Bratislava, 03-05 Sep 2008

I had fun playing at Café Carina on Tuesday; the place was packed - apprently the listing had appeared in a couple of newspapers. On Wednesday morning I went to the Leopold Museum to see the Klimt/Schiele exhibition, and to Westbahnstraase to see the world photo exhibition. Getting around in Vienna is pretty easy: you can buy a 24-hour subway ticket for 5.70 euros. I don't know if you're supposed to use it on busses and trams, too, but I did. I travelled for three days there, and I never saw a conductor. In the afternoon, I took the Twin City Liner to Bratislava. The trip along the Danube takes about 75 minutes, and it is beautiful! I arrived in Bratislava with just enough time to race to the soundcheck at Hlava XXII. I had a lot of fun playing there. Before the show I met a couple from Groote Eyelandt who were travelling around Europe. Thanks to the tricks RyanAir likes to play to raise their profits (e.g. giving "Vienna/Bratislava" as the name of an airport), Shane and Lee missed their flight to Dublin, and had to stay in Bratislava for the night. They were great fun, and I hope to visit them when I travel to Australia. Thanks, Ryan Air! After the show, Lubo (a couchsurfer) drove us back to his house in the middle of the forest somewhere. He is from Bratislava, but he lives just across the border in Austria in a picturesque neighbourhood, next to a church that is probably 900 years old. We ate a great midnight snack of prosciutto, two different kinds of cheese and sundried tomatoes while we sat around discussing pop culture and politics. The next day I was Super Tourist. In the morning, I rode the trams aimlessly for a couple of hours in all different sorts of directions, getting a feel for the city. I ended up at the Slovakian Technical Museum - a neat collection of old cars, trains, bicycles, irons, washing machines, advertisements.... The most impressive items were the snowploughs used to remove the snow from the train tracks, and a convertible limousine. They had some really creepy mannequins posing as models there, though. I don't think they've been dusted since the '60's. My next stop was the Slovak National Gallery. There was one other browser in the museum besides me, and no fewer than 30 employees. The employees follow you around the museum, directing you where to go next. I tried to skip uninteresting sections of the museum, but there would always be a CURATOR there saying things like, "Slovakian baroque art, 17th, 18th century, please, yes, this way!" And you couldn't advance to the next section until you'd seen everything in the previous one. There were lots of fun things to see, though. I enjoyed the gothic art alot, and the series of funny busts by Frantisek Xaver Messerschmidt. Oddly, there were several paintings credited to "Italian Painter", "Netherlands Painter", and so on, as if the artist was anonymous, but not anonymous enough not to leave some nationalistic trait in their work. The Best Title Award of this group of paintings goes to "Portait of a Lady in Cheesy Clothes." That painter was Spanish. Bodyguards started following me while I was browsing the temporary exhibitionin the modern part of the museum. I thought the museum was just being overly-protective of their art, but then I saw a bunch of cameras flashing and heard reporters interviewing someone in the hallway. I later found out it was the president of Portugal, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, enjoying a state visit to Bratislava. After the museum I walked up to the hrad, or castle. The view of the town from the castle was quite nice, but the castle is being remodelled at the moment, so we weren't allowed inside. I tried some yummy Bryndzove halusky (typical Slovak dish) before playing a concert in the bar of the Downtown Backpacker's Hostel that night, and made lots of new friends. The next morning I found Bistro Saigon and had pho soup for breakfast before taking the train to Banska Stivanica...