After a 2,600 mile, 10 day train trip to Frankfurt, Zagreb, Budapest and Vienna for my last international football following, a trip to a new country and back within 2.5 days was a welcome return to normality.
Wednesday: Newport, Gatwick, Vienna, Bratislava
Our outbound flight from Gatwick to Vienna plus a Flixbus coach for the short journey in to Slovakia came in under £40, although petrol, parking and a light lunch in Ascot increased the price a tad. I say lunch. It was an appalling attempt…
The coach took no longer than 50 minutes in to Bratislava from Vienna airport, offering a decent first look at the castle through the rainy windows, parking up a minute away from the hotel. Arriving at 22:30 meant that once we dropped our bags off in the hotel room the cuisine was limited to McDonald’s.
I was persuaded to have a beverage in the hotel bar before bed, a high end sisha bar trying to evidence the need to charge €15 for a Corona and a G&T. Not my sort of place, and certainly not with tracksuit bottoms and an Alice band wrapped around the barnet! How the other half live eh?
Thursday: Bratislava, match day in Trnava.
An early start to hit the breakfast buffet, which was ok… I’m still yet to tell the hotel how furious I was – still am – that they mixed kidney beans in with baked beans. Just why!? To this day I’ve yet to realise what purpose kidney beans have on this planet.
Swiftly moving on, we didn’t see any other Welsh fans for a good hour once we had walked the steep incline to the castle. Unsurprisingly the capital city’s number one tourist area, several viewpoints offered cascading views of Bratislava… the old town nearby and the ever growing newer part being continuously constructed further back. No doubt Austria was within the picture too.
We didn’t go in to the castle itself, Pete spent time talking to a few fans who had since appeared while I wandered around taking some photographs.
The stand out structure looking out was definately the Most SNP road bridge that leans accross the Danube. The bridge wouldn’t be too much to write home about if not for the strange UFO viewing platform at the top.
We fully intended to visit this after the castle, but we were more than satisfied with the castle views accross the City, thus we thought it would just be a duplication of where we were.
We walked back down the steep cobbled street, past the Cathedral and in to the old town. It was a shame the trek wasn’t a little longer as before we knew it we were exposed to a number of bars already filling up with red shirts. It would have been rude not to participate so we had a coffee and a beer (guess which one of us had a beer…) in a Georgian restaurant and watched countless worse for wear bucket-hatted supporters who weren’t quite ready to begin the days long session. It was nice to finally meet my new pal Chelle who has taken the jump and has become a decent #hownot2lifer. Chelle goes straight into number one place as my favourite female Cardiff fan… In fact she may be my only female Cardiff fan! Keep your enemies close I suppose…
From here it was another short walk to the main square, miniscule to its capital neighbours and probably smaller than Newport’s John Frost Square!
Nevertheless the impressive architecture and fountain offered a pleasant sight as we made our way to the Soviet monument and a walk back to the hotel along the Danube.
I quickly changed my plan of having an hours rest to try out a few local bars. I just about managed to walk accross the street before camoflaging myself with other reds and at €1.60 a pint, it was mandatory that I purchased two. This soon turned in to four once I met one of another new friend made from Instagram and the blog. I bumped in to Griff at a pre-season friendly between Undy and Newport having first met in Croatia; we simply carried on with conversation as though we were long-time pals. Cute.
As it happened, we both caught the Wonky Sheep-arranged buses to the ground in Trnava located around an hour from Bratislava. An uneventful journey bar the three trips to the loo and completely unecessary police escort.
I would love to tell you all about Trnava, but the truth is that I got off the bus and marched with purpose in to a little cabin that just passed as a “pub”. One does not usually have the opportunity to purchase 5 bottles of lager and a double vodka for under 5 quid, so you have to make the most when the opportunity presents itself!
Once Griff, Pete and I polished off our share of beverage, we walked all of 100 yards in to an Irish bar just around the corner from my entrance gate to the ground. The Irish bar was a really decent, multi level pub with rowdy Celts singing songs with still 4 hours to go before kickoff. The more expensive pints; at 2 euro a pop this time, did little to plug the flow of local lager, by the time I caught up with a few County lads before kick off I was adequetly hydrated.
The Trnava stadium is relatively new but you perhaps wouldn’t have noticed it – a very standard European ground that is 99 parts concrete to one part everything else!
The game was one of the better one’s I have watched this campaign, and how nice was it to take the lead in a very important game away from home! We thought being soaked by some beer in celebration was an ample price to pay. Five pints for 9 quid at half time wasn’t a disaster either. Just ask this guy:
The lead didn’t last for the whole game sadly and we had to settle for a one-all draw and rue the absolute sitter Harry Wilson fluffed in stoppage time. Still, I’ve watched a lot worse and even writing this after another draw with Croatia three days after today, hope still remains.
The coach trip back wasn’t as torturous as expected and we still had time to have a few more beers before the bar opposite the hotel shut for the night.
… Actually, I remembered having a few in the hotel too….
Friday – on to Vienna and home.
… Which is probably why I didn’t wake up to fresh on our last day, choosing to skip breakfast for an extra half hour in bed.
During my absence that morning Pete made the credible decision to catch the boat along the Danube to Vienna. Had I know it would be 5x the price and twice as long as the coach I may have abstained from agreement, but looking back that €30 would have just been spent down my local anyway!
The trip was accompanied by some infrequent commentary on what we could see from the river and, having not eaten since Wednesday night I was desperate for some quality Austrian cuisine.
So, after our McDonald’s, we were ready for our shortish day of tourism, luggage in hand.
We were fortunate to have a stop off in Vienna during out train travels to the Croatia and Hungary games, when we had a walk around the town, and even an amusement park. Today meant we could visit somewhere a little further afield and as Peter has visited the Austrian capital on a number of occasions I was more than happy to go along with the suggestion of Schönbrunn Palace… After a walk past the Cathedral obviously…
What was once the summer home of royalty gone by, today the palace is a tourist hotspot and should abolsultey be included in your plans if you are staying for a few days.
The palace offers a number of tours both inside it’s houses and the expansive gardens, but if you just want to look around “out the back” you can do so at no cost.
I certainly didn’t feel like trapsing through some posh house so we chose to walk around to the gardens, the highlight being a corridor of flowers leading up to an incredible fountain, a hill, pond and finally the Gloriette building where you could see suburban Vienna for miles.
I’m not one for gardens, palaces, churches or museums so take note how impressed I was with our visit here!
Somewhat tiring from the long walk back to the nearest tube station. We had more thing to cover before making our way to the airport.
The Naschmarkt market is not something that will be the highlight of the trip, but how often can you ramble through an outdoor market in the middle of town selling everything from lobster to cheese to baclava to tea?
Around half of the occupants are restaurants closely competing for business and I was starving once more. We were certainly not disappointed by our choice of Italian, indulging in Pizza, chips and even a salad (stop the press) to rule out airport fast food.
Seldom have I gone to a place, seen just two things and be content that I had made the most of the day. We found our way around the underground and – bar a small flight delay – it was “goodnight Vienna” and hello to the long drive home from Gatwick. All in the space of 60 hours!
Next stop… Dublin (again) and Belfast for a good friends wedding. We’re due to cross the NI/Eire border on Brexit day too. What can go wrong?
Thanks for reading,
Chris
How Not 2 Life 