bratislava

After the upset with the bank card thing, I arrived in Bratislava after an uneventful journey with a heavy heart. I downgraded my accommodation from a mad Salvador Dali/Cubism hotel to a crumby hostel. Had to be careful with my dough and it was cheap. But it stunk. Badly. It was like the owner had been boiling old root vegtables for weeks. Or was it a dead backpacker?

I had to get out in the air. Went off to the Irish pub and there I encountered the worst service I have possibly ever had. Bratislava style. Yes, I was in a bad mood but there was no need for this d*ckhead to carry on like this. First, he blanked me after I sat at the bar, and carried on with other things then when I asked for a beer, he aggressively banged on the draught tap, then slammed the glass in front of me. Just to really p*ss me off, he gave me the lowest dominations he could find as change. A horrible nasty little c*nt. Anyway, I drank my beer and enquired of him his name. Get this, he said it is 'Jameson'. Oh, so you've named yourself after an Irish whiskey then. I repeated my request. Mario. Ok, and I wrote this on top of the receipt. It had the address of the bar on it. He went beserk. Why do you write it? I told him straight up that he treated me, a customer, with great contempt and I would be writing to his boss to inform him. Surely his boss should know that one of his staff acted in a way unbecoming of an Irish pub. The pubs name is 'Dubliner'. I bid him farewell.

Off I went to the Christmas market for some punch. I was feeling blue. Things were going badly. I seen a hobo and bought him a punch too. Maybe this little act of kindness would help lift my mood. It didn't and I decided to head back to the turnip aroma of my hostel. My benchmark was the train station as I knew the route from there. Stupidly I drank a shed load of vodka at one of the outdoor stalls. I ended up not so much communicating but talking to an old Roma woman. About sixty. Fine specimen. I was befriended by some bloke. Very foolish, a train station attracts the worse of the worse. I realised he was up to something so buoyed up by the vodka I headed back into town to get away from him.

Ended up in some pub come nightclub. A old decrepit little women of at least 70 years age offered me fellatio. She had no teeth for f*ck sake. Another git became my best friend. By this stage I was drunk enough to lose my caution. It was this guy who pick-pocketed my bag. He took my Primo Levi book (not that that f*ck would know), my mobile phone and ipod. I had about the equivalent of 30 euro in my front trouser pocket. He got that too. He must have been working on my camera when a girl came up to remonstrate at him. She noticed what had happened. The staff prompty threw him out. My bag was securely held at the front with the strap over my neck. He was good at his craft, the w*nker.

The girl who came to my defense name is Milana. Same age as me. Quite pretty. She took me under her wing and took me to the hostel via taxi. First we went to the hostel and I had to run in and get some dollars and then go to an exchange place to get Slovak currency. I now realised my ipod was gone but figured I had lost it due to my inebriated state. To demonstrate the level of my drunkeness I didn't even realise she was pregnant. Never mind 7 months pregnant. Nor did I notice the heavy bruising on her forehead. These things only became obvious in the morning. Before anyone gets carried away, she slept in a separate bed in the dorm.

When I woke I knew I had been a right gobshite. I checked my stuff, then I realised the extent of the theft. Then I looked for my cash, travellers cheques. GONE! Holy sh*t! No financial means at all. I kept very calm which surprised me. Off we went to find an American Express place to report the theft and seek reimbursement. The first problem was the office took two hours to find and then when we found it, it was just a travel office so no possibility of getting cash there. Fortunately, they wired cash to a local bank and then I could breathe again. I have more than enough for a while but hopefully I'll get bank cards in Berlin.

I took Milana to lunch I was genuinely grateful to her. She wouldn't tell me about how she got the bruises. Anyway, then she made her pitch. You know, a sad story that involved me lending her money. I told her to f*ck right off. And she did. I ordered the bill and it didn't add up. It was 20% more than its consitutent parts!

More examples of the trickery and criminal intent of these people are; exchanging money - the rate they use is not the advertised rate, I asked for a calculator to check to much disapproving looks, it was completely out. The hostel owner gave me the old 'I haven't got change at the moment, so I'll give you the balance later'.

When I packed my bag to leave, I found I had concealed my travellers cheques in it. Christ almighty! My lambs wool jumper was gone along with two socks and a universal plug. My coconut moisturiser too. Wonder who nicked them ?

I realise I brought this on myself and I have learnt a valuable lesson. But the ability of these Brataslavians to deceive, rob, con and cheat is exceptional. I note that from something I read that when the Czechoslovak army took the city in 1919, they proposed to change its name to 'Wilson's Town'. I have a better idea, call it 'C*nt City'.