Bratislava City Tour... and pictures! =)

Bratislava, Day 1, Part 2

Bratislava Tour Time!!!!! In a large portion of the European tourist cities, there are free tours by this company called “Be Free.” I will be looking further into this for future trips! Our guide was Timmy from Australia, and in addition to his fabulous accent, he was really cute!

The meeting point is in the Secondary Square in front of the Hviezdoslav statue. He was a poet from Bratislava, but this statue was not the original one in this place. There was another statue of a Hungarian poet here a couple of centuries ago. His name was Ptofi (spelling? Not sure), and when Bratislava was part of Hungary for a short time, he was the Hungarian national hero. Bratislava had a couple of different names over the years when it changed hands a few times—it was called Pressburg when Germany took over and Pizoni when it was Hungarian. But when Slovakia and Czech became Czechoslovakia in 1914, the Bratislavans didn’t want to be part of Czech. They decided to become their own independent country for a while and called themselves “The Free City of Wilsonova”... after Woodrow Wilson! That lasted about a year or less. In 1919 Czech defeated Bratislava (Free City of Wilsonova), and they took it over again (they were surrounded on all sides, after all).

So when Czech and all of Slovakia, including Bratislava, decided to get along, they banded together, wrapped Ptofi’s statue up in dynamite, blew him up, and put up the statue of Hziezdoslav the Slovakian! Even today there remains a rivalry between Hungarians and Slovaks because of this very incident!

Moving right along… Also in this square  we have the Historic National Theatre (which is actually still used more than the new one the Communists built when they tried to “modernize” the city), and a place for Bratislavans to come together and protest, celebrate, etc.

And then we come to some statues. Bratislavans LOVE their statues! There are so many of them, but unfortunately there are very few signs or plaques that indicate what they are or why they’re there. The four I find most interesting are the Watchman (peeping out of a manhole!), Napoleon Bonaparte (more on him in a moment), the Paparazzi (standing taking a photo outside the Paparazzi Restaurant), and the man in the top hat. The top hat man is said to have gone mad due to an unrequited love in the early 20^th century. He would walk around town dressed in his finest, and people would give him food. In return he would give flowers to the ladies of Bratislava. (Please enjoy more detail HERE.)

And that brings us to the Main Square. Here we see… Napoleon! He is appropriately located just in front of the French Embassy, but it’s not all a kindly gesture. You see, Napoleon tried to take Bratislava twice, once in 1805 and then in 1809. The first time he was stopped, but not before he lodged a cannon ball into the huge clock tower—which remains there to this day! In 1809 he finally got it, but not for too long.

Now about this clock tower. It was built in the 13^th century, I believe, and it was added onto several times. The building attached to it currently houses the Museum of the City History, but before that it housed the mint office, then weapons, and then prisoners. In the 1600s it was actually used as a place to torture witches! There’s a plaque a few meters away that commemorates where the first witch was burned at the stake. Please see pictures.

From this place in the main market square, we looked back to see St. Martin’s Cathedral. This is the place where kings and queens were coronated for centuries here in Slovakia. Mr. Tour Guide pointed out that there’s a solid gold crown and pillow at the very top of the tower that weighs 8 kg (around 15 pounds, I think). Here it’s important to point out a couple of things. Number one, this is the first time in over five years that St. Martin’s has not been under extensive repair. There’s a highway going right past it, where the old Jewish district used to be. The Communists took over Czech and Slovakia after WWII, and giving them possession of both Prague and Bratislava. They decided to keep one city pristine and preserve the history, but then modernize the other. Fortunately for Prague, they kept that one very nice. Unfortunately for Bratislava, they started modernizing. The old town portion of Bratislava is only 20% of what the city used to be. The other 80% was torn down and destroyed to make way for modernization. In place of that historic 80% now stands a new bridge with a UFO on the top (which foreigners affectionately call the “Jetson Bridge”), a building shaped like an upside-down pyramid, and quite honestly some really ugly socialist architecture. I went into one of the apartment buildings the next day, and it literally looked like a jail with bars on the doors and windows. The tile walls looked like bathroom floors, and you could tell things were very cheaply made. The buildings are only about 40 years old or less, and they’ve just not been taken care of. It’s pretty sad-looking! At any rate, thankfully some of the important and beautiful buildings are still standing. Who knows how they decided what to tear down and what to save!

Also interesting about this particular square is the indication of a severe flood in 1850. The city sits on the north side of the Danube River (which is not really blue!), and in February of 1850, it froze over. Now that’s all fine till it starts to melt. The only problem came when the icebergs, which didn’t melt as quickly, did not melt. They were actually big enough to block the river in such a way that it redirected the water uphill into the Bratislavan City Center! The flood was the worst in the city’s history, and other floods since then have no even come close to comparing with this one.

Moving right along, just a few meters away, we stood in the middle of the main souvenir marketplace! Here we learned about Slovak traditions and culture. Apparently, if you cut an apple across the middle and the seeds are in a star-shaped design, you will have good luck! Last I checked, all apples typically have seeds in a star-shape when you cut it in half cross-ways. ;) Also, if you rub honey on your face, you will have good luck! If you throw nuts into the corner of a room, you will have good luck! If you hear an ambulance siren, you must bump your head against something three times to have good luck.

But the luckiest of all are Slovak boys on Easter Monday. They have full permission to beat up and terrorize poor little girls! Boys can throw cold water on a girl, hit her with a special stick, pick her up and take her away kicking and screaming… and the only way to stop this is to give the boy chocolate or a strong drink! And when she does this, she also has to give him a ribbon to tie around his beating stick. And then he gets to do it all over again to someone else! So those are some fun traditions…

Next stop: St. Michael’s Gate! This is the only surviving gate to the city, but if one was to be saved, it’s good that it was this one because this was the Barbican gate! Like the Barbican in Krakow, this gate is also off-center so as to avoid a head-on attack. But unlike the Krakow Barbican which had a 45-degree angle between gates, this one has a 90-degree angle! Both types have their advantages, but this one is particularly unique because any attacking force would have to make a 90-degree turn, forcing them to stop and redirect the entire army. This would buy the soldiers of the city some time to put some arrows into the attackers and defend themselves!

Also important about this gate is that this is the same gate that new kings and queens would walk through to get to St. Martin’s Cathedral to be coronated. They would walk through the streets, and the path they took was marked with little bronze crowns embedded in the cobblestones. Pretty cool to still see them there, I’d have to say!

Through the gate, we looked hung a left and took a good look at an inconspicuous plaque on the ground. This commemorates the place where the first witch was burned at the stake in 1602. Four hundred years later, in 2002, the plaque was dedicated.

And also in this spot is where we had our best view of the Bratislava Castle! Now, this castle had withstood attacks from Mongolians, Ottomans, Napoleon Bonaparte, and others, but in 1811, when Bratislava decided to hire the best Italian builders to make improvements to the castle, they had a party inside and burned it down! They still joke that the castle withstood all those armies but couldn’t survive one night of Italian partying. Bummer.

And to our right was the Trinitarian Church. Interestingly enough, there was another church on this spot at one point, called St. Michael’s Church. But it actually blocked the view of incoming armies over the hills! So whoever was in charge at that time decided to have it torn down. The only problem now… they didn’t have a church! So they built this one in its place and made it such that the view was not blocked. It is now one of the primary churches in the city. This is an important church for other reasons, however. In 1939, a deposed Slovak leader named Tiso called an emergency meeting of parliament here.

And then we walked a bit further and got a good view of the Slovak White House! =) And we continued with the story…

You see, Tiso had just been personally invited to dinner in Berlin with Adolf Hitler. Hitler proposed that Tiso should break Slovakia away from Czech and become their own country, and Tiso should be their leader. At first Tiso said no, but after several rounds of Tiso declining and Hitler insisting (promising protection if Tiso would do it and a Hungarian attack if he didn’t), Tiso conceded and called this emergency meeting of parliament. Ultimately, Slovakia conceded and Tiso became president of the country. Slovakia was now with the Axis powers, and Czech is on the side of the Allied powers. Czech felt betrayed, to say the least.

So, all that happened in March of 1939. In May of that same year, Hitler went back on his word and invaded Slovakia. Hitler also demanded that Tiso give him 20,000 Slovak soldiers, which was most of their army. But Tiso gave Hitler an alternative: he would give Hitler 20,000 Jews instead to work in labor camps. But then Tiso went back on that word and offered full civilian protection of Jews. This lasted until 1944 when the major deportation of Jews occurred in Slovakia—and Slovakia had, at one time, been one of the places where they “knew” they would be safe. Of course, they didn’t really go to labor camps, they went to Auschwitz, which we now know was an extermination camp.

And so came a Slovakian National Uprising. There’s not a square called “Uprising Square” dedicated to this event, and there’s a statue of the guy who started it. (Side note: This is where Bratislavans come even now whenever there’s a national celebration or a national tragedy. They hold protests here as well. They are very active in their squares around there!) The people of Slovakia knew they were fighting against fascism, and they felt very strongly about that. But they didn’t really know what they were fighting for. Political leaders used this time as a platform to promote their agendas, and things just didn’t go well. There was too much confusion and not enough facts or truth for people to look to.

When WWII ended, Britain asked the Czechs if they wanted Slovakia back, and interestingly enough, the Czechs did. Pretty big turn around after the betrayal they’d felt six years previous. Eventually, Tiso was demoted again and again, and he was finally hanged in Bratislava in 1947.

Moving along, we talked about how Slovakia is doing at the moment. By standards around the world, there is still a good deal of poverty in Slovakia. But there’s also a lot of growth. They became part of the EU and adopted the Euro, their economy is growing, low taxes bring in large companies like VW and others, and their strategy to getting what they want with the EU is to always be the last to decide on EVERYTHING. =) It seems to work!

Our guide also gave us an interesting aside. Several bridges cross the Danube, and they’re currently building a new one. The people of Slovakia held a preliminary vote to come up with a name for this bridge. Some wanted to name it after Maria Teresa, who is very important to Bratisava, some wanted to name it after something else, but overwhelmingly, 81% of the people want to name it after… CHUCK NORRIS! Too funny! Why? I’m not sure. But that’s what they want!

Now on to more historic sites! There’s this very large and interesting cathedral called St. Elizabeth’s Church. It’s blue. Very, very BLUE! It’s also done in the Art Nuevo style, so it kind of reminds people of Cinderella’s Castle. There are several nicknames for this church: The Blue Church, The Cake Church, The Big Blue Marshmallow, and—my favorite—the SMURF CHURCH! Too hilarious. There are weddings there every Saturday of the year, and people will be on a waiting list for years to have their weddings, christenings, etc. happen here. It’s actually one of the top 20 Art Neuvo sites in the world, and just across the street is… an unsightly, abandoned communist hospital. Kind of a shame, but you’ll find that type of thing everywhere, so said our guide. One of the other interesting things about this church is that the clock on the tower actually tells the right time—quite an oddity in Europe, I’ve been told!

And then we came to the square in which Prague Spring took place. Not sure why it’s called Prague Spring, since it started in Bratislava. Our guide said it’s because the events grew and protests got bigger, and then everything culminated in Prague. Anyway, we need some background. There was this Bratislavan leader named Alexander Dubcek. He was a Socialist, but he promoted “Socialism with a human face.” He granted freedom of the press and was not forceful about the Socialist ideals. Moscow told him to stop giving these freedoms, and when he didn’t stop anything, Moscow decided to invade and put a stop to this themselves.

Around 9:00 on a Saturday morning in 1968, people were out doing their shopping, sightseers were sightseeing, people were going about their lives, and all of a sudden, with no warning, military tanks from Moscow came rolling across the bridge into this square, invading the city. Want to know something ironic? The Soviets thought they were in Berlin. They had their instructions, and they were in the right place, they had just been misinformed of where that place actually was. They started talking to the Slovaks and realized it wasn’t Germany; they demanded to know where the press offices were (because of course they don’t want word of this getting out around the world), and the Bratislavans were quite smart in this situation—they told the Soviets it was in a building across town. During the hour or so it took the Soviets to find out where it was, word had already been printed up and was on its way out. People stood in the streets giving out magazines to tourists—magazines with the story and this picture in it—to take back to the Western world and get news out. And surely enough, it worked.

A very famous photo was taken here on this day, right in front of the university and an interesting-looking building which housed the newspaper press. This picture was taken by a man named Ladislav Bilak. (Tank Man Please click the link to see the picture. This was actually taken at the beginning of Prague Spring in Bratislava; there's a lot of confusion surrounding this picture, since the photographer was so adamant about keeping it a secret,) A man witnessing this uncalled-for, surprise invasion, tore his shirt open and stared down one of the tanks. It’s one of the photographs that always appears on lists of pictures that changed the 20^th century. Of course he didn’t want the Communists to find out he took it, for fear of being executed or having his family be hurt because of it. He kept it a secret for over 20 years, until after he died. His family found the negatives in some old boxes and realize what their father had done. So now we know who took the picture.

A series of events happened after this, and there was hard-core Communism all over Czechoslovakia. Interestingly enough, when they first became Czechoslovakia after WWII, the Czechs are the ones who wanted Communism as their form of government. Slovakians wanted democracy. Anyway. They obviously had Communism forced upon them. During the Velvet Revolution, there was a huge student protest outside a major university in Bratislava. A few people were killed, including students and civilians who were caught in crossfire. There was also a series of very mysterious car wrecks involving political officials and other influential people all over central Europe. When the iron curtain finally fell, they called it the Velvet Divorce. After this the Czechs and Slovakians separated their countries, and Slovakia joined the EU and adopter the Euro instead of the Slovakian koruna. The Czechs and Slovaks have a very close relationship now, and there’s finally a sense of peace and growth there.

And so ended our tour! It was really quite impressive, especially for FREE! Afterward, I was quite hungry, so off I went in search of Slovak food! Both the girl at my hostel’s reception desk and Timmy the Tour Guide recommended Flagship Bratislava as an excellent restaurant, so that’s where I was headed! And boy was I ever impressed! It’s touted as a place with excellent food and the feel of old world Bratislava, and it certainly is. The wood work was amazing, the food was excellent, and I truly felt like I was back in Medieval Bratislava! I got the Halusky (pronounced “halushky) upon recommendation, and I was not disappointed. It’s little dumplings in a milk sauce (not a cream sauce) with cheese and big chunks of bacon on top. YUMMY! I also got these things for dessert that looked like pierogis. They were sweet and filled with poppyseed stuff, swimming in butter—kind of like part of the South over in central Europe. ;) It’s quite full of poppyseed stuff, by the way. Not like a poppyseed muffin where you get a tablespoon of poppyseeds for the whole batch, it’s FILLED with poppyseeds! That’s big over here apparently. They had similar stuff in Poland, too.

And then it was off to shop! I typically do NOT go shopping unless I have to (even in the States!), but it had been so incredibly hot and even a bit humid in Bratislava that I just needed something cooler! I went in with a mission to get either shorts and a tank top or a sleeveless dress, and out I walked with a cute, light, airy sleeveless dress. =) Woohoo!

Next on the agenda: Skyping with Momma’s class! I am ALWAYS up for inspiring people to explore new places, try new things, and don’t let anything stop you from living life to the fullest ("The theif comes onlu to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." --John 10:10), so of course when Mom asked me to talk to the kids in Carthage I said sure. So we Skyped for a bit and I told them about my travels so far, and that was that! I got to talk with both Mom and Dad for a few minutes afterward, so that was nice. =) Wednesday was Mom’s birthday, and all I got to do was leave her a message, so it was nice to be able to talk to her, too.

And then it was shower and bedtime! The beds at Hostel Blues are SO much more comfortable than a couple of the other places I’d stayed, so I actually got a good night’s sleep! And then comes Friday—Castle ruins and Bible study with the Bratislavan brothers and sisters! =) 

Before I get to that, though, please enjoy the PICTURES! =)