going from London to Vienna a few years back. Being a poor student back then, could only afford RyanAir. So we went from STD (Stansted) to BRA (Bratislava).

** STD to BRA? no pun intended!


On Ryanair site, they said it's Vienna, but neither one of us know it's in a different country. But we thought, just a train ride away, what can be wrong?

Well, let me start by saying that the movie "Eurotrip" is a documentary not too much far away from reality. On the bus ride from the airport to the trainstation, as we were driven thru the city outskirts, we literally felt strange and scared, as the city was so run down. And to make things worse, the bus ticket inspector boarded half way and picked us out (tourists) and said we didn't have the right tickets.

Hello! We knew we had to buy bus tickets at the airport, but none of the locals told us, nor can we understand bratislavish language, we didn't know each one of us had to get three. And we ended up being threatened with police station visit or paying a hefty fine.

The ticket was 20cents US. And they fined us 35euros EACH!

To this date, I never set foot on bratisla-sheet-hole again, as I vowed when I left on that train to Vienna.