A quick day and a half in Bratislava on the way through to Poland and beyond, and also two nights at our favourite hostel to date, Hostel Possonium, which despite being decorated to the theme of the film "Hostel", about backpackers who get kidnapped and tortured by wealthy, mentally deranged businessmen, was not scary at all and is our new number one by virtue of its cosy cellar bar, great music, friendly and funny staff and hotel-like facilities.

The city is attractive, compact and easily manageable in a slow-paced day of meandering. Although we're beginning to spot a pattern in the make-up, and therefore path set out for tourists, of Central and Eastern European cities. 1. The "Old Town" - bypass the (large) bit of the city where almost all locals actually live and work and get herded into the small, secure, renovated part of the city, which will predominantly be 200 to 800 years old and have the following elements: 2. the main square, with a tourist information shop, big statue and many pigeons, 3. a main street, with bars and restaurant tables in the centre of it and a periodic of ice-cream stands along it, 4. a large church, 5. a few small but exquisitely designed churches, and 6. an ethnographic museum (don't ask, I'm not really sure, haven't yet been lured into one). Then 6. cross the famous bridge and 7. get your exercise for the day by walking up lots of steps to 8. the castle, which will either itself be or lead to 9. the viewpoint. In an effort to stay off the beaten track, we switched 4 and 5 around. Repetition aside, however, we had a really good day, and particularly enjoyed the search for Bratislava's selection of random, quirky statues.

On a completely random note, thanks to all those who make my logging in to Facebook account an interesting and difficult task these days, as to do so on new computers it often now requires me to prove my identity by identifying friends of mine from tagged photos. Which you'd think would be easy, were it not for some people (Stephen), tagging pictures of horses as their friends (Aoidin). Not an isolated incident, I've also had to identify a door, a dog, a chimpanzee, a car and a banana skin. Am looking forward to the next batch!