My most unrealistic travel goal is that I want to go everywhere twice. I have this idea that if I only see a place once I won’t see enough of it or anything more than just the surface that most visitors see. I don’t know that that’s necessarily true, just a thought I’ve held on to for a while now.

Out of all places though, I wouldn’t have picked Bratislava as needing a second visit. In December it was cold and boring and I would’ve said just skip it on a tour of Europe. While I can’t say it suddenly became exciting this time around, I did enjoy it a lot better. Maria and I sat in the park and drank wine most of the day on Saturday; just what I thought life in Europe would be like. Picnic-ing and public drinking with parents playing frisbee with their kids surrounded by flowers and a fountain or two. We went out and bought 4 drinks for a euro. I haven’t even seen such good prices at the firehall. We bought some lunch for less than 3 euro. We took a free walking tour but honestly it was so hot that I wasn’t paying much attention. We met a guy training to be in the Slovakian army – apparently they don’t get a salary during their basic training and they have to go through basic to know if they’re even accepted. Not the best system if you ask me but I guess it’s true that they didn’t ask.

on my last trip, I don’t remember seeing that the gates to the castle had castle cut outs in them. The benches nearby also had castle shapes in them but I forgot to get a picture of these ):

Painted windows on the church

Graffiti near the church

Sitting in the park with our wine and the beautiful spring that feels like summer weather.

We watched the sunset Saturday and then the sunrise Sunday. They were both fantastic views.

Just me living my best life with two plates of dumplings

Sunday I made my first real mess of public transport, the kind that I used to worry would always happen. I missed my train I intended to take, had to take a bus to the next train station, once I finally got back to Budapest, I got on a train in the wrong direction, and then finally I got on one more wrong train before I made it back to Szazhalombatta. And my phone was dead the entire time. Fortunately the ticket checker spoke really good English for once and was really nice and helped me out.

To come: a post about teaching, about Budapest, and about the next couple weekend trips I have to squeeze in before leaving. I’ve got about 7.5 weeks left now which should give me time for at least two more weekend trips.

Learn Hungarian: semmi ( shemie) means nothing. Not to be confused with Szemmi (Semie) which is a boys name short that’s for Szemere