~ Vinobranie v Pezinku (Wine Festival in Pezinok)

Hey everyone! How are you doing? So yeah, let's see how my student exchange is going here in Bratislava. The days are getting colder and greyer. But yesterday the Christmas market was officially opened and it was a wonderful evening. And it also reminded me that I still haven't written about wine festival that I am planing to for, oh, last two months. :) I am feeling at home here, for real now. Not holidays, not some sort of limited time studying here, just home. And it is nice but it also makes me a bit sick, thinking about February when I will need to leave for sure. That's why I don't think about it much. :) I have some really nice experiences with people and I got some weirdo experiences, that occur surprisingly often randomly on the street. No idea what's up with that, I am not used to it. But all in all Blava is still wonderful. I was hoping I will travel around a bit more, but the planed road trips fell apart due to the fact that it is getting late for most castles and a lot of them are under construction. Shucks. 

But to the wine festival. In September, the western Slovakia has the wine festivals, the annual ones occurring in Pezinok and Modra, they call it burčiak festival. Burčiak is a very young wine, the tour guide calls it grape cider. Burčiak tastes amazing, like a very good grape juice with tiny, soft bubbles, but it does consist of alcohol, according to Mr. Google, from 4 to 6% of it. So it can bite you in the ass, I mean, you drink it like water. It helps that 2 dcl cost, ladies and gentlemen, 60 cents. Oh yeah. So on 21st September we went to the lovely city of Pezinok. The bus connections Bratislava - Pezinok are really great. The lady at the counter gave as an absurd price for the ticket, but when we got on the bus, we payed only 1.20 for the ride, so maybe she was just messing with us. When you get to Pezinok, you can already see small stands locals put out, in front of their houses, offering their own burčiak. They just bring a table and a couple of chairs on the sidewalk and wait for customers, it looks amusing. :) The road gets completely packed as you approach the city center, so get off the bus as soon as you see the traffic jam.

The crowd on the festival is unbelievable. I usually don't freak out in that kind of crowd only on concerts, I am not a person to be in a large, slowly moving crowd for a very long time. But the food was excellent and burčiak yummy and we managed. I tried a Slovak sweet for the very first time, called trdelník. It originated from Hungary, but is part of Slovak and Czech culinary culture as well. It is essentially a dough, wrapped around a thick stick, then fried and rolled around in whatever flavour you want - cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, cocoa, walnut ... it does not sound much in theory, but it is crazy good. I of course am a cinnamon addict, so I took cinnamon one and it was heavenly. I also tried lokše, they are some sort of potato pancakes, but they were not good, also my flatmate said this is not how lokše are supposed to taste. So I need to try them somewhere else, right now they are not on my good food list.

Oh yes, the festival itself is actually quite big. I expected a very small town (really not that small), with a very small square (again, not that small) and a couple of stands, offering wine and some food (in fact three long streets of stands on both sides, offering everything from wine, burčiak, cheese, fried food, sweets, spirits, honey, to jewelry, small tourist gifts, and all kinds of toys for children). There was a stage with live music (I was unlucky enough to stumble upon Abba tribute band right as we went there) and on the other side even a small fair, that we did not visit, so I can't tell you much of it. The prices were very decent, they did not overprice their product on the stands (like they are doing now on Christmas market), so you should get your stuff there without feeling guilty about it. :)

It was a lovely event, just be prepared for the crowd. The public transportation from Bratislava is excellent and very cheap, you can get there and back without a problem. And enjoy the burčiak! Lots of it! If you plan on buying it for home, don't forget that it is still fermenting when served and after a week it will change into different kind of beverage.

 The gingerbread cookies and earrings I bought. Gingerbread was amazing.

The church in the middle of the festival, all around it were the stands. No other decent photos of the festival itself, I am afraid, too many people on the photos or they turned out shaky. Ever mentioned I need a new camera?

Trdelník. Yum!!


So if you have a chance and are around Bratislava in the end of September, I do recommend a visit of one of their wine festivals (Rača, Pezinok, Modra, those I know, there is probably many more). :)

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 Slovak word of the chapter: burčiak [means young wine, or grape cider. A professor of Slovak in Slovenia told me we call it mlado vino].
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Thank you for reading and commenting!

Bratislava: Chapter 4 ~ Jeseň v Bratislave (Fall in Bratislava)

Hey my dear people! How are you doing? It's nearly two months since I moved to Bratislava, even though it feels like a week or two. Apparently I lost the tourist vibe, as I get asked by confused Slovak or foreign people for directions approximately once a week, and I am still not feeling one bit homesick. I half expected it to hit me about a month after arriving here, even though I always loved to travel. Maybe the fact that my boyfriend comes visit every month helps.

Autumn here is absolutely gorgeous, btw. I am still walking to my faculty, a long walk, but it is so gorgeous, this week we had 23 degrees once! The sun is shining, the trees are changing the colours of their leaves, even the air smells like fall, gorgeous. The baked chestnuts stands on the streets, the smell of fallen leaves on the sidewalks ... gorgeous. No fog, basically no rain. Love it. So here are some random pictures of Old Town, or my walk across Old Bridge across Dunaj river (Danube river), and some of gorgeous Hviezdoslavovo namestie (square) or the park of Medicine faculty and another park near my faculty ... have I said gorgeous often enough in this paragraph?

White (up) and dark (down) chocolate treat in Old Town. YUM

 To me this building looks like something wizards would build for their own use. In fact it is a high school. Or so they want the Muggles to think.

Another thing made my Fall here even more awesome. Fates Warning played in Bratislava last week. It was a great, great concert, great sound, great place. Randal Club, I do recommend it!

How is your Fall going so far? :)

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 Slovak word of the chapter: strom [means tree (drevo)]. This one really surprised me.
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Thank you for reading and commenting!

Bratislava: Chapter 3 ~ Bratislavský hrad (the Castle of Bratislava)

Hey my dear people! Yeah, these chapters started good, two in a row, and now it is almost a month since I posted them. Which essentially means I've been busy discovering the city, starting my classes (and trying to figure out the no-system system of the faculty), we even went for a wine festival near Bratislava, I shall write about it soon. But yeah ... I am enjoying Bratislava, the old town is simply a perfection, and I enjoy living on my own. :) 

Oh, I went to Ljubljana for the convention, it was GREAT. Got tons of compliments on my costume and make up as well, and I was really happy about that. :) And it was really good to see all my friends and family. Now I am not planning on going back to Slovenia until the end of my semester here, unless something urgent happens, and I am planning to travel around Slovakia a bit more, so I plan to make lots of chapters of it. :) Plus, I added the Slovak word of the chapter in the end of the posts, because I think the language is really fun and beautiful and I greatly enjoy learning it. :) I will add the Slovene word in the translation as well, just so you will see that not ALL words are the same in Slovak and Slovene. ;)

Chapter 3 will be about the Castle of Bratislava. It is very nicely visible if you come to Bratislava via Nový most, which, if I'm not mistaken, will happen if you take the highway to the city. The white building on the hill gives me an even stronger impression of Old Town being a bigger version of old town in Ljubljana (where we also have a white castle, but it is very small comparing to the one in Bratislava). Since old part of Ljubljana is one of my favourite places ever, let alone in Ljubljana, I certainly do not mind the bigger version of it. 

This is is written at the entrance to the castle, if you are interested in a bit of history:

The Bratislava Castle has been inhabited since the late Stone Age. Its first written record dates back to the year 907 AD. The Crown Tower, located in the southwest of the Palace, was built in 13th century and it is standing till today. During the reign of Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387-1437) the castle underwent a radical Gothic reconstruction. After 1526, the castle became the seat of Hungarian monarchs. Under the reign of Maria Teresa (1740-1780) the castle was transformed into a luxurious Baroque residence. In 1811, the castle was burnt down and its reconstruction was only undertaken in 1953. The Bratislava Castle is currently administered by the Chancellery of the National Council of the Slovak Republic and houses the Museum of History of the Slovak National Museum.

Of course you can walk up the hill to Bratislavský hrad, it is a rather short walk right from the Old Town and you can enjoy the view while you are walking up. On the path  (we took the one going from Obchodna, then Kapucinska and up the road) you can find lots of cafes, bars and restaurants, so if you're feeling like taking a break, you will have plenty of stops. :) 

The castle itself is gorgeous from outside. The surroundings are beautiful and the castle is quite magnificent (even if I prefer the old type of castles, ala Spiš castle), not to mention the view you have on Donau and the rest of Bratislava. But the insides disappointed me a bit. I do not know, perhaps they are still reconstructing the rooms, nothing was written explicitly. And although the museum and the gallery were very nice, I found the bare walls of the castle somewhat disappointing. But the first floor with golden arches and ceilings is fantastic. So yeah ... all in all I do recommend the visit. :) I paid 2,5€ with my student discount for the entrance.

 The stairs to the castle. Hey, if Frodo and Sam could walk up the freaking Cirith Ungol ...!

The view from the tower. You cannot open the windows there, so there might be a reflection from the glass here and there on the pictures.

And the ceiling inside the castle, love this!

I did not take a lot of pictures in museum and gallery, because my camera cannot work under the conditions of normal lightning in closed spaces. Ah. No matter, go see them for yourselves. :)

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Slovak word of the chapter: čučoriedka [means blueberry (borovnica)]. The cutest word I have heard in my life. 
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Thank you for reading and commenting!

Bratislava: chapter 2 ~ Coffee and books

When I first read in the guide that Bratislava has a very long tradition of coffee shops and that people of Bratislava like to spend their entire afternoons simply sitting in a cafe, chatting, my first thought was: my people! I am a big coffee fan, which means I love to drink it, but I am also a spoiled coffee drinker, I hate bad coffee and I believe good coffee places are somewhat rare in every city. Say what you will, coffee is not simply coffee, it can be heavenly or it can be brown water with aftertaste of burned coffee grain which is, needless to say, disgusting to me. As my regular coffee place in Ljubljana spoils me endlessly when it comes to coffee, I needed to find a good coffee place in Bratislava ASAP. Me and my flatmate went discovering a bit in the last few days and I am most happy to report, that the coffee/bookshop duet I found on my first day of wandering around Old Town, works with a great coffee and service. 

Consequently it is very full and it is somewhat hard to get a table. But we were lucky today, after our visit of Bratislava castle (I shall write about it soon), we got what will probably be my favourite little space in the world, provided that I am lucky enough to get it again. ;) I took a quick shot of it, like a big fat tourist, I could not resist. 

 

 It's placed in a corner (which works perfectly for introvert such as myself ;)) and it is this big soft cozy armchair, where you can read or observe the busy street of Obchodna. 

Before I forget the obvious: we are talking about Martinus.sk bookshop and Shtoor coffee shop. Martinus has excellent choice of books in English department (and an awesome one in Slovak, naturally, they have a gorgeous edition of Slovak Hobbit that I'm definitively going to buy), I bought a set of Pullman's His Dark Materials and already have 3 others on WL. I think prices are decent as well. They have special editions of Silmarillion and LOTR (first around 70 € and the second around 120 €), in boxes and in velvet and gorgeous design, I totally want to have them. Not that I can afford them, but they look amazing. I'll rather stick to the rest of the bookstore, being very affordable. ;) 

As for the Shtoor coffee shop, it is not the only one, they have two more in Bratislava and according to the internet, it is quite popular and well known. They have their own coffee blend, called 1843, and it is seriously good coffee. It is Ethiopian and also fair trade. They have these great menus, where they tell their story and about the coffee. They also offer food (ah-mazingly good chicken sandwich with roasted tomatoes, and the cakes looked absolutely gorgeous), it is really good and classy, but also a bit too pricey for my wallet to eat there regularly. They offer smoothies of different flavours and Slovak wine and all in all anyone can get something right for themselves there. I do recommend the coffee though, it is really good.

source: foursquare.com

So yeah ... you sit there, reading a book you just bought (or brought with you), sipping this amazing coffee while people are popping up randomly to play a tune or two on the piano. Sounds like a slice of heaven to me.

source: martinus.sk

And now for the best part for me? Remember I told you Shtoor has more than one coffee shop in Bratislava? One of them is three minutes of walk away from my faculty. Oh yeah!

Have a nice day tomorrow, thank you for reading!

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!