Oh one thing I meant to mention about the views from the castle, by and large they are quite nice, the Danube, the UFO tower, and Bratislava in all it's glory warts and all. One of them warts, is the enormous concrete jungle of a housing estate just behind the UFO tower, you can't not see it, it's huge. I don't know much of the history of Slovakia other than they were communist until 1989 I think and then some years later became independent from Czechoslovakia a...

I've come to visit Hrad Castle this afternoon which is just on the outskirts of the city centre. You can grab the bus, but the walk to the bottom of the hill where the castle is perched is quite nice. I was lucky enough to have a photography exhibition in one of the main boulevards that I walked up - it's what Slovaks do I think, notice a route that the tourists might take to the castle and stick up something nice on the way. Again, no hard sell, just very pleasa...

There is a place called Hurricane's - a lovely restaurant in the centre of Bratislava, highly recommend the pesto risotto at €7. Excellent lunch :-)

Ok so cosmetically parts of Bratislava are not easy on the eye, that's a given. But the people here (taxi drivers aside) are warm, friendly and lovely. I've walked into town for a bit of dinner, sure it's quite quiet, it is only a small place so I'm told, so in a way it's appealing in a peaceful and pleasant kind of way. There is nobody trying to force me to buy their concert tickets or dragging me into their restaurant the second I pause to look at a menu. On...

Let's get it out early, I may have it wrong, I'll hold my hands up once it's confirmed I am wrong - Bratislava is a dump of a place. There I've said it - a real deal absolute dump. Now I've been to some places on my travels, some real bad gigs, this is right up there with some of the worst. Incident on bus, I have no diplomacy when it comes to old women with 3 Lidl bags wanting my seat on the Vienna-Bratislava bus and I ask the driver "mate, can you tell her to...