Bratislava

Planning a trip to Bratislava

The Hungarians called it Pozsony, the Germans Pressburg, but to the newly-minted state of Slovakia (est. 1993), it's their capital of "Bratislava," a sleepy slice of Olde World Europe snuggled into the corner where the Carpathian Mountains come down hard to meet the borders of Austria and Hungary (both less than 10 miles away).

This city on the Danube now plays an exceedingly distant second fiddle on the tourist route to its cousin Prague, which rakes in the tourism dollars from its popular placement on the Czech side of the border which divided Czechoslovakia in two a decade ago.

However, that Bratislava stayed a relative backwater can be a blessing for anyone who wants to discover the Europe of yesteryear at prices that astound (full meals for $2, museums that charge 50¢).

This Hapsburgian baroque city slumbered, under crushing communist rule, through much of the 20th century, emerging at the end of it only slightly scarred—both psychically and physically, with brutish Soviet-style architecture and urban planning slashed across the cityscape—but more than ready to show off the Europe we thought disappeared two generations ago.