Bratislava – Day 13 – Lisa Stokes

It was a cool and sunny this morning so I sat indoors at the hotel restaurant. At one point I was the only one there. I feel as though I’ve hardly stopped to catch my breath since I’ve gotten here, and since I had technical difficulties with the blog yesterday, and ended up a day behind, and I was waiting for Michael’s friend Milan to drop off his bike, I stayed in until early afternoon.

I brought the bike up to the room after he dropped it off, and mounted an extra water bottle cage that I brought with me, and will leave on the bike when I’m done, my phone caddy, my bar bag, and my seat. It took me about half an hour.

Michael forgot his European power plug this morning so once I ready to go I headed to his office. The borrowed bike was a pleasure to ride compared to the bike share. It’s a flat bar cross bike with lockable suspension. I really enjoyed riding it and might have to add one like it to my collection. The answer to the question, “How many bikes do you need?” is n+1 when you are passionate about cycling.

Ive never seen food delivery people using scooters before, but it’s quite common here.

This is me loving the feel of having a lighter bike, again.

I arrived at the office while Michael was still in a meeting so did a loop around a large park in the area. The Au Park shopping mall has been built adjacent to the park.

I recently learned about the concept of the “third place”. It refers to social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home, the first place, and the workplace, the second place. Cafés, public libraries, gyms, bookstores that encourage you to linger, and parks are all examples of third places. Bratislava, Prague, and New York City are full of third places. Brampton is lacking in them. Toronto is somewhere in between. Montreal is better than Toronto, but not as good as here.

Two of the shopping malls I’ve seen here include playgrounds for children and outdoor cafés that encourage you to linger. They also have strong connections to cycling and walking infrastructure.

These images show a very inviting third place right between the park and the indoor shopping mall.

As I looped around the park, I saw the UFO bridge and rode on the terrific bike lane beneath it. Yesterday, when looking at Atlas Obscura, I saw that there was another UFO in Bratislava. After dropping off Michael’s plug I used Google Maps for directions. Unfortunately, there are no bicycle directions here, so I used driving directions, but excluded highways and tolls roads. It gave me an 8 km route.

As I descended from the Old Bridge, I saw a rainbow coloured apartment building in the distance, so I diverted off my route to find it. I found a colourful mid rise neighbourhood with parks and public art, with restaurants, services and retail on the main floor.

While following the driving directions I suddenly realized that I had gotten myself into a potentially unsafe spot. I was surrounded by ramps and fast moving cars. I hadn’t seen a no bikes permitted sign, but when I looked on the map I could see that I was about to cross the Harbour Bridge on the motor vehicle level. I could lift my bike over a barrier between lanes and back track a few hundred meters, or continue about a kilometre to the other side. Not knowing whether or not it was legal for me to ride there I decided to backtrack.

That led me to discover this large sundial which was displaying the local time without the daylight savings time shift. On the underside was a climbing wall.

I found my way to the active transportation, level of the Harbour Bridge and crossed on the west side this time for different views than when I travelled across it last week.

I encountered terrific bike infrastructure after coming down off the bridge. The path in the first picture I had been on before, but not the second.

One thing I’ve noticed here is land uses aren’t as strictly separated as they are at home. I was riding through a residential neighbourhood and came to a T-intersection, and there was an inviting ice cream and coffee shop. I stopped, and indulged.

I joined the path along the Little Danube at a different points from last week, and shortly I was at the Medzijarky UFO.

The area was built in the mid 70s and is comprised of three tight circles of low rise towers from the Soviet era. In the middle of the centre circle is a park with a UFO by local artist Juraj Hovorka, who lived in one of the towers. He is the same artist who designed the Linden Tree monument to Alexander Dubček at the Hrad which we saw on Day 4.

As I was thinking about my return route to the hotel, I realized that I could use the OpenMaps layer in Ride with GPS in the app on my phone, and have it navigate me back using local cycling knowledge, which I did, and it worked well. I’ll stay away from Google Maps for the rest of this trip.

On my way back I saw a lot more cyclists on this bike path than last week. It was later in the afternoon, so I guess people were coming home from work.

I saw another building that made me think of UFOs. My third for the day.

I stopped to take a picture of this appealing park on the way home, and when we spoke about it at dinner with Milan, Michael’s friend, who loaned me his bike, he told me he, and Michael, worked in the building on the left when they worked for IBM.

I’m calling this picture “Wrong way down a one-way street” because I spotted it, and had to go and have a look at the art, despite the fact that it was the wrong way. It was a short residential street, and very low risk doing so.