If you’re not going by plane to Bratislava or Vienna airport, the ride to Bratislava is pretty long. I went on a 7,5 hour train passage from Göttingen via Würzburg, Regensburg and Passau in Germany; Linz and St. Pölten to Vienna in Austria. In Vienna main station I had to switch to a regional train going to Bratislava.
And this was like going back in time: you can open the windows and lean out a bit (that is impossible since a lot of years in Germany). There was a conductress running merrily around but never checking my ticket and on every stop there was a nice old train station with railway staff waiting for the train.
But then at the border (which you typically can’t recognize anymore) in Marchegg we had to leave the train because of reconstruction works. A bus brought us over the border to the main railway station of Bratislava. There I tried some giant red Klobása as a first culinaric glimpse and walked to my hotel directly under Bratislavský hrad.
I roamed through the streets of Bratislava in the beginning sundown, tried some Kofala (Czechoslovak cola) and Zlatý Bažant (“Gold pheasant”) beer to end the day.