Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
Travelling by night train in a sleeper cabin is somehow out of fashion. Deutsche Bahn already started to abolish some routes formerly served. But in eastern Europe there are still some routes that are served on a regular basis, even if it is not cheaper to travel this way than going by plane.
It was the Feast of Corpus Christi, I had a day off and I was looking for a nice destination to travel to. The only location I’ve not seen before, somewhere around Germany, easily reachable by train – was Slovakia. I reminded myself that it is close to Vienna and I didn’t suspect something really interesting there.
Continue reading “Short trip to Bratislava”
Bratislava has a good bus and tram system that is quite easy to use if you once understood how to read the complex system maps. I didn’t use the tramway, mainly because at the time of my visit the trams didn’t run to the main railway station because of reconstruction works. But the busses and trams seem to be of good quality.
Continue reading “Getting around in Bratislava”
Everywhere in the world you seem to get the same soft drinks. But during the Cold war the situation was kind of different: in the communist and socialist world the cola from the United States wasn’t allowed. That’s why in different countries alternatives have spread. Most of them are nowadays unknown, but not Kofola.
You can reach the main sights in Bratislava on foot, you can go to the Danubia Meulensteen Art Museum by boat and to the castle of Devín by bus. But if you want to see the Červený Kameň castle, explore the little Carpathian mountains or simply don’t have enough time to wait for ships and busses, it is time for car rental.
Continue reading “Renting a car in Bratislava”
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.
While for most travel destinations you get good books in German or English from companies like Baedeker, Marco Polo or lonely planet, the variety goes down when looking at eastern Europe. One might even say that there is no choice.
Flying to Sarajevo was a quite spontanous idea: I still had a week of paid leave to take and in the last year I was continously travelling eastwards throughout former Yugoslavia, having seen Zagreb and Ljubljana. Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were the logical consequence.
Continue reading “Welcome to Sarajevo”
When Yugoslavia broke in parts in the beginning of the 1990s, the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina escalated; the state is a reflection of Yugoslavia in miniature. Three ethnics and three religions exist next to each other: Bosniak muslims, orthodox serbs and catholic croats. While the bosniaks, forming the majority of nationals, wanted to became a separate state, the serbs wanted to be part of Serbia or remain in former Yugoslavia and the croats wanted to cooperate close with Croatia. No surprise.
As I was travelling to Sarajevo, Bosnia, I got a very cheap flight which included a 15 hours layover in Beograd. Not much time for the capital city of Serbia, but enough to see the main sights of the city and to catch a bit of the atmosphere. I had to prepare well and especially to get some Serbian dinar in advance.