Bratislava – Day 6

Michael was very quiet getting ready and leaving for breakfast, so I didn’t hear a thing. I was aware of him coming back to finish up in the room before heading to work, but only momentarily and I fell back to sleep.

I had breakfast on my own on the terrace. It was lovely with the temperature already in the mid-teens.

I spent a few minutes orienting myself with a paper tourist map this morning and headed to the nearest bike share station.

I have a different phone number here, due to buying a local SIM and plan, and no roaming data from Canada, so I couldn’t purchase bike share, because I couldn’t get the text or voice call from MasterCard to confirm the purchase. Fortunately, I was getting it set up last night when Michael was around, and not this morning. Michael had to use his credit card because his phone has two SIM slots, and some roaming from Canada on his Canadian number. If I had been on my own, I would have had to put my Canadian SIM back in the phone, and go online to purchase roaming data, just so I could receive a text to confirm a purchase. This is because MasterCard hasn’t given the option of confirming the purchase via email, or simply foregoing the confirmation, as is done on purchases at restaurants. I had the same issue with the 72 hour transit pass. It was. inconvenient and I’ll be having a word with MasterCard when I get home about how they expect me to handle this type of thing when I travel.

The bike share stand closest to the hotel was empty. The app tells me there are three bikes at the next closest bike stand in the direction that I want to go, a nine minute walk away, and provides me with navigation to get there.

Success. I’ve now done bike share in four cities.

The street I had to use to get to the train station had no cycling infrastructure, and is a busy street for Bratislava, but not for someone comfortable riding in Brampton.

The really expensive infrastructure here like bridges, have phenomenal cycling infrastructure, and the Danube Cyclepath is terrific, but it’s quite poor otherwise. Even where there are bike lanes they’re often quite narrow and stop unexpectedly. There’s a lot of sharrows. And there’s mostly no cycling infrastructure. And because there’s so many tram lines here wants to be very careful of the tracks.

I scouted the train station this morning so that it will be fast on Thursday when I go to Vienna. It’s a good thing I scouted this. I turned right one street to soon and ended up going around the back of the station and up a giant hill (or at least it felt giant on the bike share bike, which is the heaviest bike share bike I’ve ever been on. Solid, eastern European engineering, I guess), and about half a kilometre before I realized I was not getting to the station.

But if I haven’t taken a wrong turn, I would’ve missed this hotel.

I’m not gonna get the heavy bike up the stairs to the station.

So back out to the main road and then right onto the station access road. Weirdly just past the green paint was a No Bikes sign. So I got off the road, but there was no need and next time I’ll stay on the road.

Success.

I took a different route away from the station to see something different. I’m already getting a mental map of this place and haven’t planned a route for today. I just have in my mind what I want to see and I am riding to where I think it is and I’ve been successful so far.

This is the Slovak Radio Building which was under construction from 1971-83 and is made of brown COR-TEN steel. It has been listed on the Daily Telegraph’s list of the 30 ugliest buildings in the world.

I wanted to lock up the bike so I could walk around the pyramid, but I realized that I had a problem. The lock goes with the bike. When it’s locked around the bike share stand, the lock goes onto the left side of the front axle. When you’re riding, it’s supposed to rest on a stand on the right side. I had locked it to the left side.

I messaged Michael to find out if anybody at the office knew what I should do. Then I continued riding.

He messaged back that no one did. I sent an email to the bike share company, but after half an hour had heard nothing back. So I tried phoning, which in itself is a challenge because it turns out you have to put a plus sign before the phone number and I couldn’t even figure out how to get the + 🙄, but Michael helped via Facebook messenger. I got a recording, which was in Slovak and just waited until it timed out and someone answered. I asked if they spoke English, and the reply was only a little. In the end, she changed the status of my bike so that it appeared to be returned, and allowed me to take out another bike, and sent maintenance to lock it up the first one. This picture shows the correct placement.

Problem solved I headed for Zaha Hadid’s Sky Park.

Hadid is what is known in the business as a starchitect. She has designed curvy buildings all over the world. It was great to see some up close. It’s in large area of dense new development, and is walkable and bikeable, and all the roads make the cars feel like they are visitors even around the large shopping centre Eurovia which had no surface parking.

After exploring there I decided to ride across the Apollo bridge. I found the bike approach, but it was fenced off after one block wth a by teach you were sign posted. I thought of the detour and and ended up back near the shopping center. So I went back out onto the road and use the motor vehicle lanes, and ignored the no bikes permitted sign. Once I got about a quarter of the way across the bridge there was a gap in the railing between the motor vehicle lanes and the bike lane at a bus stop and I was able to get into the bike lanes for the rest of the Crossing. With the exception of the temporary detour, it is excellent infrastructure.

The cycling infrastructure went down to the Danube bike path on the south side of the river. I rode along there to the Old Bridge for active, transportation, and trams, only.

Just under that bridge is a bar that has an old street car outside it, and a hemisphere made out of bike wheels. I spotted it Friday from the bridge when we went into the office and planned to come back.

At this point, I started feeling hungry and headed back to Eurovia to use the bathroom and have lunch.

Adjacent to the mall is a huge pedestrian area and patio area and then the Danube, Cyclepath and the river.

I had a good lunch in a lovely setting. There are many mid rise residential building attached to, and surrounding, the mall.

I continued along the Danube Cyclepath after lunch past floating restaurants and clubs to the UFO bridge, which was, until 2000, the longest cable stayed bridge that has one pylon and one cable stayed span. It has a flying saucer, shaped object, housing a restaurant, bar, and lookout platform.

These ramps are for accessing the cycling and pedestrian platforms that are hung beneath the road.

I decided to return to the hotel. I only referred to a map once today, and once I decided to return set off in the direction which felt right. At one point as I passed a side street, I noticed our hotel and stacked office tower in the distance, but it was too late to turn. I turned on the next street, and, given that it’s one of the tallest buildings in the area, was able to navigate towards it by catching glimpses of it.

I recognize these old tracks that I crossed and train station from pictures that Michael has shared in the past.

The bike share station is on this corner. It was the hearts on top of the tower that I was navigating toward. The hotel is to the right.

When Michael got back from work, we relaxed for a while and then walked to a different part of town for dinner.

Many of the bus is here front on catenary wires like the trams.

We passed a mostly closed market on the way to the restaurant.

We took a walk after dinner, and Michael showed me this appealing restaurant, which has changed hands since he ate there.

He also showed me this lovely tree lined bike path. I’ll have to give it a try tomorrow.

Finally, we had a look at the Apollo hotel which was apparently a favourite of the Soviets when they would come to visit Bratislava.


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