A Guide To Wandering In Ružinov, Bratislava

Welcome to Ruižnov, Bratislava.  You should visit.

"But I only planned for one day in Bratislava!  There's nothing to do there!"

Really?  The Ružinov neighborhood of Bratislava was my home for a year and a half and I never got bored.  So when I received a Couchsurfing offer in that neighborhood in the summer of 2011, I didn't hesitate to accept.  The apartment I stayed at was no more that 5 blocks from my old apartment. Ružinov is a jumbled labyrinth of streets, parks and apartments that makes getting lost a pleasure rather than a task.

But really; why should you visit Ružinov?  Ružinov is the neighborhood of flowers.  The entire neighborhood is one giant, grassy park where many of the streets are named after flowers. Hidden among the parks and colorful Communist-era panelka flats are many small restaurants, cafes and "krcma" or family pubs, where you can feel like a local.  For all of you backpackers who want to brag about a "local" story here's your chance.  And even at this short distance from downtown, the prices drop noticeably.  All it takes is a quick 10 minute ride from Old Town on the "Eletricky" Line 8 or 9, and little explorer's spirit to find yourself in a world totally different from downtown Bratislava.  For those who need a little help, I have some recommendations.

1. Strkovecke Jazero
Strkovecke Jazero is the perfect place for a picnic on a sunny day or a few hours of fishing.  Bring a blanket, a couple of sandwiches and few liters of Corgon beer (or Kofola) and pick on spot on the shore.  If you're too lazy to pack a lunch there are two good restaurants located right on the water.  I've spent many evenings with lovely Slovak girls watching the sunset over this scenic urban lake.

2. Hostinec u Deda Restaurant
Like many neighboorhood pubs in Slovakia, Hostinec U Deda is well-hidden among all the flats and forests of Ruzinov.  When you're close enough you'll easily recognize it by the commanding deda (grandpa) standing guard over the entrance.  The inside is a kaleidoscope of Slovak books, posters, furniture and other random things hanging from every inch of the walls.  Once you take in the decoration of course you have to eat the food.  The menu features traditional Slovak cuisine, like brnzovy halusky, and a great selection of cheap Slovak beers on tap.

3. Kastiel' Prievoz 
I frequently roll my eyes and joke that you can't walk more than a block in Europe without running into yet another castle.  Prievoz Castle doesn't sit high on a noble mountain or isolated in a rolling field, but sits unassumingly in the southern part of Rusinov on the appropriately named Krasna Street (Krasna means beautiful.)  It's a little, historical gem in the middle of the Communist-era suburban mess of Bratislava.

4. Espresso Planetka Pub
Hahaha! If you find this place, send me an email and I will personally buy you a beer wherever we happen to meet: rb2mcmullen@hotmail.com  Planetka Pub looks traditional on the outside and wonderfully kitschy on the inside.  It has some of the best pizza I've found in Bratislava and a giant patio that's perfect for sharing many drinks with friends on a nice day.  This pub (and the nearby park) is the location of many of my most memorable parties during the year and a half I lived in Ruzinov.  That summer of 2011 it also served as the concert venue for a special show I put on with a friend as part of a "Slovakia Reunion Tour."

It's very easy to get lost in Bratislava, but that's half the reason you traveled here anyway.  Here's a Google map of the locations mentioned: Ruzinov Map

The Wrong Way To Hitchhike Budapest to Bratislava

(As I've mentioned before, my notes on this Eurotrip were stolen in San Jose, Costa Rica.  More on that later.  Due to this my memory of this part isn't accurate so I will substitute it with online information.)

Aboriginal Hostel's excellent breakfast fixed my palinka hangover quick, and I drank enough free coffee to keep me wired until at least sunset.  The hostel staff had no additional information on hitchhiking to Bratislava, so I took the hitchwiki.org information to heart:

When heading west (M7 to Balaton or M1 to Austria and Slovakia), you should take bus 272 from Kosztolányi Dezső tér or Sasadi út and get off at the stop Budaörs, benzinkút. It stops right in the Agip service station with a lot of traffic to both motorways. The journey takes 20 minutes. It can be a great place if you get a chance to talk to drivers, though the staff of the petrol station may not allow it.

It was a lucky day.  I didn't have to wait long to get a ride, and the guy was practically fluent in English.  He was an Austrian-Hungarian who handled construction contracts for various projects in Central Europe.  His current project was a large entertainment park that would be built right by the convergence of the Austrian-Slovak-Hungarian borders.  I had been through that empty region before.  I congratulated him on his success, but secretly felt that the last thing an untamed wilderness area needed was another massive, sprawling building complex.


View Larger Map
What did it matter?  I'm no fucking earth child.  With just one ride I was almost to the Slovak border.  The Austro-Hungarian dropped me off at the highway exit near Rajka which lead to his house and happy family.  At that moment, I saw no safe place by the highway so I went to the auxiliary road to keep from getting killed.

My luck ran out.  After an hour barely a car had driven by.  I was impatient and grumpy.  I estimated the border would be no more that a kilometer away so I started walking down the 150/S2 to see if on the other side I would encounter a bus stop where I could go directly to Bratislava.  My Budapest hostel hangover was starting to return and the coffee had wore off.  It's sunset.  I swear no more palinka ever again.

Highway M15: This is where you should cross the border

When I got to the border, there were no bus stops - hell, there weren't even cars.  A lonely, derelict border station from the days before the highway had been built sat there as a stunning monument to post-Communist neglect.  Here words like "renovation" and "renewal" don't exist.  The desolate relic mocked my stupidity for taking the auxiliary road instead of the highly-trafficked highway border crossing.  I crossed the border on foot alone.  The two cars that followed ignored me as I entered Slovakia.

There was another building ahead surrounded by trucks.  Perhaps I could rest there for a minute and find a ride.  Or perhaps not.

Road 150: This is where you shouldn't cross the border

Strip clubs are fun, but not the place to waste my time while I am still 20 kilometers from my final destination.  Plus I imagine that border strip clubs have some rather frightful ladies.  Beyond the club I saw nothing promising for a ride nor a rest.  I focused what little energy I had and swore I would walk all the way to Bratislava if I had to, God dammit.

Another kilometer down the the road my luck returned.  The two-lane road had been reduced to one-lane for a construction project.  Temporary stoplights had been put up in order to make the two-lanes alternate turns so as to avoid head-on collisions.  This created considerable backup on the lanes.  Bad for the drivers; good for me.  I started casually walking up and down the line of stopped cars asking for a ride.  Within 15 minutes a nice elderly couple had taken me to my old home of Ružinov, Bratislava.

I'm home again.  My European home.





  

Hostel Business In Budapest

"Ideally we get him so drunk that he will miss his 8am flight.  Leaving him no choice but to work with us.  C'mon...do you know what that guy could do for our hostel website traffic?!?!"

The owner of Aboriginal Hostel was explaining why we were trying to finish off 6 bottles of various Eastern Europe liquors in the amount of time normally reserved for the 100 Meter Olympic dash.  The target of his scheme was Josh, the American owner and founder of Hostelmanagement.com, one of the best website for promotion and networking in the hostel industry.  Josh had excused himself to the bathroom for minute - most likely due to the copious amounts of alcohol we had been drinking all night.

Aboriginal common room

Being a Costa Rica hostel manager had perks.  By simply flashing my business card and website, the Aussie manager had given me 20% off my room and access to the staff's store of liquors.  He introduced me to the owner and Josh, who by coincidence was staying at the place on the last night of a month-long Eurotrip before he caught an 8am flight to California the next day.  He had picked the hostel due to its good ratings.

Josh was a programmer and website designer who had eventually focused his work on his personal project, Hostelmanagement.com.  He was a quiet and unassuming man who didn't talk much unless it was about web design.  He looked at my hostel's website and quickly pointed out several things I could change in order to increase our traffic and guest visits.  I could clearly see how valuable he could be to any hostel business.

I wasn't the only one.  Aboriginal's Hungarian owner had been trying to convince him to become part of the Aboriginal team.  He was a flashy, loud, jewelry-wearing man who was more concerned with the monetary aspects of hostel ownership than the hospitality part.  He not only promised Josh great pay, benefits and compensation for his missed airplane flight, but said that he had "special friends" who could get Josh the golden prize: a free one year European Union work visa.  No questions asked.  Delivered to his hands within a few weeks.  I know from having failed to get a EU work visa that this is no small task...

Palinkaaaa

The Hungarian owner's showy manners and bribes seemed to make the shy Josh uneasy.  He was polite, but kept insisting that he had to make his flight back to the USA the next morning.  This was difficult considering the strong spirits we were drinking.  What the owner offered us was formidable: Hungarian and Romanian Palinka, Croatian Rakija, Polish vodka and beer for those who lacked the balls to pound these shots.

I of course jumped into the liquor with no reservations.  It was all free.  I've never found liquors from this part of the world particularly enjoyable, but the palinkas and rakija were high-quality brands that went down smooth. Too smooth...

Besides I had to do "business" with these hostel employees.  We talked of partnerships and the possibly of me working as a manager at Aboriginal in the future if Costa Rica didn't work out.  Josh asked my recommendations for Central America while the flashy Hungarian hostel owner insisted we drink one more shot...Josh, the pay is good...one more shot...We'll get you an EU visa...another shot...palinka good...blahblahshotblah...pa-shot-linka...

pa...lin...kaaaa...

aaa...   aaa...   shot...?

Fuck...

Why did I pay for a bed?  Around 9am I woke up on the couch in the common room.  The Aussie manager looked amused and told me to get some breakfast...It's FREE!  I asked what had happened to Mr. Hostelmanagement.com.  "Oh, he made his flight, but in bad shape. I need to get home myself and recover." My shape wasn't as bad as I expected and a few cups of strong coffee helped.

I ate the free breakfast (it's delicious), checked Hitchwiki.org then caught the metro to the nearest hitchhiking spot to Bratislava, Slovakia.

Hairy Hungarian Hitchhiker: Belgrade to Budapest

That is an impressive beard!

In hitchhiker language "H" is for Hungary

That is the first thought that came to my mind when I got picked up by the truck-driving Hairy Hungarian Hitcher.  His massive beard, short stature and round figure gave him the appearance of a dwarf who had crawled out of a mountain from Middle-Earth.  I had no way of expressing my thoughts since I discovered with a simple "Hello" that my driver knew not one word of English.  Magically in my travels I had acquired 6 words of Hungarian, which were enough to make the Hairy Hungarian Hitcher (now referred to as the HHH) smile with delight and chat to me as if I were his long-lost friend.

"Szia. Eg, Kete, Haram"

"Ezhgie okjoklkomun keszelk?"

"Uh...Koszonom!"

"Kegeskszouem keszerss!!! Gskgetlkl zeguk eguszoj ...." 

  

Truck drivers.  The true saviors for many a desperate hitchhiker.  Lonely, creepy, smelly and uncouth...they receive a bad reputation even though most of them have a heart of gold.  All most truck drivers need is some entertainment since being on the road for a million hours can get mind-numbingly boring.  Hitchhikers have received the same bad reputation as truckers thanks to a few bad apples; and we get bored standing by the road.  Naturally, we bond quite quickly.

Lost in Serbia

Somehow my conversations with the HHH were more interesting than Dusan, my first hitcher who had taken me from the northern side of Belgrade to the desolate, hot highway where I got the next ride.  Dusan and I had rambled on in my broken Serbo-Slovak-Polish language and he was happy to leave me with two wonderful gifts.  The first was a wilted cellophane-wrapped sandwich that I greedily accepted (when traveling never turn down free food.)  The second was a fine map of Serbia.  It was not a standard highway map but it was detailed and included all the major roads and cities I needed to know for traveling.

Too bad I'm leaving Serbia today.

I was showing this map to the HHH, who laughed and then suddenly looked concerned.  He pointed at the northern-most point on the map and said something with a rather regretful tone in his voice.  He repeated it with the same sadness and I looked at his hairy, dwarf face.  I gathered that was the point where I had to leave.  Only when I when we reached the border did I understand that the border police was his principle concern.  No hitchhikers.  Were it not for that I would have had a ride on highway E75 all the way to Budapest.  I shouted, "Egészségédre!" and got out.

My next two rides were spent in silence save for the Hungarian greetings.  These people weren't as excited as the truck-driving HHH to venture a conversation with a foreigner when they couldn't speak English.  My final ride dropped me off in central District IX within the vicinity of a metro stop and a shopping mall.  The mall had a bookshop where I quickly checked my email.  My last-minute planning skills were in effect, and I was hoping for a last-minute Couchsurfer to give me a place to stay.

There was no last-minute Couchsurfer.  I received responses, but they were offers for other nights or locations too far outside of downtown for me to handle getting lost at 9 at night.  This left me to search for hostels.  I already knew of some from previous stays so I headed to my favorite of them all: Budapest Bubble.  It's perhaps one of the smallest hostels in Budapest, but by far the coziest and friendliest one.  And one of the co-owners, Olga, has received praise and admiration from far away for her smile and indie-girl good looks.  I took the nearest metro there.

Budapest Bubble was full.  No surprise for a place that only has 20 beds.  However they did send me to their sister hostel, Aboriginal Hostel, which was a mere 500 meters down the road.  I thought I would get some sleep.  Instead, as a card-carrying hostel manager from Costa Rica, I met some very important hostel people who revealed to me the rather sordid and often dirty business of hostel management.  This is gonna be a long night.