Breaking it Up: Bratislava

"A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win....but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost."

 --Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Is that artsy enough of a quote for you? It is for me. But this is an artsy blog post. Because I'm writing about Bratislava, and I'm writing about a small town in the South Moravian region of the Czech Republic called Břeclav. But I'm also not really going to write about those things. I have some pictures, but you could probably find them on Google Images if you wanted to.

I had planned this trip as carefully as I could, so I bought a ticket on the Eurolines bus from Prague to Bratislava, Slovakia far in advance. The night before I was leaving Prague I had looked up the route to walk to the bus station, screen-capping streets and directions. I had calculated what time I needed to leave the apartment based on how long it would take me to walk to the bus station. But I hadn't factored in two elements: how the vicious cold of pre-dawn, mid-winter Prague and a solid 20 pounds of wintertime clothes stuffed into my backpack would slow me down. I also decided to deviate from the route I had mapped out, ended up on the train station which was across a highway from the bus station. Five minutes before my bus was leaving. So I made a new plan: bought a train ticket to Bratislava.


Dawn from the Prague train station.

Except then I made the exceptionally stupid decision (which I can only blame on Dayquil, my never-ending cold, and my own idiocy) to exit the train at Břeclav. Except that Břeclav is actually still the Czech Republic. And I walked about thirty minutes into the town before I actually accepted that I was not in Bratislava. Then I had to turn around (still in the freezing cold, still carrying my massive backpack) and return to the train station. Where I found out the next train was not coming for another hour. Except that it was delayed an hour. And then it ended up being an hour and a half delay. So I spent an interesting afternoon hanging out in the Břeclav train station bar, drinking my woes away. And then I finally arrived at Bratislava just as the sun was setting.

So all in all, one of my less successful days of travel. The next morning Cait, Christian and I went out to explore the city for an hour or so before it was time for us to leave for the airport.

Buying excessive amount of American junk food in a store we stumbled upon near our hostel. The people working in the store were kind of bemused by our enthusiasm but seriously, Reeses's and Kraft Mac 'n Cheese in Europe? Goldmine. 

Exploring the Bratislava castle from the outside/courtyard.... not going inside because it's a museum and nobody felt like paying.

And that was more or less it for our winter break, except for the night Cait and I spent in Skopje in a hilariously weird AirBnb where I decided it was probably time for me to leave the Peace Corps. It was a good time and also a bad time, thus my only getting around to actually writing this blog post seven months later. Although let's be honest, I'm not exactly a prompt or timely blog post writer.

Breaking it Up: Praha (Prague)

...Now that my ladder's gone 

I must lie down where all the ladders start 

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

--William Butler Yeats,  "The Circus Animals’ Desertion"



On the third day of the new year, before my friends had woken, I packed away the few things I left out the night before that I would need in the morning, I pulled on my coat and my gloves and my scarf, and I headed out into the still debris-strewn streets of west Berlin. I took the metro to the train station, headphones in, drifting in and out of attention to the world around me once I had gotten myself where I needed to be. I boarded the train and sat in the window seat even though my reservation was for the aisle. We pulled away from the station and I realized I'd be riding backwards. I slouched in my seat until I was comfortable and I slept for a while and when the train's stopping at a station woke me up we were no longer in Berlin or a city and I saw a man looking down at his ticket then at me so I started to rise from my chair but he waved me back and sat beside me. I nodded at him gratefully but didn't speak and he didn't speak and I continued to watch the world pull backwards away from me and I tried not to think about my friends or Kosovo or turning 30 or my guilt or all the thousand little things I chide myself for every day. I tried to empty my mind and let the words of Bob Dylan fill it and watch Germany slip away and feel peace.

I did try.

Prague was frigid and the wind bit through my jeans, through my muscle, seemingly through my very bones, the minute I stepped out of the train station. I followed a group of rolling suitcase-touting tourists to the town center. I couldn't get a good internet connection anywhere so I ducked into a hotel, blinked my eyes sadly and asked for a street map. I checked the street I was on and found the street of my AirBnB and felt a rising surge of triumph when I found the building number of my apartment followed by a swift plummet when I realized I had no way to contact the host. I wandered up and down the street seeking internet or an idea of what to do, whichever could present itself first, before my host stepped out and recognized me, let me in, gave me the key and left me to my solitude.

I have never had an AirBnB meeting/key exchange that was not an exercise in patience and fortitude. But it's still the best way to go, to my mind.

I looked around the little studio that would be my home for a few days and now, not consumed with finding my way through a strange city, the edges of my mind began to refill with all the doubts and anger and sadness I'd been pushing away so I went back out into the street and let the crystalline cold of early January in the Czech Republic freeze me into a human-shaped automaton. I walked around a bit and went to the grocery to store to stock up on supplies (beer, junk food) and returned to my temporary home to thaw and sleep.

I walked through the famous Christmas market, past the famous astrological clock, across the famous bridge and up to the famous castle and I looked on at the famous beauty of this city and I felt mostly nothing.

I stared at this church from an alcove where I was hiding while waiting for a momentary blow-up of snow and wind to pass, and I felt nothing.

The skies cleared and I felt nothing.

I took pictures of things I thought were beautiful and things I thought were strange or interesting, but I felt nothing.

I sought out things I'd read about, I went through the motions of a person on vacation, and I felt nothing.

I looked at the lights and the people and I smelled the meat and the beer and the potatoes and the garlic and I felt nothing and I heard the singing and the deep, bellowing clangor of the city's church-bells and I felt nothing.

I returned to the apartment after my wanderings through the city, because my legs ached below where my coat protected my torso and thighs. I slept then, mostly I slept, for the several days I was there. I slept and I drank and I ate and I thought and then I remembered. I thought about my host family in Topanica and I thought about my host family in Rahovec and I thought about Trump and I thought about the friends I had made and I thought about all of the friends I have said goodbye to, unable to say if I would ever meet them again and I thought about that professor in college who inspired my stupid Peace Corps dreams and I thought about all the reasons why I should stay and do what was right and I thought about all the things it would mean for me to do that and I thought about all the reasons why I should go and I thought about all the things I would feel if I did that and I remembered the moment I was looking on the Peace Corps website at the list of countries who were taking TEFL volunteers and I remembered choosing Kosovo and I remembered riding my bike through the excruciating heat of mid-day summer in Hanoi to get my documents mailed in time and I remembered the agony of waiting, of people asking about my application and having no answer, and the ecstasy when I read my invitation while sitting in a cabana on a beach in Thailand with Zach and I remembered the first night of my stay in Georgia when I was bewildered and freezing and I remembered the feeling that my life was moving forward somehow and I remembered leaving Chile and thinking I'd never teach or travel abroad again and I remembered the panic attack I'd had walking down the street of New York with my mom a few days before I flew to Prishtina and I hated myself more strongly, more acutely and more venomously than I had ever hated anyone or anything before in my entire life.

And then I slept and I tried to forget.

I did try.

pa pa l'americano

Confession: I was not overly excited about coming to Italy, or Milan. I'm sure that makes me a bad world traveler. I guess the thing for me is that Italy is well-tread territory: by my friends, by movies I've watched, by general American pop culture. So while I felt some vague relief at the sight of the foggy, verdant hills and low, rainy skies surrounding Milan as my plane from Istanbul (layover) descended onto the city, I didn't feel any particular emotion about actually being in Italy. More of a, well, here I am, and here I wait until Joanna (my friend and travel buddy for the next leg of the trip) arrives. There was one thing I was very excited about: heading on to Switzerland the next day. I'd booked one night in a very highly recommended hostel in Milan, Ostello Bello, and then had a mid-afternoon bus to catch the next day up to Lucerne, where I would go see a statue that I have loved since the first time I read about it. But more on that later.

Milan. My first impressions were surprise at how the airport was a little bit run-down, a little bit shabby. Although I did fly into Malpensa, which is where a lot of the cheap-o planes arrive and depart, mine included (shout-out to Pegasus!). The system of shuttles into the city of Milan is pretty easy to navigate, and it drops you off at one of the big train hubs in the city. From there I made my way to the hostel, and although I can't exactly recall if it was easy or difficult, I don't remember any serious hardships. I wrote down directions the hostel gave, they turned out to be fine. Except the damn rain. It was pouring. Which is why a lot of my pictures look like this:

Grey skies! Have I mentioned my hostel? So the thing about carrying a big ass backpack with enough stuff to allow you to travel with ease for weeks on end is that it is HEAVY. You know that scene at the beginning of Wild where Cheryl has to basically lie down on her backpack, roll around, and arduously crawl to her feet the first time she puts on her pack? I had a similar, albeit less extreme experience, the first time I put on Big Boy Blue. I had to back up to the chair where B3 was resting, deceptively docile and cooperative, wrangle my arms into its straps, and pray for luck that I could stand up with the damn thing on. I ended up repacking twice after that first round, because I do have some faint notion of my own limits. So by the time I got to Italy I had already discarded some stuff (gifts for my friends in Georgia, my clothes for the wedding, a couple other items I sensed I wouldn't need) from my already lightened pack. And yet. I was in no rush to explore Milan while carrying that thing around.

I have to be honest, even though it's embarrassing, there's another reason I was so down on Milan before I even got started. When I got to the metro station, I was so tired and disoriented I was swindled by a person I'm going to refer to as a gypsy, based on the way she was dressed. Basically I walked up to the machine to buy a metro ticket and she started pressing buttons to "help" me (and actually bought me a much more expensive ticket than I needed), but the screen was in Italian so I was letting her help me. When the ticket came out, she handed it to me and then swiped the change before I could. She got about 10 Euro off me. I have to hand it to her, it's an effective scam to run on jet-lagged tourists who don't speak Italian. I was pissed at her, but also at myself for not even seeing that coming.

Anyway, after that I had about two hours of "fuck Milan!" while I was taking the metro and finding my way to the hostel. Between the bag, the metro scam lady, and the rain, I was not feeling it.

Then I got to my hostel, and they saved everything for me. Warm, cozy, friendly. You get a free drink when you check in, there's a free dinner (that, unlike the free dinner I will talk about getting later on in Albania, was actually extremely nice: a couple different kinds of salad, pesto and pasta, garlic bread, a few delicious sides, discount drinks during the dinner hour), the rooms are about 5/6 beds to a room so you're not in a massive 30 person bedroom, each with their own bathroom, they'll do all of your laundry overnight for 10 Euro, the staff were totally friendly, and there was a free breakfast with amazing coffee that was more than my free breakfast at most hostels (multiple cereals, yogurts, with with spreads, eggs, some kind of breakfast meat, etc). Seriously, this place was nice. Yes, it was 35 Euro a night, but it was worth it. They basically helped redeem Milan for me that afternoon. After relaxing and de-stressing from that morning I went back out and explored, came back to a nice dinner, got some gelato (which I don't get, as a phenomenon), woke up early the next morning to check out a few more things around the city, then got to the bus station.

Saint George, hey! I was just in a country where he's a BFD!

Some shots from the area near my hostel, wandering around looking for the post office.

The Duomo di Milano, a structure so beautiful and intricate you could probably spend several days exploring all of the renderings on both its outer and inner walls, and still not be finished. I've included a handful from what must be dozens of photos that I took because honestly, after a certain point, it's hard to even look at it for its detail anymore.  There's just too much.

A VERY fancy shopping center to the left of the cathedral's square. I felt like a plebeian interloper even walking past some of the shops in this area.

Statue of Leonardo daVinci located nearby.

A series of bas-reliefs located outside a theater, also nearby.

Hilarious. Maurizio Cattelan's 'The Finger', located in Piazza Affari (Business Square), outside of Milan's stock exchange building. I can't say that any piece in recent history has so accurately and appropriately captured my feelings.

On the way to the castle I passed this structure, which you can see part of in the picture above and more of in the two below. It was for Expo 2015 which, at least for this year, seems to be focused on the relationships between technology, energy, plant life, and human health. Seemed interesting, I was disappointed it wasn't open yet.

Approaching and entering the Sforza Castle.

Obviously the best of a crop of pictures taken while attempting to get both the round corner garrison and the main front structure. No joke, I was basically lying on the ground while doing this and yes, people were staring at me.

So bad it's good. Look at all the pavement I managed to capture in this shot! Such a pro.

A slightly better although less artsy shot.

This was my favorite corner of the massive courtyard when you first enter the palace. They're a bunch of broken pieces of old columns, crests, and stone coffins. Some are more intact than others. 

Vines, on the outer wall of the castle. Surrounded by a moat that presumably was filled in at one time but now seems to be mainly used for housing stray (adorable) cats.

The castle, from the other side of the park. And in the other direction...

The lovely park behind the castle and Milan's own "Arc de Triomphe" (Arco della Pace) because apparently this style of arch is like the butt of nationalistic architecture: every country's got one.

So after this wonderful late afternoon/next morning exploration and postcard sending I went back to the hostel to pick up my bag and head for the bus station, to catch my late afternoon bus. With the help of the people working there I got to the closest metro station with relatively little trouble and then TOTALLY botched getting to the bus station because when I exited the metro, I turned left instead of right. That's it. Seriously. I turned left and headed out onto the street and walked about a half a mile in what I thought was the right direction until I was basically about to enter a major highway. So I turned around, tried a couple of side streets, and about 45 panicky minutes later returned to the metro station only to realize that the bus station WAS ON THE OTHER FUCKING SIDE, DIRECTLY BEHIND THE METRO STATION. Vai me, this is why sometimes I think I shouldn't be allowed to travel alone. Regardless, though I got there with only about 15 minutes to spare (at least at this point in my travels I have the foresight to realize I'm probably going to mess things up in some fashion and I give myself veeeery generous windows of time to do exactly that) my bus had not arrived. 

There was another 15 minutes of panic when I realized that none of the electronic signs worked, the ticket station was packed with a sea of people looking to buy tickets/get information so I wouldn't be able to talk to anyone at a counter anytime soon, and none of the depots were labeled and therefore I had no idea how I was going to identify my bus when it finally arrived. Thankfully an Italian woman saw me wandering around looking like a teary, anxiety-ridden pack mule and pulled  me over to where I was supposed to be and where, thankfully, there was a very nice college student who spoke perfect English and who explained to me that I was in fact in the right place and that this is just how things generally work in Italy. Bless you Rafaella, wherever you are! The bus left about a half an hour later, making its way north through the Alps into Switzerland. I got a couple of shots from the ride although they hardly do justice to just how beautiful it was, especially around Lake Como. Anyway I arrived at Lucerne safely around 9 or 10 PM and made my way to my hostel without too much trouble. I had a full day and a second night in the hostel in Lucerne so I basically showed up and fell asleep. The hostel in Lucerne was ridiculous, especially compared to the place I'd just stayed in Milan, but more on that in the next post.