Flipping Coasters and Frequenting Pubs

While in Vienna I heard from my friends that I met in Skopje, and they offered to let me stay with them when I arrived in Bratislava. Once my bus pulled into town I waited at the bus stop for a while and then was met by Jane, who took me on a walk through Bratislava’s old town, before we settled down at a bar for a few drinks while we waited for her husband Tom to get off work. As we waited I proceeded to ask The Questions, and we continued the game for a while once Tom arrived. We then caught the bus back to their apartment where they set up their rollout bed for me to sleep on, and fixed me up a quick meal of schnitzel with salad, bread, and a cup of tea. Tom and I then did a few shots of vodka while we chatted before calling it a night.

The next day, I woke up and Tom made me breakfast of fried eggs, bread, and tomatoes. After breakfast, while my gracious hosts worked, I headed into town to go on the free walking tour. The tour was great and the guide (a fellow writer) and I chatted between stops about our own writing and our favorite books and authors. After the tour I was feeling a bit famished, so I headed to a spot that had been pointed out to me by Jane when she was showing me around called Slovak Pub. While there I ordered some halusky, which is these delicious potato dumplings with sheep cheese and bacon bits and a glass of wine, then I ordered a wonderful garlic soup with cheese served in a bread bowl.

After telling my stomach that I had had enough to eat I went for a walk over to the castle and took pictures as I walked around inside the castle walls. I then walked back to the apartment and met back up with Tom and Jane. After hanging around the apartment for a bit and drinking some tea we headed out to Slavín monument, which is a monument to fallen Soviet Army soldiers who died liberating the city during WWII that lies upon a large hill and offers a great view out over the city. After checking out the monument and the view for a bit we headed out for dinner at a kebab shop near their place and then went and got a drink at a nearby bar before returning to their apartment for the night.

The next morning my hosts prepared me a breakfast of bread with cheese, tomatoes, and a cup of tea. I then walked with my friends to the bus and after a few stops parted ways with them giving them hugs goodbye as they were going to be heading out of town for the weekend and my next two nights would be spent at a hostel. I got checked into my hostel and wrote for a while as I waited for the weather to clear up. I then went to get lunch, returning to Slovak Pub to sample a bit more of the menu. This time I got some little pierogies and a glass of wine.

The food was delicious but there was a weird moment while I was eating my pierogies where the waiter came over and pointed to the little cup on my table that had a couple of napkins and some silverware in it. I’m not sure if he was indicating the napkins and this was his way of telling me that I had food in my beard or if he was indicating the fork and suggesting that I should be using silverware to eat my pierogies (a food item I consider to be the epitome of finger food). Either way it was kind of weird. I wiped my face and used my fork until he was out of view and then went back to eating my pierogies with my fingers, the way the food gods intended.

After lunch I took the bus out to Devin Castle about 30 minutes ride from the bus station. The castle is a very cool old ruin along the river and while I was there the weather broke allowing me to get some pretty nice pictures.

Later that evening after returning to the hostel I am once again sitting in the common room and writing when a young guy bursts into the room and asks me “Are you Dan?” I reply that I am in fact Dan and he asks if I’m from Seattle. I tell him that I am actually from Tacoma, and he gets super excited. He tells me he is from Seattle and that he saw my Seahawks scarf lying on my bed and had asked reception who was sleeping in that bed and they had pointed him in my direction. He then proceeds to tell me that he is super high, which was quite obvious from the moment he entered the room. I tell him that sounds nice and he says that he and some other guys are about to smoke and asks if I want to join them. I agree and we return to our dorm room where one of the guys is rolling a blunt.

While in the dorm I met a few of my other roommates. In addition to my Seattle stoner friend Edward, there was a Harry – the gentleman from London rolling the blunt, Will – Edward’s Canadian friend, Debbie – a girl from Germany, and Iris – an Irish girl. After the blunt was rolled, to go along with an already rolled joint, and a fully packed pipe, we went to smoke. It made sense after my first experience smoking pot on this trip being with Dutch guys that my second time smoking would be with a guy from Seattle. Keep the stereotypes alive. All of us smoked except for Iris, and then Edward, Harry, Iris, and I went to get some pizza for dinner. Before leaving to head to the pizza place though we headed down to our dorm room to get ready for an evening out and then the four of us stood around talking and waiting for nothing for a while until Iris and I exchanged a look of “Why the fuck are we standing here? Let’s go.”

While at the pizza place it came to light that Harry had lost his debit card and was trying all sorts of ridiculous ways to continue to pay for his travels without any way to access his money. His main method was having people pay for him or give him cash and using Paypal to pay them back the funds. While we ate I had him look up the exchange rate for euros to pounds and bought his five-pound note off of him to give him a little bit of spending money. After eating, Edward headed back to the hostel and Harry, Iris, and I headed off to a brewery to get a drink. As often seems to happen when I am in a group of travelers looking for a location I ended up taking the map and played navigator as we searched for this brewery. A much easier task when sober. We found it eventually and they each had a drink, while I had a coke and after a bit I started asking them The Questions. After finishing our drinks we headed to Slovak Pub to keep drinking and get some more food. I had the cabbage soup this time, which was absolutely incredible and a glass of wine, while they drank beer and Harry had the garlic soup in a bread bowl. We then left Slovak Pub and went in search of another bar and after entering one bar and deciding against it we ended up back in the bar that I had gone to with Tom and Jane my first night in town. While there we finally finished up the questions, several of which Iris had given very similar answers to mine, including an identical answer for how she would die if she got to choose. While at our third and final bar of the night we ended up playing some bar games including coaster flipping and coin spinning. Iris and I got super competitive with the coaster flipping and ended up having an epic battle, which she finally won in the bonus round. We managed to make it most of the way through these games without spilling any of our drinks and surprisingly when one finally did get knocked over it was not my wine glass, but Iris’ beer mug. We finally called it a night and headed back to the hostel. Before going to bed Iris had me write down my list of questions on a sheet of printer paper for her so that she could put them on her wall back home. Then after getting shot at several times by a Nerf machine gun while sitting in the reception area, it was time to call it a night.

The next morning I got up and emailed my buddy Mr. Toad – my friend from back home whom I have been staying with in Sofia. He had arrived in Bratislava the night before with his wife Portia, because the swim team she was a coach for was in town for a meet. We had had plans to go out for a day trip to Banská Štiavnica, which is an old Slovakian mining town, but I had decided to cancel those plans the night before, as it would have necessitated my going to bed earlier and I was having too much fun competing at bar games to call it a night. Instead we were going to meet up and I was going to give him a walking tour Bratislava based on what I remembered from the walking tour that I had taken. Iris, who was only in town for about 24 hours, got up and checked out of the hostel and put her stuff in storage, as her bus to the airport was not until early evening, then she joined me as I headed off to meet up with Mr. Toad.

We got a quick bite to eat at a café before starting the tour. We happened to be starting at the same time that the actual free walking tour started and I thought it would be funny to go over to the starting spot for the legit tour and stand a few feet away and start the Homeless Dan walking tour of Bratislava, but I decided that would be kind of messed up and just began the tour from where we were instead. My tour was a lot quicker than the actual tour but we ended up seeing all the same sights, as well as visiting the castle, which was not covered in the other walking tour, and while there were surely a few details that I forgot, I was able to remember for the most part the stories that had been told on the previous tour. Since we hadn’t gone up to the castle on the other tour though, I had to improvise and make up a few stories and facts about the castle in order to get that great trip advisor review from my two tourists.

After the tour we headed for lunch at Slovak Pub (detecting a theme here yet?), this time I got a different kind of pierogies than I had had the day before along with a bowl of goulash soup and a glass of wine. Mr. Toad ordered the garlic soup in the bread bowl and the pierogies I had had the day before, and Iris ordered the halusky. So, all of the food being consumed at the table was either food I had already consumed or was currently consuming. After Slovak Pub we returned to the brewery from the night before, where I had some wine while my friends drank beer. While we chatted and drank we also flipped a few coasters but not competitively this time. After that we all returned to the hostel so that Iris could make sure she had her bus and flight info all figured out, then with some time still to kill before she had to leave we returned to our final bar of the night before and had a final drink and flipped our final coasters.

After that Mr. Toad headed back to his hotel to check in with Portia and I walked with Iris down to the bus station. After saying goodbye with plans to meet up later on my trip when I found my way to Kiel, Germany where she would be living for a while, I headed back to the hostel where I smoked some with Edward and Will and then a bit later I met up with Mr. Toad for dinner. Can you guess where we went? If you guessed Slovak Pub – Congratulations! If you didn’t guess Slovak Pub, then that is really sad for you. On our way there we came across a laser shooting across town and of course had to follow it as it bounced off of a couple mirrors before dead ending on the side of a building. Super weird.

When we had finished our detour and arrived at Slovak Pub, I once again ordered the cabbage soup (my first repeat order), along with yet another type of pierogi, and some wine. After our late dinner Mr. Toad and I said goodnight and headed back to our respective sleeping establishments. I watched the rest of Hot Tub Time Machine with Will, which I had started earlier with Edward before we had gone to smoke, and then called it a night.

The next day I got up and checked out of my hostel, putting my bag in storage and then headed off to meet Mr. Toad. We went and got some breakfast at the café we had gone to the day before and played some cribbage and then we went to catch the bus out to Devin Castle since Mr. Toad had not gotten a chance to check it out yet. After waiting around for a while we discovered that the 29 bus out to the castle does not run on the weekend and rather than trying to figure out where we needed to go to catch the other bus that does go out there on the weekend just decided to go get lunch and play some more cards instead. Almost all of the money I spent in Bratislava was spent at Slovak Pub. This time I ordered the cabbage soup for a third time and once again got halusky, but this time with the addition of smoked sheep cheese, and of course a glass of wine. We played a couple more games of cribbage and a game of spite and malice and then headed back to the hostel. I said goodbye to Mr. Toad and then grabbed my stuff and headed off to catch my bus to Budapest.

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