The plans are non-existent and we are ignorant. We all get up early to take the 6 am bus to Bratislava. Four hours pass, as the snow piles up and the roads get worse. The Czech bus lines offer coffee and newspapers in strict contradiction to American low standards. I opt to sleep instead.
We arrive to Bratislava's bus stop and the immediate utterance is "What the fuck are we doing here?" Outside the station, streets are full of slush, shit and debris. We need to take the 202 tram to our hostel, but it's no where in sight. As soon as we buy our tram tickets, the man behind the counter closes his ticket kiosk, so we are left alone among the Slovak people, looking incredibly confused. Crossing the street, we manage to find the correct terminal and board the next tram. In Prague, the tram system marks stops through the clear enunciation of "Příští zastávka Výstaviště Holešovice" "Příští zastávka Dělnická" etc. The woman's voice verges on angelic, giving a cadence to your journey. In Bratislava, the broken speaker systems croak out "Rajska" before falling silent. We step out.
The hostel places all eight of us on the third floor. Nothing remarkable, aside from the concrete communist view outside. We sleep for several hours. At this point, we realize that most of us don't have any euros and begin a quest to find conversion rates. It is Saturday, and all the banks are closed, as well as the only kiosk we can find. As we walk, we see a man lying slumped in the center of the road. A man next to him starts screaming and throwing cards at the body. We assume he is dead, until someone gets out of their car to go help him. Many puns involving Brutalslava are made.
We go into Tesco and the cashier direct us downstairs to customer service. Customer service directs us to look up stairs. A kind employee walks the whole length of the shop looking for their non-existent exchange booth. He directs us to the mall, telling us it is a 30 minute walk away. We arrive in around 15 minutes to Eurovea, a elongated egg-shaped glass construction, and find the only bank open on Saturdays in all of Bratislava. We buy wine and walk to the center of the bridge over the Danube. "This is actually beautiful," someone says.
We go to a beer hall, and eat dinner. A couple people have brought small glass jars containing shrooms and honey. I'm the last one to get a jar, and I go into the WC while everyone waits outside. The bathroom is empty. I pick a stall and pull out the jar. The spoon Ju stole is too big to fit into the jar, so I have to use the back end to scoop the shrooms out. I get honey on my hands, and the only sound in the entire bathroom is metal clinking on glass.
We climb the castle, looking for Sub Klub. A man directs us towards the base of the hill. The Klub is in a bunker under the castle, with euro drum beats, lights and geometrically painted walls. Dancing ensues, until Ju gets freaked out by the strobe lights, and N is too tired. E repeats over and over to herself "I'm turning into butterflies". I feel sober.
N, E, and H go back to the hostel, but C, J, Ju and I go back to the castle. We climb to the top, and the city is beautiful. We are all laughing. An old lady watches us out of her second story window. C sees a graffiti rabbit and begins to have an existential crisis. "We've left Bratislava behind".
We walk down the other side of Castle hill, looking for a place to stop. A fluorescent lit hall way advertises a caffe. It leads to an dark courtyard, completely silent. We mirror it, but growing uncomfortable we go back.
Then we find Cafe Nervosa. American pop songs play, while Slovaks talk loudly. When we enter, they stop for a moment, or so it seemed, and then continue. We order beer and sit down. I had wrapped the honey covered jar in our map to stop my coat from getting sticky. I pull it out, crumpled. I explain that the map is better now, it has more meaning. C steals our beer mugs, which we are certain the waitress notices.
When we get up to leave one guy sitting nearby with one of his friends stops us and says hello. He speaks English, and he starts to tell us about how he had lived in Arizona and seen the Scottsdale. "You have this big canyon, and the big roads, and I live here with these [he points to the cobble stone roads] and a ditch". I want to stay, but I'm high to explain the appeal of small Slovakian roads to the American mind, and we need to leave before we can be stopped by our waitress. Ugly Americans all of us.
We get back to the hostel to find that E and H had seen a stabbing, and the next day we see the blood all over the street. In our stay, I did not read a single datum of information about Bratislava or its people.
