A late post, but a longer post-

The city of Bratislava is not your ordinary tour stop, in Central Europe.

We woke up early- tours generally run in the early morning, and end with lunch at whatever "local and historic" restaurant the guide decides on.  Then you get a few hours to meander about, and it's back to whatever form of transportation is taking you -back- to the 'ol HQ.  Our experience followed the standard protocol.

The first thing I noticed when I got off was how -dirty- the place was.  Garbage sat around, paralleling the dirty people that sat nearby, staring with empty eyes at each tourist who walked by.  I excused myself to the bathroom and quickly hit Jon up for the twenty cents you had to pay to use the "pisser".  An old man sat in the front room of the bathroom, asking for change.  He propositioned me first in Slovak, and then in German.  Luckily, or perhaps better put, ignorantly, I spoke neither.  As I exited the building, I caught him staring me down with those empty, empty eyes.

The country of Slovakia gained it's status as a country in 1990.  Formerly apart of Czechoslovakia, it wasn't until fairly recently that they became an independently sovereigned territory.  In twenty years, it appeared they were making progress- already, they had established the Euro as their national currency and the European Union had been happy to let them in.  As we walked past old walls, and empty cathedrals, the tour guide told us of the massive renovations the city had been through- once the capitol of the Hungarian empire, in recent times, the city had torn down it's old walls, disposed of its gates, and accepted the 21st century as the popular sleek and trendy architectural style.  I noticed many new buildings as I walked by; however, my eyes also caught wind of the graffiti literally stapled to almost every shop, or tower.  Some of it was beautiful, but most was a mundane array of "Hi, my name is ____ " and the never-old "Fuck ____ ".  The country acted as if it was on it's way to a higher living, yet the dirty streets spoke a different tale.

We made our way up a large hill, and eventually crossed through a tunnel past parliament, into an old palace.  The castle was not what I expected; I can't say it wasn't pretty.  Any castle is attractive, largely due to the massive size [though this one sat hardly three stories of the ground] and proportion of it.  But it was empty- literally.  Having been burned down in the late 19th century, renovations to it had began in the early nineteen hundreds, but alas, funding had cut it off.  In recent years, they'd had a thrilling campaign to refresh the revival, but work was going slow, or at least the cold and barren courtyard seemed to say so.

We eventually stopped for lunch.  The staff was rude, and wanted us gone as fast as I could- the food was bland, and mediocre at best, so I had no problem obliging.  As we walked the streets, I couldn't help staring at the beggars and gypsies that stalked by us, moving away from eye contact, sulking like -zombies-.  It mirrored the caste system of almost every country; the homeless were almost always lowly, too lowly to acknowledge, and it appeared here that they their spirits had been broken, and most were keen to follow tradition.  I was tempted to walk up to one, to give him money, sit down, and to talk- but Central Europe is notorious for pickpockets, amongst other things.  I shallowly turned my head, and pretended to ignore them.

The boat ride home was quiet, and after a few minutes of staring out the window, I fell asleep.  I woke up roughly an hour later, and we were home.  Stepping off the boat into Schwedenplatz, I notied the graffiti that lingered on the dockside, portraits and illustrations from the youthful minds of Vienna.  Yet here it was elegant, grandeur in display- comic esque illustrations of fight scenes, humorous satires of politicians and historical scenes, pictures from -Alice in Wonderland-.  What made Vienna so different from Slovakia?

Walking up the steps to the main streets, I smiled and laughed at one of Mariams jokes.  It was better not to linger on the question.