Friday, September 27, 2013

Sept 27 - Transfer to Budapest

This was mostly a bus day, from Prague to Budapest, via Bratislavia, where we stopped for lunch and got a short tour thru the old town. There is a very interesting bridge that the Communists built -- has kind of a Calatrava look to it.
Communist-built bridge in Bratislava
 We learned, however, that to anchor the bridge they had to tear down the oldest synagog in Bratislava, and later made a nice granite monument to it.

Polished granite wall with white etching of synagog destroyed
for the bridge
A Slovak, Ludivit Stur, was featured in several places. His claim to fame was that he led the change in laws to eliminate serfdom and that he codified the Slovak language to help give Slovaks more of a sense of self and community. There was a Slovak language before that, but apparently it was quite informal and impacted by all the other conquering groups that rolled through the area.

There were also a number of interesting street sculptures. My favorite was  the guy in the sewer. And LOTS of different international restaurants: Loch Ness Scottish Pub, Hacienda Mexicana, The Dubliner, Thai and Fusion Restaurant, McDonalds with "Americke Legendy" (3 burgers I've never seen there), and El Gaucho.
Bratislava street sculpture

We found more Magnum Bars at our morning pit stop (and of course we bought them), but I refused to look for them in the afternoon. We got to the boat just before 6pm and found that our cabin looked a bit smaller in real life than in the photos. On the plus side, it had more storage than we first thought though and we managed to unpack and have space to move around, wi-fi is free and should be available in the ports, and we get 2 glasses of wine for free with dinner. The other hundred travelers are here too and tomorrow we start our program of exploring Budapest.
Our home away from home for 2 weeks


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