A Country for the Day
One of the cool things about Vienna is that it sits on the Danube. And, obviously, rivers go to other places. In Vienna’s case, one of the nearest places of any significance is Bratislava. More importantly, in caching terms Slovakia represented a whole new country for me. That made a day trip across the border seem almost compulsory.
There are several ways of getting from Vienna to Bratislava. Bus and train are the sensible options, but both involved travelling out to stations and then doing the reverse at the other end. Given where I was staying, there was another possibility. I could go for the full Tommy-Tourist premium option and arrive by boat. That sounds like it should be slow. It isn’t. The Twin City Liner takes only about ten minutes longer than the train. More importantly for me, it departed from Schwedenplatz, barely five minutes’ walk from my hotel. At the other end it deposited me on the riverside, right next to Bratislava’s compact city centre.
By my reckoning, that saved at least twenty minutes of transport-related faffing at each end. Suddenly the apparently extravagant option was also the convenient one. So obviously, I booked it.
Travelling in Style
The Twin City Liner is a high-speed catamaran running between Vienna and Bratislava several times each day. My outward boat departed at 8:30am and was due into Bratislava at 9:45. The last useful return left at around 6:30pm and arrived back in Vienna at about 8pm. It takes longer coming back because it’s uphill. I decided that simply travelling on the boat wasn’t quite touristy enough, so I enhanced matters by booking myself into the Captain’s Cabin. This is essentially the upper deck, with bigger seats, waiter service and a slightly better view. Nice.
It wasn’t the cheapest way of spending a day in Slovakia, but it also wasn’t frighteningly expensive. So I reckon it was probably the best. There was no travelling across Vienna to reach a railway station. No figuring out onward transport when I arrived. I just wandered down to the Danube, got on a boat, and 75 minutes later wandered off it in another country.
As for what I was going to do once I got there, the plan was somewhat less sophisticated. At the Mega Event the previous day, a Czech couple had described Bratislava as a “village pretending to be a city”. That sounded ideal. What they meant was that the centre was compact, bijou and distinctly twee. With about eight hours available before the return boat, my plan was therefore simple. Clear out as much of the old town as possible. Or at least make a damned good mess of trying.
Boots on the Ground
Getting off the boat left me right where I wanted to be. No stations, buses or additional messing about. I was in central Bratislava, with several hours available and an frighteningly large number of geocaches on the map.
I started by walking a short distance along the river to an earthcache at a river measuring station. I collected some information but never actually logged it. Even afterwards I couldn’t really work out what answer they wanted. Life’s too short.
So I crossed the road to the monument to Ľudovít Štúr and then headed towards Ganymede’s Fountain. The fountain itself dates from 1888 and depicts Ganymede being carried to Mount Olympus by an eagle. Rather more locally, the lower parts include children holding several species of fish from the Danube. On the way there I bumped into two British cachers. They’d hosted an event in Bratislava that morning, which I’d missed by virtue of still being in another country. They suggested I could log their event if they could log mine later. Go for it!
More usefully, I’d solved the coordinates for a nearby multi-cache. It was the only Bratislava multi I’d managed to solve before coming, so I was definitely going to attempt it. They needed one too, so the three of us wandered off together. Thankfully, it proved to be an easy find. Slovakian multi-cache. Tick.
A Man in a Hole
The next memorable stop was Čumil. There really isn’t a sophisticated way of describing Čumil. He’s a bronze geezer sticking his head and shoulders out of a manhole. Installed in 1997, he’s subsequently become one of Bratislava’s best-known landmarks. More importantly, he hosts a geocache. I’d been told about it by the Czech couple at the Mega Event the previous day, so I knew exactly where to look. Knowing where it was and actually retrieving it were different matters.
Čumil sits in tourist-central, and there’s nearly always somebody photographing him. Quite often, lots of somebodies. That made retrieving the cache without advertising its existence something of a challenge. Eventually I got a sufficiently clear moment to grab it. It got busier, so to replace it I played the old “could you photograph me with the statue” card on a couple of fellow Brits. They were none the wiser, and hopefully none of the other forty or so tourists there at the time spotted what I was up to. Cool!
Uptown, Top Rankin’
From here I started zigging and zagging through Bratislava’s Old Town. By this stage the cache types were piling up nicely. I’d found traditional caches, the multi, my first puzzle of the day, plenty of Adventure Labs and some virtuals. This was going rather well.
Eventually my meandering carried me north to the Presidential Palace. There was a particularly pleasant formal garden behind it, which conveniently contained another two sets of Adventure Lab stages That’s the joy of Adventure Labs in a European capital. You can be ostensibly sightseeing while the numbers quietly accumulate at a frankly unreasonable rate, and nobody around you thinks you’re acting suspiciously.
Miles from Anywhere
Having cleared up around the palace, I turned south again. I passed the Plague Column, which I’ve only subsequently discovered is called the Plague Column, and picked up my only Wherigo of the day.
My route then brought me back into the older part of the city through Michael’s Gate. It’s the only surviving gate from Bratislava’s medieval fortifications, completed in the 14th century and subsequently altered several times before acquiring its present appearance in the 18th century. On the floor underneath the gate there’s a dial in the floor showing distances to multiple European and worldwide destinations. Because of that setting, it’s the subject of a couple of virtual caches and umpty-fifteen Ad Lab stages.
The Onset of Pain
By now I’d stopped trying to maintain anything resembling an elegant walking route. I was letting the caches dictate matters. The route brought me eventually to St Martin’s Cathedral, where there was another puzzle cache. I found it. I couldn’t open it. Sometimes finding the bleedin’ thing apparently isn’t enough.
Memorial
Close to the cathedral, under the looming SNP Bridge, the mood changed. Rybné Square contains Bratislava’s Holocaust Memorial, standing where the city’s Neolog Synagogue once stood. The synagogue wasn’t itself destroyed by the Nazis. It survived the war, only to be demolished in 1969 during the redevelopment associated with construction of the bridge. The memorial was erected in 1996. Its black wall carries the outline of the lost synagogue, while the central sculpture sits above the words Zachor and Pamätaj. Both mean “Remember”. It commemorates the 105,000 Holocaust victims from Slovakia. 105,000? That’s a Wembley and a bit. There’s plenty of entire countries that have fewer people than that. I am frankly appalled by how that could happen, and I am now even more appalled that the same mindset is occuring again, directed towards Muslims rather than Jews.
So before we get too politcal, that made this another stop in what has unintentionally become something of a theme during my travels this year. I’ve visited several places connected with the Holocaust and Europe’s Jewish communities. Vienna was another example, with its reminders of individuals who were forcibly removed from their homes. They’re not comfortable places to visit. Necessary but not comfortable. As it should be. Every one reinforces my opinions on that period of history. Sometimes travelling shouldn’t simply involve photographing pretty buildings, finding plastic boxes and drinking beer. Some things deserve a pause, both physically and mentally. Reflection is good.
Refuelling
Happily, the remainder of the afternoon was considerably lighter. My wanderings brought me back along Hviezdoslavovo námestie towards where I’d started that morning. I still had some time before my caching event, but not really enough to launch another major assault on the map.
Food seemed appropriate. I found a nearby Italian restaurant and ordered a very, very good spaghetti carbonara, accompanied by garlic bread sticks and a decent local beer. This proved an excellent decision. I’d been walking and caching for most of the day, so a proper meal was becoming less of a luxury and more of an operational necessity. It also filled the remaining time perfectly. All that remained was to wander over to the event and see whether anybody actually turned up.
A Proper Euro-Event
This became comfortably the best-attended of my “MKGees on Tour” events this year. There were probably twenty people there. Many were local, but the Vienna Mega had clearly helped. There were visitors from Finland, Belgium, Germany, France and elsewhere. A proper European caching event.
I spent ages chatting to people, swapping caching stories and generally enjoying the slightly peculiar phenomenon of travelling somewhere you’ve never visited before and immediately acquiring a temporary social circle because everybody hunts Tupperware using satellites. It was genuinely good fun.
Eventually, though, the clock started edging towards boat time. I grabbed one traditional cache right next to the event site, then returned to an Adventure Lab stage I’d skipped earlier. That left just the walk back to the river. I did that in company with a Belgian lady from the event who’d also travelled across from Vienna and was catching the same boat back. She hadn’t, however, splashed the cash on the Captain’s Cabin. So at boarding time, class divisions brutally reasserted themselves.
Back Upstream
The Twin City Liner carried me back towards Vienna as daylight began to disappear. And yes, as established earlier, it took longer going back because it was uphill.
had closed in. I’d already eaten in Bratislava, so there was no need to venture out again. I walked the few minutes back to the hotel and investigated the minibar instead.
Somehow a half-bottle of wine from the minibar was cheaper than buying one downstairs in the full-sized bar. I’m not sure that’s how hotel economics is supposed to work, but I wasn’t going to argue.
And that was Slovakia. A new country for my caching map. A pile of different cache types. A surprisingly successful event. A beautiful compact city, small but perfectly formed, as the cliche goes. Good food. A fast boat. And, to finish it all off, sunset over the Danube from my premium seat upstairs. An excellent day.
