An Eastern Bloc-to-Eastern Bloc border crossing, from Hungary to Slovakia– a first for my collection of border crossing photos! This crossing was the most depressing we’ve encountered. Ransacked, graffiti-ed, and not at all welcoming.

Soon Petrzalka appeared before us. Once upon a time it was a garden-filled outpost of Pressburg in the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary.  Annexed by Nazi Germany as part of the First Slovak Republic, and then for about a year was a labor camp for Hungarian Jews.  After WWII it became an internment camp for Hungarians. Thirty years later authorities decided to construct panelaks, the concrete housing blocks that color the skyline.

 

 

 

A little gritty, a little rough, especially as one weaves deeper within the complex. Some of the buildings appear to have been renovated, at least on the exterior, but a fresh coat of paint and new windows doesn’t seem like enough to save this borough.

 

 

 

 

By now Day Trip Fatigue had started to settle in, yet an hours’ drive home and one more sightseeing point lay ahead: a series of bunkers on the Slovakian/Austrian border. We forged on, the only navigational guidance being a spray-painted sign on a highway concrete barrier.

Our concern that the bunker complex might be underwater due to the flooding throughout Central Europe was not unfounded, so this part of the road trip remains for some other time.  Too pooped to trek into Bratislava for dinner, but knowing that Austria had closed an hour before, we roamed the aisles of the Bratislava Tesco looking for dinner foodstuffs.
A couple of hours later we were enjoying grilled chicken and cold refreshments on our patio. We may not have eaten dinner in Slovakia, but we decided that dinner from Slovakia counted towards, “Three Meals, Three Countries.”