I don’t know what this has to do with anything but it was in the middle of the old town Bratislava.  Enjoy.

Slovakia is where Fred’s grandfather was born so we were excited to see Slovakia’s capital city. Slovakia has about 4 million people and most of them live close to Bratislava.  

There was no increased security that we noticed because of the attempted assassination of the Prime Minister yesterday.  Our guide never talked about it and no one brought it up.

After having several nice weather days in Budapest our luck ran out and we had some rain and coolish temperatures.

We left the dock in Budapest at 11PM last night so this morning we were still sailing along. About 9ish we went through the first of several locks we’ll encounter on this voyage.  Today’s lock was required because we had to go around a huge hydroelectric dam.  We were in the lock with a Viking ship and it was a pretty fast process and we were on our way.

Bratislava has its own charm but no ‘must see’ sites.  Our walking tour took us around the old town area and the guide talked about the country.  

At one point, while we were waiting for people who were in the restroom, she talked about her family and how they were affected by the fall of communism. Her father lost his position as a director for a TV manufacturer because of increased competition from better makers.  That was tough on the family and she said her mother longed for the old days of communism.  It was just too big of a change for them. We heard this in Hungary too, it’s a major paradigm shift and some of the older population never adjusted. 

Slovakia had the added burden of being part of the former Czechoslovakia.  Communism fell in 1989-90 but the country didn’t split in two until 1992.  That split, although amicable, meant Slovakia was slower to adopt democracy.  Today, their economy is doing pretty good and they are one of the largest automobile manufacturers in Europe. Several car companies have established plants in the city.

The city is pretty enough and it looks like they’re trying to bring more tourists in by sprucing up the place.  Working against this is their new PM who is threatening to take over all the media in the country and has already stopped aid to Ukraine.  Slovakia is a member of NATO and the EU.  Would we live here?  No, we would not.

I was able to get a picture of the entire ship on our way back.  Ours is the one closest the shore.  The other ship is another AMAWaterways craft, the Viola.  People from that ship had to walk through our ship to get to the dock.  This is very common with river boats.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Vienna.  Our first time in that city, although we’ve been to Austria before.