Visit Bratislava. Now!

"Gunner," a retired Navy warrant officer colleague of ours, is about 20-40% accurate with anything he tells you. He's right just often enough that you can't even use him as a negative barometer. (Curtis knows who and what I'm talking about.) But one thing Gunner was right about is that Bratislava, Slovakia, is a cool town. It's just across the river from Vienna, so it has excellent pastries and coffee. It was ruled by Hungary for 900 years, so the food is good, if a bit "sturdy" in the German mould. It was actually the capital of Hungary while the Turks were knocking at the gates of Buda and Pest, so it has some great architecture. It was joined with Czechia for almost a century, so the beer is good, yet at the same time it has its own strong viticulture tradition. It's smallish (half a million) and has made great strides in repairing decades of communist neglect. The old part of the city in particular has really been fixed up. And it doesn't seem to have been discovered by too, too many tourists yet. But you might want to hurry to get here before they do, because the Slovaks are working hard to attract people.

Some scenes from our first full day:

Slovak teen idol singer.

Slovak C&W singer. Even better than the teen idol.

Slovak mounted police.