Bratislava

Bratislava is like a little jewel to me, but it remains quite unknown for many travellers. Many people doing the popular Prague, Vienna, Budapest circuit skip the Slovak capital, and sure it's an important miss. I've already been there 3 times, and I continue to consider it worth a visit. If you're lucky to be in Vienna for a few days, you should leverage one of them with a day visit to Bratislava. It's pretty simple, you just go to what is left of Südbahnhof (the original station was demolished in December 2009, a few months after I was there for first time, to give place to the new Hauptbahnhof currently under construction), spend 14 euros in a return ticket to Bratislava (you can do the back trip on a different day and it gives you free travel in Bratislava's public transport) and do the 70 minutes trip to the old Hungarian capital (it served this role during the 150 years when Budapest was under Ottoman rule).

When leaving Vienna you'll have a nice view of the city's modern skyline from the bridge crossing the Danube

Then you'll see a flat landscape (as an Asturian it still shocks me to see how flat a good part of Europe is) with many fields used for Bio crops, some panelaks when approaching Bratislava, and finally you'll find yourself in in a rather ugly train station that gives a quite messy impression. I think that's quite OK, cause mess is one of the things that first come to my mind when I think about Bratislava, but it's a beautiful mess. When heading from the station to downtown you'll probably use an overpass from which you can see to the left an untidy mix of worn out early XX's buildings, socialist government-university buildings, the Slovak Radio Building and some glass and steel sky scrappers. Indeed, for a city of its size Bratislava has a rather surprising number of sky scrappers and though none of them is to remarkable neither by height or beauty, they certainly add to the charm of the city.

If you stroll down Stefanikova you'll see on your left a nice park (further to the left there's another park that I consider more interesting for its open space and its "Soviet feeling", I don't know how to explain it, but if there you'll probably understand me).

To the right you have an area with some nice old buildings quite in disrepair

Cross the pedestrian subway and you'll have Obchodna to your left. This is a lively shopping street, with some low rise colorful, freshly restored buildings, some grey ones with peeling facades, a Vietnamese market and a cheap and good enough Vegetarian (Hare Krishna) restaurant: Govinda.

To the right you see a nice, mainly pedestrian (I think only trams and buses drive along it) street, with 2 small churches to the right and that will take you to the Castle. The view of this slightly uphill street is one of my favourite views there.

Now you're in downtown. I won't expand too much on this, just check some properly written guide (wikitravel can be a good start), but I'll say that it's a pretty charming city centre. The main square is lovely, with a restored, art nouveau building that pretty much stands out. I should also highlight a small area close to the Cathedral with pedestrian almost medieval streets flanked by very old buildings. Now you should go the de Danube and stroll along the promenade. There you'll see a construction that is a real winner in my list of ugliest buildings in Europe, the Slovak National Gallery. Let me explain, the gallery consists of 2 parts, a beautiful old building, and a modern extension done in the 70's that looks like an authentic monstrosity to me. The pics in the wikipedia entry make it quite clear.
Go on along the Danube and get to the Nový Most (new bridge), now cross it and enjoy the view of that broad water extension flowing before your eyes (you can also check the concert posters put up along the pedestrian walk, thanks to that I've discovered Ambassador 21, the Belarusian incarnation of Atari Teeenage Riot).

You're in Petržalka now, the massive Panelák neighbourhood. Most tourists won't give a damn about this kind of tower block extensions, but I love cities and I love history, and these areas show us how European cities developed after WWII. In fact, I find these restored and coloured paneláks quite beautiful. You also have some more recent glass and steel buildings in the area, like the ones in Digital Park, hosting several IT companies. By the way, the huge presence of IT companies in Bratislava is amazing (Dell, Lenovo, Accenture...) though I guess it's mainly a "call center and support" thing, with quite little software development happening there.
Now you can stroll along a nice park by the river to get to the Stary Most (Old Bridge). This is an interesting concrete, steel and wood construction.

You cross over it to be back in "Bratislava proper". A bit to your left you'll see an area still in development with new office buildings. One of them caught my eye cause it's like a small version of London's City Hall.
And now, you must head to the last must see in this tour, the Blue Church.

The Blue Church is a really beautiful work by the amazingÖdön Lechner known as "the Hungarian Gaudi". I'd already visited this church in 2009, and at that time it didn't impress me that much, but in these last years I've developed a real taste for Art Nouveau/JugendStil/Secession... and this time I was delighted by this little gem. There are some crazy decorative items on the roofs, and the funniest thing of all is that there are some motifs on the walls that resemble inverted crosses :-)

In front of the church there's a very beautiful building following very similar lines and recently painted in pastel colors. The building's low railings are absolutely cute, green, organic, iconic Art Nouveau style. I've just found now that (it should not be much of a surprise) that such nice construction is also a work by Ödön Lechner

As bottom line I'll say that Bratislava probably can't show off any too unique feature, but it boasts a beautiful eclectic mix easily enjoyed on foot. I think the city's motto "Little big city" is sharply appropriate

Ah, of course, you can find some interesting street art there too