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Bratislava's Understated Charm Provides Welcome Respite - Pt 2
By Tom Kagy | 05 Jun, 2025
As the second stay of our 12-day Central Europe road trip, Slovakia's capital proved the ideal antidote to the tourist frenzy we had just left behind in Prague.
Our experience entering Prague had made us fret about getting caught in rush-hour traffic as we entered Bratislava. To our relief we found the traffic to be fairly light and flowing freely. Navigating to the Loft Hotel was straightforward, and we were soon parked in its somewhat cramped tri-level underground parking garage.
The Presidential Palace had been built in the mid 18th Century to serve as home for a Hungarian aristocrat.
We've since learned that the capital of Slovakia isn't much bigger than Brno in population, with 475,500 in the city proper and 720,000 in the metro area, or about a third the size of Prague. Bratislava's population density of 1,300 per square kilometers was less than three-fourths of Brno's 1,700 and less than half of Prague's 2,800 which probably doesn't even factor in the tens of thousands of tourists swelling the population during tourist season.
Bratislava was a welcome respite from tourist congestion, especially once we were in our room gazing out to the empty expanse of greenery we assumed to be the grounds of the nearby Presidential Palace. After a brief rest we headed out in search of dinner. We noted in passing that the hotel restaurant beside the lobby was the very popular Fabrika beer pub which doubled in the morning hours as the Loft's breakfast buffet.
Bratislava has ample green spaces like lush Medicka Garden, perhaps the city's largest park aside from the one behind the Presidential Palace.
From our hotel we turned left to walk eastward down a narrow one-way street lined on both sides with parked cars. The grayish wooden wall lining the right side was completely covered with graffiti while the taller white concrete wall to the left side was pristine. Based on our assumption about the expansive green space we had seen from our hotel room, we assumed the left wall bordered the Presidential Palace and the right wall bordered a public park of some sort.
Bratislava's chicly laid-back vibe reminded us of Portland. This thrift shop is in a downtown residential area to the east of Medicka Garden.
We joked that the wall of the Presidential Palace grounds being pristine while the wall of the public park being covered in graffiti suggested that the national leadership didn't tolerate free expression. We discovered later that, in fact, the pristine left wall bordered the grounds of the government's bureaucratic offices while the graffiti-covered right wall bordered the park grounds, open to the public, behind the Presidential Palace. The leader of Slovakia, it seems, does tolerates free speech, unlike the leaders of some purported democracies, including our own.
About four blocks from our hotel, just past Námestie Slobody (Freedom Square), and the Slovak University of Technology (STU), we came across Bistro Zepen House, a Ukrainian restaurant with tables occupying a series of rooms of what appeared to have been a private home. The patrons, judging by their charmingly nerdy dress, appeared to be STU engineering students.
Few tourists are evident even in Old Town Bratislava outside relatively small tourist areas.
Unwelcomed and unacknowledged on entry, we found the restaurant's sole empty table in one of the smallish back rooms and seated ourselves. A harried young female server eventually took notice and dropped off menus. Her brisk demeanor suggested the establishment routinely dispensed service on the fly to students rather than lavished the kind of attention expected in tourist restaurants.
The meaty traditional fare we had been trying in Czech restaurants had made us particularly receptive to the menu posted outside the bistro's door depicting an assortment of non-meat dishes. We perhaps overcompensated by ordering a soup, stuffed eggplants (which looked remarkably like Korean stuffed eggplants), ratatouille and two types of dumplings wrapped in the shape of an exotic mushrooms. The generous portions made it impossible to finish any but the soup. We walked out with the satisfaction of having enjoyed a restaurant that contained not a single other tourist.
At the center of Eurovea mall on the Danube is an expansive square with statuary and a big reflecting pond.
The Loft's breakfast buffet had neither the charming interior nor the assorted small, hand-crafted items like Pod Vezi's. But it did provide a nutritious assortment of the fare standard in hotel buffets, combined with efficient service by an eager young team wearing Fabrika pub t-shirts. Through the big plate-glass window off to the right side we could see groups of people climbing the steps up to the street carrying golf bags or wearing cycling gear. Around us were conversations in German or Czech, with some in British English. This was in contrast to the Pod Vezi where we heard mostly English, more American than British.
We intended to spend our one full day in Bratislava exploring the areas by the Danube which was about a mile south of our hotel as the crow flies. The problem was, there were no pleasant strolls that followed the crow toward the river. We puzzled out a seat-of-the-pants zig-zag course, generally following the course with the most pleasant scenery in a light morning rain. We strolled the southern edge of the lush green Medicka Garden, alongside the highly atmospheric St Andrew's Cemetery, through a pleasant residential area with shabby-chic shops that might have been in downtown Portland, and a quiet industrial park in Sunday lull.
After nearly an hour of walking we were dismayed to find ourselves at the edge of an industrial area, having walked too far east on a course that entirely missed the Danube because of its sharp southward bend a quarter mile west of where we ended up.
We spent another 20 minutes walking northwest along a bike path toward the tall white arch of Most Apollo (Apollo Bridge), thinking it was Stary Most (Old Bridge) which we had identified on the map as the likely center of Bratislava's riverside entertainment district. Our highly un-touristy course ("Look at those lost Asian tourists!" is what we imagined passing drivers were thinking) took us in front of a lavish glass atrium that turned out to be an entrance at the east end of the Eurovea shopping mall.
Our highly un-touristy course ("Look at those lost Asian tourists!" is what we imagined passing drivers were thinking) took us in front of a lavish glass atrium that turned out to be an entrance at the east end of the Eurovea shopping mall.
These steps lead up toward the west side of the stately Bratislava Castle.
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