It was my dad's idea. It's always my dad's idea. As soon as we stay somewhere for more than three days, he wants to rent bicycles. He can't help it. It's in his Dutch DNA. So if it's anyone's fault, it's my own. I should've said "no" after what happened in Laos. But I didn't. When my dad came up with the idea to rent mountain bikes in Bratislava, I said "yes" loud and clear. I told him it was a great idea to cycle to Devín Castle on the Austrian border. So when I ended up in a garden center, my clothes soaking wet from the rain, waiting for a new mountain bike with no flat tires, I really had no one but myself to blame.

In hindsight, everything hinted at a negative outcome from the start. When we wanted to make a reservation for three bikes, we already ran into trouble. The rental place was closed the day before we wanted to go cycling. Luckily, people at the tourist information office were able to get in touch with the owner and by the end of the day, we had a reservation and put down a deposit. But when we showed up to pick up our bikes the next day... there was once again no one there. It started to rain. My parents and I huddled together under a pent. Every minute seemed to last an hour. I was getting cold. A big part of me just wanted to go back to bed. I was sure the owner was not going to show up, but we'd already put down the deposit and leaving didn't feel like an option.

Just when I was about to turn around and go back to my botel, the owner of the rental place showed up on an electric scooter. He did not see it as a problem that he'd kept us waiting for half an hour. Both my dad and I were very annoyed already, but put our annoyance aside so we could finally hit the road. We got our mountain bikes, and a normal bike for my mom so she wouldn't have to put extra strain on her bad back. Almost an hour later than planned, we finally left for Devín Castle.

Rain kept falling steadily as we followed the boulevard along the Danube towards the Austrian border. We had 10 kilometers ahead of us, which is not that much for the average Dutch person. Despite the rain, and despite my brakes screeching loudly every time I touched them, I was optimistic. So far, things looked better than they'd done in Laos. The boulevard had a beautiful lane for cyclists. I loved it. And then it ended.

First, the signs along the boulevard disappeared. Since the first one I'd seen said "9.8 km", I'd assumed this nice boulevard would take me all the way to Devín Castle. But not long after I'd spotted that sign, the boulevard ended. No signs were pointing me in the right direction, so I just stayed as close to the Danube as possible. After a while, we had to go off-road. Dirt sprayed everywhere. The paths were very rocky. My butt was starting to hurt already, but I was also enjoying myself. Slovakia was silent and cold that morning, gradually turning green in the first days of Spring. The small forest we cycled through was beautiful. Sadly, that part of the journey soon ended, as the path ended when we came across a road. Not quite a highway, much busier than a backroad. There was no bicycle lane, so we just cycled on the main road, pretending we were cars. Occasionally we'd pass a house, cars passed us by every few minutes. It was still raining. My mood dropped. I wanted to pick up the pace, but my mom had different plans. Out of nowhere, she stopped and yelled: "Go on without me!"

My mom had a full-on dramatic outburst in the middle of Slovakian nowhere. She had tears in her eyes when she told my dad and me that she couldn't go on. She thought her back was letting her down once again. She said she just didn't have the power in her legs to turn the paddles around. I'm not going to lie, I rolled my eyes when she said those things. I love her, but I knew this had nothing to do with her body letting her down. That was simply impossible: One second she'd been right by my side, the next she was 20 meters behind saying she couldn't do it. I know my mom, this was very unlike her. Something else had to be up. My dad looked at her bike and solved the mystery: she had a flat tire. We all looked at each other. There was only one thing to say.
"Now what?"


My phone told me we were right in between the center of Bratislava and Devín Castle. Smack dab in the middle, five kilometers either way. That's a long walk, especially when it's cold and rainy. My dad asked me for my phone, so he could call the guy who'd rented us our bikes. I gave my dad my phone, but he handed it back because he didn't know how to dial the number on the business card he'd put in his pocket for instances like this one. I dialed the number and fled. My dad can be intimidating when he's angry. When he hung up, he was furious.
"Now what?" I asked again.
"That idiot said we should call a cab and come back. And he ain't paying for that cab. Well, neither am I." He looked around. "I'm going up to that house over there. Maybe someone can help us."
My dad disappeared, leaving my mom and me behind. I couldn't help but be reminded of Laos and my dad having to fix his bike between the rice fields. The big difference between then and now was that we had been close to our hotel in Luang Prabang. Now, we were an hour's walk away.

When my dad returned, he was accompanied by a Slovakian man.
"I'm getting a ride to the city center," my dad grumbled.
"What about us?" my mom asked. "Shall we stay here?"
"You could go inside," the Slovakian man suggested. "There's a... an... arboretum there."
My mom looked at me. I looked at her. "Okay. Why not?"

The arboretum turned out to be a garden center. My mom and I both like gardening, so we decided to walk around. The place appeared to be deserted. Although the plants were beautiful. I was starting to feel uncomfortable. It was too quiet. A memory of Percy Jackson's visit to Auntie M's Garden Emporium popped up in the back of my mind. I decided to talk about the misshapen fruits on a lemon tree to convince my mom that I wasn't freaking out. Every little noise made me jump. The situation was surreal. "This is how people die" is what I imagined my friends would say. How do a Dutch girl and her mom end up in a deserted Slovakian garden center in the middle of nowhere? I was balancing on the verge of hysterics. Then I rounded a corner and my heart stopped.


A person was standing right in front of me. A woman in overalls, most probably a garden center employee. I literally jumped when I saw her. And then she asked the question I least expected in that situation.
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
My first reaction was to decline. I said my dad would be back any minute and my mom and I would just wander around for a bit. But as the rain fell down harder and harder, we got colder and colder. My dad was still nowhere to be seen after what felt like an eternity. So my mom and I went to the house next to the gate and asked if the offer still stood. Five minutes later, we were all sat on the front porch, talking about quinces.

It was the most bizarre situation I'd been in for as long as I could remember. The rain kept on falling and as the temperature dropped, we were invited into the office. There was a beautiful shrub full of flowers that gave off an amazing smell. After getting stranded in the middle of Slovakian nowhere, I was now sat in the office of a garden center next to a Caribbean plant. I couldn't help but laugh. "This is so bizarre," I told my mom a thousand times. Never in a million years did I expect to end up in such a situation. But I was grateful for it. I could go to the bathroom there and when my dad showed up with a new bike, we all got another cup of tea.

Around noon, we left the garden center. It was called Agapé and had ties with Boskoop, the place where I got for my long jump training. Bizarre as the entire encounter might have been, I'll never forget the kind Slovakians who offered us help, shelter and tea on that rainy day. They made a bigger impression on me than Devín Castle, which we eventually did reach. None of the bikes had any issues again. Yet with Laos in the back of my mind, and this Slovakian experience leaving me flabbergasted, I couldn't help but think: What will happen next time when my dad says "Let's rent bicycles"?

I've often talked about how much I like trains. They're great. But there's another mode of transportation that I like just as much, yet rarely get to enjoy: the boat. 2019 has been a good year for boat trips so far though. In February, I went to Dordrecht by boat and on a sunny day in April, I boarded a boat that would take me from Vienna to Bratislava. Things got even better when I got off the Twin City Liner in the Slovakian capital. Because right next to the mooring place for the ferry was Botel Gracia, the hotel where I'd be staying for the duration of my stay.

Sleeping in a botel had been a dream of mine since my mom explained six-year-old me the difference between a hotel and a motel. I'd jokingly asked her if a botel was a thing too. When she said yes, all I wanted was to stay at one. It took sixteen years to happen, but the wait only fueled my excitement. I had so many questions when I walked to Botel Gracia. Would I get seasick? Or riversick, as this boat was on the Danube? Would the rooms be cramped, like on a submarine? Would the riverside be safe or scary at night?


As soon as I stepped aboard the botel, I knew I was not going to be seasick. The Gracia was a big ship and barely moved in the fast currents of the Danube. While my dad checked us in, I wandered off to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, mesmerized by the river outside. The most exciting thing to float past was a duck, and I loved it.

We'd arrived before midday, so after dumping our luggage, my parents and I left the boat to explore Bratislava. Although there is a sightseeing bus, we decided to walk. The map we'd picked up at the front desk showed that all the major sights were within walking distance. Within five minutes, we'd reached the city center. It was a sunny day, and because we were so exhausted from walking almost 20 kilometers through Vienna the previous day, we just sat down on a bench to enjoy the weather.

With the boat as our base, we planned short trips into the city. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, with a boat break in between. It was an atypical plan for the Fisher family, but it worked under the circumstances. We were all tired, me from university deadlines, my parents from worrying about my grandmother who'd just been hospitalized. My grandad had given us his blessing to go on this trip, as there was nothing we could do for him and his wife by staying at home, but we made sure to keep up to date on the situation by returning to the boat's wifi at a regular interval.


Our adventures in Bratislava were small. They started on the second day of our stay with a visit to Bratislava Castle, a mere ten minutes away from my hotel room. We could have reached the castle in seven minutes, but I was still doing a half-limp when walking uphill due to a calf injury. Once I'd made it up to the castle, I basically wanted to go down again right away. The building was renovated and redesigned so many times that it now looks odd. I felt strangely uncomfortable. The castle looks like it belongs in every single century it lived through, from the 9th till now, or in no century at all...

After leaving the anachronistic castle behind, we walked to the other major landmarks we spotted on our map, all close by. We saw the Blue Church (do not recommend) and Michael's Gate, but I personally enjoyed simply strolling down the old streets the most. They're charming in that calm Eastern European kind of way that Western Europe just lacks. I calmed down a bit in Bratislava, realizing I didn't need to hurry of worry about what was to come. I think Bratislava is the most relaxed European capital I've ever visited, and it reflected on my own usually stressed mind. Later in the afternoon of that day, my parents and I took a walk along the Danube, crossing a bridge to the other side. I went down to the water, sat between trees as I dipped my fingers in the icy cold Danube and thought to myself: This place is perfect.


I slept well in my bed on a boat, but woke up to rain on the third day. We rented mountain bikes to visit Devín Castle, but believe me when I say that that deserves a blog post of its own. When I returned to the botel that afternoon, I crashed on my bed and didn't get up until it was time for dinner.

It was still raining on our fourth day in Bratislava, and I wanted to stay on the boat all day. My parents convinced me to go out and explore the city once more. We walked to a Russian cemetery, which was my idea, as I hadn't seen a graveyard from up close yet and that usually is part of my routine when I visit a new city. This cemetery was the resting place of Russian soldiers who died while liberating Slovakia from the Nazis in the Second World War. It's odd for a girl from Western Europe to see statues honoring the Red Army, but those are the experiences that make traveling so interesting. I got the chance to see history through Slovakian eyes, and in those eyes, the Russians weren't all bad. Although the state of the cemetery seemed to imply that the current generations don't care as much anymore...


That night, the rain stopped pouring. We decided to stay on the boat and have dinner in the botel's restaurant on the top deck. The view we had from there was amazing. Night fell relatively early, and the weird but famous UFO bridge lit up just a couple of dozen meters away from our boat. The spotlights on Bratislava Castle turned on. For some reason, all those lights made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I left the boat with my dad around 9PM to take pictures of the riverfront with its bridge and view of the castle. All the pictures turned out awful, but the short walk and the views were worth the effort.

I was happy when I went to bed that night. Four days in Bratislava is a lot to explore the relatively small city, maybe a bit too much, but I'd had a good time. Most important of all: I'd finally had my botel stay. But would I surprise anyone when I say I hope to go back someday? Probably not. Because as usual, I already have new Slovakian adventures in mind that I hope to turn into reality.