I checked the weather forecast on Monday this week, and hey, it wasn’t going to be that bad! I excitedly tried to persuade Nige that it was going to be a fun weekend by explaining that it was only going to be raining ‘a little bit’. Yesterday, things had got a little worse on the weather front (ha! I’m a comic genius!) and today, we arrived to what can only be described as sleet and gale force winds.

For the first time I can remember (since I was 8 on the very first flight I took – to New York – get me!) I was scared on landing. I thought we weren’t going to make it, and the plane was being blown about all over the place. We did however, and I almost felt like kissing the ground of Slovakia; although I managed to refrain myself as I didn’t want people to think I was taking the mickey out of the Pope in what is, largely, a Catholic country.

Getting out of the plane and then leaving the terminal in search of bus tickets was like walking on the moors during a storm, or getting caught in a blizzard on the top of Everest (or so I imagine). We couldn’t even walk forward such was the strength of the wind, and the driving sleet changed my sleek straightened locks into kooky frizz in an instant.

We are staying in a place (booked through the usual Hostelworld.com) called Hotel Kyjev. It is dirt cheap, and seems to be in some kind of groovy time warp back to communist 1970’s with a Trabbie in the lobby and carpet on the corridor walls. What would once have been torn down as old fashioned and out of style has now become kitsch retro trendy – except it isn’t retro – it’s real. The bonus in all this, is location and cost.

All checked in and we headed out (in the wind and rain) to explore the Old Town. It didn’t take us long to decide we’d earned a beer stop; if for no other reason than to give ourselves an opportunity to dry off and warm up. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere where the beer is both good and cheap – it was shaping up to be a good choice of destination after all!

We braved the walk to the castle after our beer-fortification, and in spite of the weather and renovation work being done around the castle it was beautiful and impressively guards over the city. However, when you are being battered by the elements (and the sleet/jeans/hood-but-no-umbrella combination is particularly nasty) there is no incentive to linger in any outside place particularly long. We decided it would be a Good Thing to head to the museum to learn a little about Bratislava and Slovakia, the Communist years, and the fight for freedom. To this end, we took up the LP recommendation of the Natural History Museum (as the actual history museum was closed for renovation – just like everything else around the castle).

There was a confusing exhibition on the ground floor about the Slovak Air Force after WWII – which, although in English and Slovak, didn’t seem to be explaining what the point of the exhibition was. The next floor up had a huge display of photographs of folk dancers, traditional costumes, and a video being streamed in a loop showing traditional dancing. This may have been quite interesting, however without a basic knowledge of the Slovak language it was all just a bunch of pictures and pretty outfits.

The remaining floors housed some rocks, fossils, and a life size model of a woolly mammoth. Not really what I was hoping for (although we mused later that the clue was in the ‘Natural’ of the title). The biggest bonus was that on emerging from the museum, it appeared that the rain had lessened and we could continue to wander the streets of the Old Town in a slightly drier fashion.

One of the best things about the city, was being there by chance at the same time as an installation of static displays of pictures from all of the former Iron Curtain countries charting life under Communist rule, and the subsequent fall of Communism as the ‘curtain’ came down. The displays were scattered about the city, so we’d come across them by chance and could linger and reflect over this so very crucial part of the recent political history of our continent. Moving stuff to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.

The LP recommended a bar called KGB, and we couldn’t resist. We had pre-dinner beer costing 1 Euro, sat in a cellar next to a statue of Stalin (or was it Lenin?). Magical!