Bratislava 2 – Day 14

I decided to go to Danubiana Art Museum, 20 km south of downtown Bratislava, very near the border of Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria. It opened in 2000, and was founded by Gerard Meulensteen of Eindhoven, a Dutch collector and art patron, and Vincent Polakovič, a Slovak gallerist. It’s a 22 km ride from the hotel, all of which I have done before, so I decided to take the my bike on the bus to the gallery, look around, then ride south for a bit, which would be new to me, and then ride back to the hotel.

The transit portion of the trip entailed taking two buses, transferring about 5 km into the journey. The second bus only runs once an hour, so I set an alarm for 7 AM to make sure that I was at the bus stop by 9:06. The other complication was the hotel is at a transit hub, and I didn’t know the location of Platform J, where the bus would stop.

The dining room terrace was covered in ice, and I encountered icy puddles all day long. I saw man slip and fall on the slope to a pedestrian bridge in Petržalká.

I usually only take a couple minutes from leaving the hotel to being on the tram, and they come frequently enough that you don’t need to know the schedule. This morning I gave myself 15 minutes since I didn’t know which platform to use. I got a workout by the time I got on the bus! I went down into the pedestrian subway and couldn’t find signage for platform J at any of the exits. So I tried each one in turn, carrying my bike up and down. The last place I looked, which was the last possible place for it to be, and was where I needed to be, was also the easiest platform to get to directly from the hotel. Oh well, I’ll know for next time. The appointed time arrived, and passed. No bus. But I wasn’t the only one at the stop. It eventually arrived, but it was later than the amount of time allotted at the transfer point. I got on, but I knew unless the next bus waited, that I would miss the second bus, and then have to wait almost an hour.

When I got to the transfer point, I could see on the electronic board that the bus I needed was no longer listed. Then, I couldn’t get the bike out from the tight space. At the beginning of the ride I held onto the bike, then I noticed the red bar that could be put around it to keep it from falling over. I managed to put it around it, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the bike back out. Someone helped me, but by then we were two stops down the road.

I got off, and found some sunny steps to sit on, and checked where I was in relation to the route I had planned for returning this afternoon. I was about a kilometre away from the route. So I went into Ride with GPS in my browser, and reversed, and re-saved the route, something that wasn’t available in the app. Then I watched my position on the phone screen as I rode towards the route.

I was in Petržalká. It is the largest borough of Bratislava and shares a land border with Austria. It is home to about 100,000 people. It was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. In April 1945 it was freed from the Nazis and taken by the communists. It was returned to Czechoslovakia after World War II. Construction of housing blocks began in 1977. The tower blocks are known as  Panelák. It is the most densely populated residential district in Central Europe.I quite like the area. The housing is very dense, but the green space is extensive, and it has good Active Transportation infrastructure.

I saw this bridge design several times as I travelled south. This seems to be a tributary of the Danube.

One of the street car lines is being extended 3.9 km further into Petržalká with a 2024 opening date. From what I saw today that looks ambitious. This is the current terminus.

There are some modern midrise buildings in Petržalká, but the Panelák dominate.

The construction of the streetcar extension caused me to have to detour from the path here. Unusually, detour signs were not provided. I managed a roundabout way back to the path.

Veľký Draždiak is a natural gravel swimming area.

The churches in the former Communist built areas are quite utilitarian, and of a similar design from place to place.

I have now joined the Danube Cyclepath, and here is another one of those wonderful way finding signs. I cycled this section in the spring. The cyclepath is on a berm, on this side of the river. The black and white stick in the lower part of the picture, to the right of the way finding sign, is a flood gauge. I assume that the cyclepath is on a berm so that it is still useable when the river floods.

When I was here in the spring, I had a goal of riding across all seven Bratislava bridges. They all have excellent cycling infrastructure. This is the Floodplain Bridge. It is 2.9 km long and 35 m wide. There are cycling paths on both sides. Unlike some of the other bridges it doesn’t have stairs as well as ramps.

Every few kilometres there are small restaurants. The cyclepath runs on both sides of the river and there are frequent bridges across it. For about a kilometre this section had a variety of exercise equipment every hundred metres or so.

I saw quite a few swans as I rode along. This is where I turned off the Danube path to go to the gallery.The bus that I would’ve been on had I waited an hour, was returning from the terminus at the gallery. It didn’t beat me by much, even though I stopped a lot to take pictures.

There is a large dam here, the Cunovo Water Power Plant, but very few of the spillways were operational today. 

A surf and kayak school have been set up with artificial rapids part way across the dam. There are two different courses. It looks fabulous. And once you get to the bottom, you can paddle around to the left to take out and carry your boat up to the top and come down again. There are stands for viewing. There was a sign advertising European youth championships this summer. There is a hotel and campground, restaurant, outdoor dining, pool, and playground. I would have loved to have tried this back when I was kayaking regularly. 

I was puzzled back in the spring when I saw a bike crossing on Ride with GPS at this point. I wasn’t able to see a bridge when I was there. I discovered last night when I was planning the route today that it is actually a bike ferry. During the warm months when you use it on its regular schedule it is €4 per per person. This time of year it has to be booked and is €20.

I was absolutely delighted by Danubiana. It was much more extensive than I had realized with an outdoor sculpture park, a rooftop park with excellent views of Bratislava, the Small Carpathians, and the Danube River – I was able to see the Kamžik TV Tower – and an extensive indoor gallery on two floors, with four special exhibits, as well as the permanent collection.

This made me think of a deconstructed coffee mug. It was called Contemplation, which, come to think of it, one can be prone to do over a cup of coffee.

This was my favourite outdoor sculpture. It is called Smiling Faces by Bilio Nic.

I also really like this one called Infinity Lady by Ján Ťapák.

This one is called Danube Wings by Peter  Pollág.

This figure is called Pičus by Victor Freso, the same artist who created Octahedral Body, the colourful sculpture outside Eurovea shopping center. He says of Pičus: he is “man both ridiculous and foxy, an insidious son of a bitch, full of complexes; a self-important, arrogant bastard, the type that people find annoying in real life”. The gallery had a whole room full of these figures and mirrors to make it look like they were even more.

Here are some of the exhibits which drew my attention.

There is a funny story, told about these Brillo boxes, with respect to exhibiting them in Toronto. “In 1965 thirty Brillo Soap Pads Boxes intended for a Toronto exhibition were held at Canadian customs, as officials questioned their status as art. The officials contacted Charles Comfort, then-director of the National Gallery of Canada who, on examining a photograph, determined the works were not art, but merchandise. Two years later, Brydon Smith, curator at the NGC, together with Jean Sutherland Boggs, the Gallery’s new director, purchased eight Brillo Boxes. For them, the works were indeed art and, more than that, art worthy of the national collection. Purchased 1967”.

One of the special exhibits was by Michae Mraz which I found quite interesting.

Another was by Martin Stranka, who seems to be quite prolific. I also enjoyed his work.

This piece by Katarína Galović Gâspâr is called Brandage. I thought it apt in the  highly branded, consumer driven society we live in.

The Art Café was very inviting and I had a latte.

I had about half an hour before the bus arrived when I finished so I rode south and picked up one new tile and saw a little bit of the Danube Cyclepath that I hadn’t seen before.

I wasn’t allowed to board the bus until it pulled up to the stop. I was the only passenger for the first 10 minutes or so, but then, as we went through small towns more and more people started to board.

I had two transfers to make on the way back, but the second bus driver came out of his booth and down to the middle of the bus where I was standing with my bike and told me I wasn’t allowed to bring my bike on the bus at this time of day. I thought I was allowed to bring it on until 3pm, but it turns out it’s not allowed after 1pm. And, apparently it’s always at the discretion of the driver. So I got off and planned a route back to the hotel, which was only 6 km. This picture is entitled, “Left Behind”.

When I saw this giant sundial, I knew where I was. I had seen it in the spring.

My route took me under the Harbour Bridge, which has cycling infrastructure on both sides, and streetcar tracks. And, under the Apollo Bridge, which has been attractively designed even underneath.

Today I noticed there’s a bike counter on the Old Bridge. I was the 133rd cyclist across it today.

This is the north end of a major transit stop and university.

I realize it was still early enough to have another coffee, and I was quite hungry, so I stopped at Hentam, and had a delicious meal.

It felt quite bitterly cold from the café to the hotel, which was only about a kilometer. We decided to eat dinner at Komin, near the hotel, rather than going to the Christmas market tonight. But first we went up to the 13th floor to the Outlook bar for a drink.

I have two days left on my own, and two days left with Michael, and then I return home on Monday.