Author Archives: Miss Penny Black

First Poll!

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Hobnobs and ginger nut biscuits. I’m sure that jar was full this morning.

I’m finally getting around to working out very basic plugins – they’re tools and functions that can be added to a blog. First up is inserting a poll. I’ve been wondering how many people who read this read other blogs as well. So please vote (that’s you too, family members!) because pressing buttons is fun and it only takes a second.

As you can probably already tell, we haven’t done much today. We’re sitting around eating biscuits, surfing the net, and Luke and Andrew are playing a Star Wars board game. I went out to get my legs waxed this afternoon, which was very satisfying for me but isn’t really interesting news for you. Mainly we’re just waiting for Matt to call so we can work out what our next move is.

Impressive or frightening? Andrew’s collection of remotes. The ones that live downstairs, anyhow.

Andrew let me use his ultra wide lens. Now I’ve realised that I need one too.

Oh, something I’ve been meaning to write about is Andrew’s shower. It has lights in it. LED lights that change colour when there’s water going through it. My first reaction was to wonder how something like this could exist and yet no one bothered to mention it to me.  Now I’m wondering how many other pointless-but-awesome things are out there that I don’t know about. Probably millions.

We’ve had a few curious experiences with novel lighting solutions this trip. The most notable other one is the boxed bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin that I bought in Bangkok. The cardboard box lit up like a mini neon billboard in 4 stages if you picked it up and set it down (there’s a video of it in action behind the link). Needless to say that has been posted home for safe-keeping. 

The weather’s supposed to be amazing tomorrow so we’re probably going to a pub for lunch and a walk along the river. Isn’t life grand?

Cambridge

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I lived in Cambridge in 2002 and coming back has been a trip down the proverbial memory lane. We haven’t actually been into town yet and I’m curious to discover how sharp my memories of the place are. Just being with Andrew and the whole Englishness of the suburb he’s living in is almost like déjà vu.

Last night we went to a lovely country pub owned by Andrew’s former boss and met up with a bunch of his workmates, quite a few of whom I’d met years ago. It was like a window into what life would have been like if I’d stayed. If the food at the pub was anything to go by I’d definitely be a lot fatter. Chicken, camembert and cranberry pie – so good!

The pub was called The Golden Ball and it was everything a pub should be. Lots of wood paneling and red carpet, a fire was going and there was the constant hum of conversation. There were even little pots of original edition Trivial Pursuit cards on each table. Sitting there, with a group of nice, funny people my age was just so comfortable.

We stayed til nearly midnight then Andrew decided to leave his car and a friend of his, Andrea, kindly gave us a lift home. We fell (gently) onto our air mattresses and had a solid night’s sleep.

….ooo000ooo….

This morning we walked back to the pub to pick up Andrew’s car. It was a beautiful hour or so’s walk through the countryside. We saw horses, a prize winning village and many daffodils. We couldn’t help but remark on how much better it was than walking in Slovakia, what with the easily-identifiable path and signposts and the general lack of snakes.

We decided to stop back into the pub for a quick drink and then drove into Cambridge where it was raining then sunny then raining then sunny and altogether quite like Melbourne. Everything looked pretty much as I remembered it. Including the hordes of people clogging the footpaths.

Luke got a long-overdue haircut, Andrew and I bought lollies at the market and then repaired to a charming, old-school pub for drinks. I found two ciders on tap that I hadn’t tried before and had a half pint of each before Luke came back.

 

We went for a wander around the city centre and now we’re back home at Andrew’s thinking about what to have for dinner and what our plans are going to be for the next week. Everything hinges on hearing back from Matt and whether we’ll have a car or not.

Bratislava to Cambridge – a quick update.

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We left rainy Bratislava at 10am after an inordinately expensive taxi ride (when will I learn to look for a meter right away?!) to the airport and then the expected undignified crush to get onto the non-allocated Ryanair flight. Crammed together like sardines, we were at least grateful that the flight was only 2 and a half hours.

Stansted airport was bathed in glorious sunshine when we got there and after a long wait in a short line at customs we emerged, ready to give Matt a big hug and head to the nearest pub for a pint and a catch up. No Matt at the arrivals gate so we waited. And waited. And waited. Luke tried to call, sent messages to no avail. We’d spoken to Matt only the week before to confirm that he was picking us up so we started to get worried, both for his sake and ours. After a couple of hours and considering plans of hiring a car, heading to Nottingham by coach or catching the train into London and staying at a hostel, I realised that my friend (and former housemate when I lived in the UK) Andrew wasn’t too far away. We called him and he offered to come pick us up, which was amazingly generous, and was with us in half an hour. Thank god Cambridge is so close to Stansted!

We were overjoyed at Andrew’s arrival – he’s such a champ. He’s just bought his own place so we’re staying there for the moment and working out what we’re doing. This coming week was supposed to be a long drive along the south coast with the car that Matt was buying but we still haven’t heard from him. My guess is he’s either mixed up the dates or he’s had some sort of accident on the road and couldn’t reach us.

Hopefully we’ll find out what happened soon, but until then we’re hanging out at Andrew’s doing internet stuff, eating ridiculously cheap cheese from the omg-huge Tesco across the way. Apparently the third largest in the UK. It’s seriously the size of an aircraft hanger and just as charming.

…..oo00oo…..

To jump forward in time, since I wrote the above Matt called us to say that he thought we were arriving tomorrow and he feels awful about getting mixed up and hopefully will have acquired a car by the end of the weekend.

Fingers crossed! Now we’re off to the pub.

Two Days in Bratislava.

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Bratislava has been very pleasant. I’m a sucker for cobblestones (and watching women in stilettoes try to walk on them) and European architecture. We were fortunate to arrive here in time for May Day, which was yesterday. I think a part of my brain is still expecting it to be freezing because I’ve just experienced summer and so now it should be winter, and my default expectation for Europe is ‘cold’.

Ladies sitting in the sun.

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful weather though, and well timed as the first of May is a public holiday here in Slovakia and after walking through an almost-deserted shopping district we found most of the town in the main square, where there were bands playing, vintage cars being paraded and women in historical costumes walking around. There were also enormous queues for icecream. It was 25 degrees, after all!

We joined in an extremely well-attended free walking tour. I counted about 40 people. It did make it a bit hard on the young girl who was taking the tour but she did ok and we learned quite a bit about Slovakia’s history and culture. A few interesting facts:

The local castle had withstood Gengis Khan, and Ottoman invasion and Napoleon (an extremely impressive list, considering how many didn’t) and was then burned down by some Italian painters who got drunk and let their cooking fire get out of control about 100 years ago.

At Easter it is traditional for boys to douse girls they like with water then hit them (lightly, I assume) with green sticks. In return the girls thank the boys for this enormous privilege by giving them shots of alcohol and money. I mean wow. Not hard to guess which sex came up with this idea.

I also learned that the Velvet Revolution started in Bratislava, not Prague, which seemed to be important so I might have to do a bit more reading on this because right now all I know is that it was about getting rid of Fascism.

Lastly, witch burning was a bit thing here in the 1700’s. I guess women have it easier these days in Bratislava, maybe being hit with sticks does seem like a step up from the old days.

This statue, ‘Man At Work’, is the most famous in the town. Every time we walked past it had a circle of photographers around it.

During the tour we met an Australian couple who had retired and were riding around Europe on a tandem bike. They have their own blog and so Luke and I have been reading it and marveling at their adventures. They’re also ridden around SE Asia and traveled to India. Incredibly inspiring – if I’d met them in Melbourne I’d probably have rushed out and bought myself a new bike already. They take a tent and stay at the occasional hotel but mostly camp. Perhaps after our Africa leg, where we’ll be sleeping in tents most of the time, I can work out if this style of travel really appeals to me.

The Blue Church looks as though it was made of marzipan. Very pretty!

We spent half of yesterday afternoon asleep so, wide awake, we decided to stay up and watch the last two Harry Potter movies and get them out of the way before arriving in the UK. I have to say that they’ve grown on me and I think they get better as they go on. Watching the characters literally grow up over the space of (in my time) a few weeks is interesting too. I’m now quite looking forward to going to HP World (or whatever it’s called) and seeing all the props and whatnot.

Today has been rainy and I have little to tell. We walked around this morning and went down to the Danube and walked across a bridge that has a UFO shaped restaurant at the top. WE thought about going up but went back into town and had Mexican instead. All the cheesy heaviness of central European food is starting to get to me and I’ve been eating mostly salads in Bratislava. Oh, with the exception (in Zdiar) of a pizza that was Hawaiian but also had mandarin on it. I’ve been meaning to note that down for ages. Mandarin! Picture me shaking my head at the madness of it all.

A menu board showing traditional Slovakian food. The plate in the second row from the top and the dish on the right shows a meal Luke had – slices of beef in a thick vegetable soup-sauce with a sliced bread dumpling and raspberry jam and cream on top. WEIRD.

So that’s pretty much it for this part of the world, off to the UK via the much hated Ryanair tomorrow. I’m dreading the flight and dealing with the baggage (we’ve got three 15kg bags paid for but they must each be 15kgs or under, not one at 14kgs and one at 16, for example. I seriously hate this airline). I’m very much looking forward to being greeted at the airport by Matt, a friend who buttled for board at my place for a couple of years (I mean he was our butler) and is pretty much family.

I can’t wait to be in a place where I don’t have to feel embarrassed all the time about not knowing more than 2 words of the local language. Which is stupid because, really, how many people who come to Slovakia can speak Slovakian, and people here seem to speak enough English to help or point to things. I didn’t get the impression, like you do in some other countries *cough*France*cough* that people were being surly because we were foreigners. They just seemed a bit surly as a whole.

But I’ve really liked central Europe. Great history, great food, great prices, beautiful landscape and we’ve made some good friends and met some really interesting people. I’d rate it!

Farewell Zdiar, Hello Bratislava!

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The last few days at the Ginger Monkey were pleasant and, thankfully, uneventful.

The front of the Ginger Monkey.

View from the front of the hostel.

Wally (the hostel’s dog) had come home from the vet (he’d been bitten on the face by a venomous snake) and then been let out (unwittingly by one of the Canadian girls who’d been on the walk where he’d been bitten… I mean… god, I’m not surprised they felt massively guilty even though, of course, none of it was intentional) and not come back for over 24 hours. In fact, he didn’t really come back at all. Danka, the manager (and continuing apologies if I’m spelling your name wrong, Danka) went out to find him sitting by the side of the road, probably debating the various merits of avoiding the vet and possibly dying or going to the vet and getting more injections.

Wally, not looking too happy.

In the midst of all this a new employee for the hostel, Mel, arrived. God knows what she thought of it all. The Ginger Monkey has really stood out to me as completely unlike every swish, modern, 100-room, multi-floor hostel we’ve stayed in so far. It feels a lot more like staying in some kind of log cabin share house, where everything is a bit dodgy but the people are really nice. Asa, the other employee (in fact, I’m not sure Asa and Mel get paid, it’s a few hour’s work for board… maybe? Feel free to correct me, Mel) had only been at the hostel for 3 days when we arrived. Danka had been the manager for 3 months. The owners were currently traveling… it was all a bit Fawlty Towers, tbh.

The kitchen. Note the little cuckoo clock under the red fairy lights. It scared the bejesus out of everyone on the hour with it’s loud monkey noises.

Oh, did I mention that there was a church next door that spent 5 minutes, morning and night letting us know when it was six o’clock? Why six I have no idea. Alternate peals at eight or nine would’ve been more civilised but that’s not what churches are about, I suppose.  And don’t get me started on Sundays, when it was every hour, if not half hour. There was also, even more mysteriously, the loudspeakers positioned around the village that blared incomprehensible (ok, probably Slovakian) folk music once a day.

Combine all this with the fact that Luke also saw a snake (the Canadian girls saw two) and … well. It was surreal. Fun, but surreal.

I take back what I said about the last few days being uneventful.

Luke, Wally and Jen (another guest) chilling in the loungeroom.

This morning we waved goodbye to Asa, Mel and Danka – and of course the beleaguered Wally, the other dog (whose name I’m not going to attempt to spell again) and Kevin the cat, and caught the bus into Poprad.

From Poprad we caught a four hour train to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

I’ve heard mixed reviews of Bratislava. The general consensus seems to be that it’s dull. Mel said she liked it though, which gave us hope. The train journey was certainly picturesque, with castles popping up every so often and a few swan-strewn lakes and many little villages.

We found our hotel and its surly staff pretty easily and settled into our air conditioned, enormous room with our own bathroom. After a month of hostels and shared-bathroom hotels this is a luxury not to be sniffed at.

Immediate impressions of Bratislava are that it is extremely pretty. In the old part of town anyhow, which reminds me of those really over-the-top casinos where they recreate the canals of Venice but it all looks a bit too clean and nice. Bratislava could easily be transported into a Vegas casino to play the part of ‘ye olde European village’ as it is extremely tidy, newly painted, cobblestoned and full of quaintness, including ever-so-slightly cutesy statues around town – more on those tomorrow.

Tonight we’ve eaten an extremely tasty dinner at a gourmet establishment for the astonishing price of 20 euros (that included drinks) and estimated that something similar in Melbourne could be bought for perhaps three times the price. Already the prospect of paying Australian prices for things is boggling our minds. We bought enough groceries in Zdiar to last 6 meals with accompanying drinks for 5 euros. Ludicrous! Although we did hear today that the minimum wage is 3 euros an hour in Slovakia. Kind of puts things into perspective.

More photos, and hopefully something interesting to write about tomorrow, we’ve really no idea what to do here so we may take up Mel’s suggestion of the free walking tour. Night all!