The first few Adventures...

Well, the first adventure in Bratislava occured Wednesday morning (also known as "streda ráno", for those of you who have a keen desire to learn Slovak), when Miša (my host mother) and I went to one of the malls of Bratislava. This particular one was called "Avion", due to its close proximity to the Bratislava airport. At any rate, we went to the mall to get a newspaper, make a stop at the post office, and to get a sim card for an old phone the Veselýs' had on hand. So, we went in, and wandered around quite a bit, going into various clothing stores (thus I learned the words 'nohavice' (pants) and 'rifle' (jeans) and had the words 'blouzka' (blouse) and 'sveter' (sweater) fixed permently in my brain), and then wandered over to Orange, the store where you handle your phone. This is where we purchased the sim card, whose name in Slovak escapes me at the moment. At any rate, this sim card uses credit: right now, it has €10 on it, and I'll need to purchase more when I run out. After that, we got the newspaper, stopped in a petshop to look at new collars for Mattes, and went to the post office to pay the bills, I think by money order. At any rate, after that, we went home. Pretty simple.
The next adventure came that evening when Petra came to take me for a walk around Old Town, which is the downtown district of Bratislava. It's also the only part which didn't get smashed up by the Communists. At any rate, it's not far from my house, walking distance, actually. So, Petra and I went to Old Town, and she showed me around. We got some ice cream while we were there, and decided to head over to Bratislava's beach. The beach is only there during the summer, as it has to be set up every year. It's on the banks of the Danube river, and it's a place where lots of people hang out, and have a drink (both alcoholic and not) with friends and family. Petra and I hung out there for a while, then headed home.
Thursday (štvrtok) morning brought forth a third adventure, when Miša took me to see the Slavín memorial. It's the rough equivalent to the American Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, although it's dedicated to the 6,845 odd men who died liberating Slovakia from the Germans. It has some amazing views of the entire city!

After the Slavín, we went to the Church of St. Mary of the Snow, and it's little quarry chapel. It's beautiful, and so quiet. The cool thing is, people have bought tiles and stones to thank Mary for whatever blessing she's given them. The oldest one I saw was from 1900! Unfortunately, you don't get pictures of this because Blogger is being uncooperative. But at least you got the Slovín!

At any rate, fourth, and final, adventure is that I went to Old Town again Thursday night, this time with Miša. Turns out, she loves books as much as I do. We went into a bookstore that had a decent selection of English books. Does it surprise anyone that I purchased one? I did try to get one I don't have at home, and it's paperback.... So, Miša and I walked around for quite a while, looking at monuments, and listening to a Jewish band that had a concert that night, before taking the elektrocar home. The elektrocar is how I'll be getting to school everyday. Well, I should say we "tried" to take it to our stop. Turns out, it was late enough that the elektrocar wasn't on its usual route, so we got off a bit further away than we wanted, but it wasn't really a problem.

And... that's all there is. There isn't anymore.