An Afternoon in Bratislava, Slovakia | Notes from the Archive

the third new-to-me country from my 2012 inter-railing trip!

May 23, 2012

*SHARED TO THE BLOG IN NOVEMBER 2025.

ARCHIVE / aar•kive / (noun): a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.

Welcome to a new Notes from the Archive post, a series in which I am sharing some of my old & well documented travel notes to the blog. I’ve been keeping detailed notes and journals from my travels abroad long before I ever started sharing that content to this little corner of the internet. For some reason, it only dawned on me recently that, although not as thorough as my note-taking and journaling of today, this information could a. be useful to someone out there planning a trip, b. offer a glimpse into my travel days of yore, or c. just be fun for me to relive briefly under the pretense of being useful — so I figured why not share them here!

If you have stumbled across this post on a deep-dive through the blog archives, hello! I have done my darndest to make sure every piece of information shared here is just as relevant today as it was the day it was scrawled in my journal. I would also like to take a moment here to apologise in advance for any poor-quality photographs. You have been warned.

Today’s Notes from the Archive post — An Afternoon in Bratislava, Slovakia — covers everything myself and my then-boyfriend got up to during our 2012 inter-railing trip. Bratislava was the fourth official city of the trip in the third new-to-me country(!), and I must confess: I didn’t love it. In fairness to Bratislava, we only spent about 6-hours in town en route to Kraków, so maybe I just didn’t give it enough of a chance? Either way, it just didn’t light my world on fire.

Despite that, you better believe I made the absolute most of our time in town, tourist-ing to the very best of our abilities. Listed below is all the useful information I could garner from my journal, divided into the following categories for ease: getting there / where we ate / and where we touristed.

Enjoy!

getting there

the welcome sign at bratislava *hlavná stanica*

Here’s how we made the journey to Bratislava from Budapest:

we took a train from Budapest-Keleti station into Bratislava Hlavná Stanica — or Bratislava hl.st. — , the city’s main train station. Seeing as the two cities are relatively close, the train journey was a speedy 3-hours.
if you’re counting along with me, this train from Budapest was the third official use of our inter-railing tickets, which allowed us to travel on any 7-days within a 1-month period. For more info on the different inter-railing tickets, see the official website here.
seeing as we would be back at the train station a handful of hours later, we secured lockers for our bags and left them safely locked away. This website seems to have good information about different storage options in Bratislava.
from Bratislava hl.st., we walked 15-minutes into the Old Town to begin our explorations.

where we ate

apparently, a rather goulash-adjacent tasting meal

Sadly, I didn’t record the name of the place we ate our traditional Slovakian meal at — but I do have photographic proof that it existed!

where we tourist-ed

bratislava statues: paparazzi // napoleon soldier // čumil // schöner náci

Bratislava Statues // there are these human sized statues dotted all around the Old Town, and hunting them down is one of the most popular things to-do in Bratislava. If you’re interested, this website seems to have good location info for tracking them down!

Walk of the Century, Bratislava Edition // okay, you know the drill — we were cheap students in 2012 and didn’t want to spend any money on our day in town. Here’s the 7.5-kilometres self-guided sightseeing walk around the city that we did, starting and ending at Bratislava hl.st.:

Grassalkovich Palace // aka: the presidential palace. My notes say that, “while obviously a palace, it isn’t ostentatious”. Intriguing.
Michael’s Gate // the city’s only preserved gate.
Church of the Annunciation
St. Martin’s Cathedral // the largest church in Bratislava.
Slovak National Theatre (Historical Building)
Primate’s Palace
Bratislava Hrad // aka: Bratislava Castle. Undeniably, the highlight of our sightseeing. The climb up to the castle was more than a little strenuous, but the views from the top were totally worth it.
Blumentál Church
Slovak Radio // aka: the Inverted Pyramid building. My then-boyfriend was an engineering student at the time, so this stop was more for him than for me, but it was still pretty cool to see.

And there we have it: An Afternoon in Bratislava, Slovakia! A short-but-sweet addition to my Notes from the Archive series — I hope you enjoyed it, friends. I’ll be back soon with the next stop from my inter-railing trip: Kraków!

Until then,

Victoria xo

*Date of trip: 23rd May, 2012*