Bratislava, Slovakia

[TinyBubbles]

Anyone been to Bratislava, I'm gong at the end of the month, would love any information you can pass on.

[jakobsen]

I've been there once (in the summer) and would love to go back and explore. With apologies to French readers, if people associate Prague with Paris, then Bratislava would be the equivalent of French medieval city of Carcassonne (walled city, castle and all).

 

It's fun during the summer when everyone is out. Once, while strolling in front of the U.S. Embassy and conversing in English with my hosts, a bunch of kids approached and invited us to play chess with them so they can practice their English. Unfortunately I coudn't dump my hosts and I don't play chess either. Mind you they were middle-class looking Bel-Ami types. I went back after dinner looking for the boys but they were no longer there. Unfortunately I left the following morning and couldn't check out the promenade again. But it looks cruisy.

 

Bratislava is safe but I never let my guard down anywhere I travel.

 

Some notes about Bratislava and Slovakia:

 

1. Bratislava is a suburb of Vienna. Just like many from Rhode Island prefer to fly to/from Boston instead of Providence, most Bratislavans fly out of Vienna.

 

2. Slovakia's infrastructure (telecommunication, roads, etc.) is world class and it is clean.

[look4tops]

Austrians would kill you for what you just wrote here LOL :+

[goingtorio]

is it actually possible to find rentboys there though? how??

[Guest Seabrook]

I went there a few years ago. For a gay time, don't bother unless things have heated up since I was there. There was one gay club that I went to on a Saturday night. The place was almost empty. I had read about an interesting sauna and I went to it. Very straight. The old town is very interesting. Otherwise the place was still vintage Communist era.

[+ Charlie]

Slovakia is much more socially conservative than the Czech Republic, so don't expect the kind of free-wheeling gay life that one can find in Prague. The Slovaks seem to be most comfortable with ideological rigidity, and switched remarkably easily from being hardline Fascists during WW2 to being hardline Communists after the war. Part of their rationale for the "Velvet Divorce" in 1992 was their dislike of the greater sophistication (read: moral flexibility) of the Czechs.