Bratislava!

So it’s Bratislava next weekend with Shiz and Paul H. Unfortunately we’ll be fielding a slightly under-strength team with the absence of Mr Taylor, but it still promises to be an excellent long weekend and I’m looking forward to sharing the delights of Slovakia with Shiz and Paul, who are both Slovak virgins. I’ll flatter myself with the title of ‘Slovak Veteran’ as it’ll be my 3rd time in this great country. Went with Mark in 2000 where we only visited Kosice (see Wild East 1), again in 2002 (see Wild East 3) when we were diverted from Turkey and revisited Kosice and went to Levoca and Bratislava (where an unsuccessful attempt to find the conservatoire from the 1987 Bond film The Living Daylights took place).

Anyway, checking the weather it’s currently well below freezing with 15cm of lying snow at the moment. Unfortunately though, the long range forecast is indicating milder weather with rain and balmy temperatures of +5 by the end of the week. So here’s hoping the weather will turn a bit colder at the end of the week – Budapest was perfect last year with sun and temps of 0 during the day and –6 at night.

Bratislava is an odd place, the second biggest town in the old Czechoslovakia, located a mere 3km from Austria – hence the large number of hopeful escapees to the west during the communist era. There’s lots I haven’t seen like the infamous Petrazalka communist prefabricated concrete suburbs and Devlin castle. In 2002 Bratislava was one of the cheapest capitals I’d ever been to, so hopefully this won’t have changed much.
As far as running is concerned, I’ll hopefully get a massive 3 runs in this week and hopefully will be able to go above the 2km barrier in future.