Erasmus Road Trip: Krakow and Bratislava

Hey hey guys !! 

Well well, I guess u all know what am I going to write about after reading the heading of the post

yeahh babies, the trip to Krakow and Bratislava it is. 

For those who are not very keen on Geaography, Krakow is the second largest city in Poland and Bratislava is the major city and capital of Eslovakia.

It all started last week 17th of March, me, Alfonso, Barbara, Gloria and Tamara went by car from Ljubljana to Krakow, passing by Austria and Slovakia before reaching our destination. Some of you may ask, 'ohh it's a long trip'.. yes indeed, 4 countries in 10 hours, that's actually quite a lot, it's like crossing Spain from the very North to Andalucia.. 

Can't say anything really about the hours spent in the car.. the usual, we got prepared with lots of food, chocolate and a wide range of snack.. you know it's 10 hours and we are not going to stop in side ways restaurants that charge you 3 times more than usual for a single meal.. c'mon we are sutdents!

Anyway, around 6pm we arrived to Krakow! and hopefully it wasn't very difficult to find the hostel (in Warsawska Ul.) nor find a place to park.. apparently in Krakow you can park for free on the streets from 6pm until 10am... so it was totally perfect for us, We parked the car and we registered in the hostel, which by the way, was amazing! I totally recommend it to those who want to visit the city, it was only for 8 euros, 5 minutes walking distance from the old town, close to the train station.. all advantages I mnust say... plus, it's was almost brand new, all the furniture and stuff, they even had a playstation for guest! 

Right after we spent some quality time in the hostel, we went to search something for dinner, we end up in a Burrito restaurant next to the hostel, very nice food and cheap.. like 12 zlotys (3 euros), and later we went to walk around the city centre and check out the night views of Krakow. Later on we were looking for a place to hang out a bit and dance, after trying several places, we found this great bar called Carpe Diem II, a pretty regular bar, the best part it was that on the dancefloor there weren't many people, so we could order the dj all the songs we wanted.. lol

On Friday morning, we decided to wake up early enough to have breakfast (which was included in the hostel price) and head to Auschwitz (in Polish Oświęcim), the well know Concentration Camps during the WWII , for those who want to know a little bit of the place, it's a complex of 3 concentration camps (Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III-Monowitz) 90km away form Krakow. 

We only got to see the first two... I am not going to bother you with the history about it, u can check on internet, but a curiosity is that Auschwitz was a concentration camp for the political prisioners and a extremination camp just for Jewish... what the hell were the Nazis thinking... 'todos locos' .

About the museum-tour itself, it's free to get in and see everything, but if you want a guide explaining all the way around it's 28 zlotys (7 euros) for students and 40 zlotys (10 euros) for normal price. I totally recommend to get the guide, first because it can be in different languages (we got our in Spanish), and second beacuse the guide can tell you many more thing and lots of anecdotes that are not written on the explanation placards.  remark* (there are set times for the tour guides, we got the 12:20 one, and between the camps I and II there is a free bus connecting them, or u can also walk, it takes like 20 minutes..)

What can I say about place.. it's very interesting to see it, mainly for historial reasons, but it gets depressing for moments once you see all the pictures and what the people left in the camps... 

Anyway..  after spending half day there, around 4pm it was time to get back to Krakow... once there we went to look for some food and later meet with some Spanish Erasmus friends of Tamara and Barbara, they showed us a little bit more of the city, we visited the Jewish neighbourhood (where the Schindler List was filmed) and later on to a flat party. Very busy night I must say . 

We had to go to Bratislava on the Saturday noon, so I decided to wake fairly early to do some sightseeing during dayligth.. I don't know if I said it before, but Krakow is an amazing city, very beautiful, for me it was wonderful, because I barely expected anything on the forehand, I even tought it was going to be a horrible, once again, don't make judgments before you see something with yout own eyes.. 

Well, as I said before, by noon we packed everything and we began our jouerney to Bratislava, where Monika (a Slovak Erasmus in LJU for the first semester) was witing for us, we decided to meet her in the capital and to spend a couple of days with her because she's from Surani (1 hour away by train from Bratislava). 

After 6 hours of driving we finally got to the capital, this time it was a little bit more diffiult to find the hostel because it was in the middle of the busiest street in the city (restricted to traffic), so we parked near by, and walked to the hostel... Can't say anything about the hostel, a regular one, at least it was within walking distance of the old city. Anyway, after taking a shower and resting for a while, we went for dinner, and Monika as a good Slovak and tour guide, she took us to a typical Slovak restaurant with tasty food and great beers. I ordered Bryndzové halušky, delicious btw, (dumplings with goat-milk cheese and bacon). 

This is actually a different dish, dumpling filled with cheese.

Once we finished dinner, we went on some chit chatting time with more beers, until it was above time to get to a club or something. Looking for a place to party it was again a little bit more difficult, not because there weren't places, actually there were quite a wide selection, but the ones we saw were kinda posh or with music we mostly don't like, but luckyly, we found a bar (which I don't rememebr the name) in the old city, lots of people, and commercial music for all the likes and preferences.. 

On the next morning we went to to visit Bratislava, once again, don't judge a city before seeing it, many people told me that Bratislava is worthless seeing, just for a hop and a coffee. It is true that the city is small compared to Wester European capitals, but it doesn't mean is ugly or anything, actually is quite beautiful, Medieval style, just check out yourself.

Around 3pm we decided to finish being 'guiris' (Spanish slang for tourists) and get ready to hit back to LJU, 5 hours of trip were waiting for us, that's why we didn't want to leave late.. 

Some figures: 

5 people, 1 car, 1700 km of roads, 20 hours of driving, 2 visited cities, passing by 4 different countries (Slovenia, Autris, Slovakia and Poland)  tons of fun and an amazing experience. what else can I ask for?

I hope u guys enjoyed the blog, see you on the next one! 

1 abrazo a todos! 

Party in Ljubljana, hell yeahh !

Heey guys !

Haven't written any post for like 2 weeks, let's be honest, I am kinda lazy to do so, and quite busy.

Classes has started already couple of weeks ago, nothing special really, I haven't reduced the class load respect to the first semester, actually is the same, I have again 7 subjects, which 4 of them are really important for me to coz they are very difficult to pass in my home university, but this is not the point really.

What have I done lately? well, beside of going to class every single day and getting bored a usual, it's partying around ! I don't now if I mentioned before the places students can go partying in Ljubljana, so let's make the first one of plenty of them.

For me, this week of social life, ok lets say partying,  was reduced to 1 party during weekdays, (damn flu !) I was recovering from being sick, so the brightless idea is going out sick, altough I did go out for a while on Tuesday night coz it was the 'the Anual Rozna Dolina Costume Party'. Due to the Carnivals the students organization or something like that prepared a costume party for the cause. They put a big tent in in the football field for the people to stay drunked under security and warmness. A big success I must say, the pre tickets were totally sold out ne day before the official date, and later they were selling 200 extra tickets that were sold out in one hour also.. so imagine how crowded was it. I had my ticket, but I didn;t stay long, I just wanted to check out how was the party and stuff, I hang out for a little while with some friends and later I got back to my room. It could have been a real fun if I wasn't sick that day, but well, It was good to see people havinf fun tough.

Anyway, this is not what I want to focus on... and this is... partying in Companeros Club on Thursday nights! Every single Thursday there is Erasmus party in that club, so for us , Erasmus student it is almost a must to go there, full of exchange student under one roof, and of course local students.

As usual, before hitting the club, we gathered in the dorms to prepare our bodies a little bit, for students that mean, drinking before going to the club. But yesterday night was a little bit different, we had special Slovak drinks Monika brought us before she went back to Slovakia. And there were lots of alcohol for 8 people. Under normal circumstances having lots of drink is not a big deal, but when you have several bottles of white wine and a peer licquor of 50 degrees, it really matters..  (Thanks Monika for the drinks!)

What can I say about the warming up, very good, some chitchatting, playing pyramid, you know, fun stuff. Around 2am or so we decided that we were ready to gou out, so we called two taxis to hit the party (taxi here is really cheap, not like in Madrid). 'Metro Taxi? Dve Taxi Rozna Dolina, Yellow Trafika Prosim' is most wide said sentence during the nights...

About the club, nothing special really, there are better places to party, but the environment is quite good, the music is not bad either, but the best thing is that is close down at 5am, one of the latest in the city, that is really a plus. So as usual, after a long night dancing we packed the left overs of our bodies and hit back home at 5...

On the following post I will write about other party places like Orto Bar, Metelkova, K4 and so on!!

C'mon this is Erasmus and party is what is about !

1 abrazo guys!