Bratislava

12 September 2007

I went to Bratislava at the end of August, for more of the music man and his boat. An attempt to see whether I could get near the boat without bringing down a huge hailstorm upon it like last time.

The parents and I did a bit of sightseeing on the first day. Everything seemed to be uphill, or at the top of several steep flights of steps. The sort of steps that make you think your knees are going to explode before you finally just give in and drop down dead.

The view from the castle grounds was great and the Danube stretched out below us as we basked in the sunshine. The empty pontoon in front of the Au Café revealed that the music man was still on his way upstream from Hungary and over on the horizon I could see the wind turbines that Suzy and I had passed in the bus back in June.

The castle is said to look like an upturned table and with its four turrets, those who say this do have a point. But it’s a grand looking place … which made the collection of naked metal statues in the adjoining park seem all the more incongruous. There was a web address painted onto one of the solid metal naked dudes, but the website doesn’t shed any light on why they and their rusty willies are there.

Around the town I spotted several posters for Hubert’s concert the next day. A slightly bizarre feeling, to realise that my photo had been pasted across eastern Europe that summer to advertise the concerts on the tour. I’m not sure what wins: the posters or the plane?