Walking Tours

We started our day and our time n Bratislava with a free walking tour. We figured this could be the best way to explore the city while learning some of the history while simultaneously getting tips and recommendations on how to spend our time in Bratislava. After a quick coffee, we arrived at our tour and began. It was great to hear some of the interesting stories of the city of the ancient city. We followed in the footsteps of the coronation of the queen (despite being crowned as a king?), walked through the jewish quarter (seeing the 2 final buildings from the original section), walked up to the Bratislava castle (occupied since the 10th century and, temporarily, by Napoleon), and even followed the story of Nazi and Soviet occupation. The story of the city starts as far back as the 10th century, but it has been an incredibly tumultuous past for the city due to ts very central proximity to Western Europe and the East. Its first significant occupation came when Napoleon took siege to the town in 1809 on his way to the doomed offensive in Russia. An interesting anecdote explained by our tour guide, is that after Napoleons forces were expelled, to recover from the destructon caused by the french canons, any building that had been destroyed by the French forces, would void taxes for 2 whole years. Of course, tax evasion was as lucrative an industry as it is today because civilians would find cannon balls from around town and jam them into their building, thus making them exempt from taxes. We then made our way to the cathedral in which the coronations of the Hapsburg dynasty took place for a number of years. This includes the famous Maria Theresa, who was (coincidently, im sure), the only woman ruler, and one of the few good kings of the empire. And yes, she was, in fact, a king, despite being a woman. Many refused to have a queen, but as the only appropriate heir to the throne, they simply crowned her as a king. Her reign lasted 40 years. We then made our way to the former jewish quarter that was almost completely destroyed during the second world war, the city lost as many as 95% of its jewish population. This is because, despite never being invaded by the Nazis, they did cede power through a puppet government and forcedly removed a very large portion. Almost all of the 95% were sent to concentrations and had, what must be, one of the lowest survival rates in any of the countries at about 20%. This means that 80% of the 95% were killed. the Later soviet occupation meant that any jewish people who could leave the city left as soon as they could, and even to this day, the jewish population is incredibly low. The tour ended with a tour of the castle of Bratislava that had many occupants over the years but most noteably Maria Teresa and Napoleon. Although the castle has had many occupants in the 11 centuries since its creation, it has never been taken by seige. Yet, at one point, it was destroyed by Napoleons forces. This is because drunk French forces that occupied the castle managed to start a small fire, and with large amounts of gunpowder present, the castle was completely destroyed by the fire. It was rebuilt in the 20th century. This was basically the end of the tour, and our tour guide was nice enough to give us food recommendations and restaurants to try the authentic Slovakian food. Mum, dad, and I followed his suggestion and went to a pub that served a great potato soup in bread. Though we were blissfully unaware of how large it would be. We were incredibly full by the time we finished it, but we were quickly hurried back onto our feet as we wanted to join the communism tour of the city. This was also about 2 and a half hours, but admittedly wasnt quite as interesting as the first tour. I still enjoyed it, but the major points were covered in the previous tour anyway. This one did eventually begin to discuss the brutal and tragic occupation of the soviets in which freedom of speech, religion, and travel was essentially banned. Even when communism tried to be altered to more effectively capture the needs and wants of the people, with the socalled communism with a human face, it didnt take long until the soviets invaded the country and qwelled these even slighly progressive ways of thinking. Strict soviet communism then ruled for a number of decades until an outright protest from the whole country turned the soviets away from the country in 1989. This coincided with the end eventual end of the soviet union. By the time this tour ended, we were all knackered and very tired, so we headed home for the night. Luckily, we were still full from lunch, so we only needed a small snack to survive through the night.Read more