Travels: Brooke and Luke in Bradislava
I’ve gone to a lot of different cities, seen a lot of different places, but they were always in hostels, always new to the city. In Bradislava, I found out that one of the best ways to experience a city is by going with someone who knows the city. Horatiu and I set off to Bradislava to finish our own little mini exchange; we accommodated Luke and Brooke in Prague, and in turn, they accommodated us in Bradislava. We went to the best places in Bradislava, and also ventured off to hidden gems of the city as well.
The city is very reminiscent of cities in the Czech Republic, and rightfully so as Bradislava was once part of Czecheslovakia, these two cultures are not far apart from one and other. Bradislava doesn’t necessarily remind me of Prague though, its significantly smaller, but it benefits because its much easier to get around, and it has a small hometown feel to it. It has a castle, but its much smaller then the Prague Castle, it has a town square, but again, much smaller, but I’m sure you all get the picture. In a way, its a miniature version of the city I’ve spent 4 months living in. A large portion of the cities population lives in large communist style apartments that are located a 5 minute tram ride away from the city center, and that’s exactly where we lived. Luke’s grandfather (or Dedko in Slovak, who will be introduced later on) has clients who occasionally need to come to Bradislava, and that appartment is for them; luckly they weren’t coming when we arrived, so all four of us stayed there.
Castle view - Credit Horatiu Halmaghi for image, click for original
One of the first things we did in Bradislava is something the most of the locals do, and not many tourists; ride the bobsleds and play on the obsticle course. Now, the bobsleds weren’t any regular bobsleds, and the obstacle course wasn’t a regular obstacle course. The bobsleds weren’t in snow, it was simply a bobsled that went down a large slide, and I believe it was wheels at the bottom of the carts as you go down. They exist in Prague too, but I’ve never had a chance to check them out. The obstacle course was one of the most intense things I’ve done in a long time, basically, you were strapped into a suit, given two ropes, and you have to go a cross a series of ropes to get from one platform to another in a large collection of different trees. All of the trees are attached by strong metal harnesses, and the rule is you have to have one rope on metal at all times, for safety reasons. Some ropes you had to balance on, some you had to climb, and some were just plain impossible. You have to see it to believe it though, I just wish something like this existed in Vancouver. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in Prague for this trip, so when Brooke puts up pictures, I’ll update this post.
The next thing we did was we went into town to find a popular pub, where we sat and had a few drinks, while drinking large bottles of Kelt beer along the way. Now, generally when your walking from one place to another, you don’t exactly expect to be chased town by a large Slovak man, but that’s exactly what happened to us. See, Luke is an artist, and he has a certain mark which I’m sure most of you have seen in Vancouver. Well, that night he brought his spray cans, and we happened to run into a wall that was just asking to be marked, and so, Luke pulls out his bottle and starts making his mark, asking me to stand on watch. As he starts going, we see two men sitting at the nearby park, and I notice one of them starts yelling at us, but we had no idea what he was saying. I turn around to tell Luke that this guy isn’t happy about him painting on the empty white wall, and when I turn back, I see the guy running at us, full speed ahead. We all run, and the guy gets almost within arms reach of Brooke, and at that point Luke and I were ready to turn around and get into our first Slovak fight (well mine anyways, Luke is born in Bradislava and I don’t know the full extent of his past), but just as we were about to turn around, the man stops in his tracks. I guess he decided he had ran far enough, and damn, it was far enough, he chased us for a good while, something Luke hasn’t even experienced spray painting in Vancouver. I guess the common European man takes a much larger offense to spray paint.
Lukes bird, if you look for it in Vancouver, you’ll find it. - Credit again to Horatiu Halmaghi
We ended up finding the city, grabbing a few drinks (at cheap cost too, the prices were relatively the same as Pragues, except using the Euro), and heading back to the apartment. The next day we finally met Babka and Dedko (meaning Grandma and Grandpa, respectively), and they let us into the house with a very warm welcome. His grandfather was a policeman, which is a very daring profession during those communist times, he had been one through the cold war, and the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. First, they made an amazing plate of food made of ham, potatoes, and a great cream (I can’t exactly remember what it was called, Hora can you?), accompanied by wine and/or beer. Afterwords, we headed to the garden, where we spent the majority of the day. We checked out the garden where Dedko grew all types of food, such as garlic, strawberries, grapes, etc. It was quite an impressive garden, but what was more impressive was how much wine we were served, and how much we drank. Between Hora, Luke, Brooke, and I, we finished off 6 litres of wine, and topped the day off with a barbeque. By the time we decided to go to the city, I was already drunk enough to call it a night, which is essentially what we did. By the time we got into the city center for the second time, I felt as though I was nursing a hangover, it was a strange feeling for it being 10 o’clock at night.
Dedko, Babka, and Brooke - Credit again to Horatiu Halmaghi
On the final day, we set off to do something Luke and his older brother had done a few years ago; raft down the Danai. Our first mission was to get floaties, and so Hora and I bought a pair of donut floaties, and we set off to the top of the river. We took a bus to an area that quite a few Slovaks like to come to, it was a nice area, and so we had quite a bit of spectators looking on (quite possibly in disgust, it was not a very clean river). The plan was to enter from another river, and from there merge into the Danai. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly happen; Brooke saw a snake and freaked out, and decided not to do it. The plan was to go from the top of the Danai all way way into town, but since we couldn’t leave Brooke by herself to get back since we didn’t have cellphones, we did the next best thing, which was to go down the Danai and exit somewhere that we could see from the distance so that we could see and meet her, which is exactly what we did. Floating down the Danai was a lot of fun, its a shame we didn’t get to go all the way down, but don’t worry Brooke, I don’t blame you for being scared, I know you didn’t want to go in the first place. Its alright, we still had a lot of fun.
The Danai - Credit again to Horatiu Halmaghi
Overall I had a ton of fun in Bradislava. We cooked food together for a lot of the nights, it was nice to finally have an oven. We just had a great time overall, hanging out in a city with a semi-local, cooking food with friends, drinking with grandparents, swimming down a dirty river. It has the makings of a weekend I definitely won’t forget. Thanks for everything Luke and Brooke!
