Would you know if this was a quiz question? Bratislava and Vienna are the closest capitals in Europe, only 60km distanced from each other. For different people this fact has different consequences.

There is a group of people who live in one of them and have never been to the other. Strange enough for 60km distance, isn’t it?
From the Slovak point of view, I could hardly imagine a person, who has never been to Vienna before, you know, to all the great museums (see Daniela’s article), all the romantic secret streets (it could almost compete with Paris), squirrels around Schönbrunn, Schnitzel and Sachertorte. But these people exist, those who heard about Strauss or Schiele, but never thought of seeing the place where so many famous talents were born or lived. Why is that?

Now it is 20 years since we can cross the border from the East to the West and on 21 December 2009 we were celebrating 2 years since we can do the same and in addiction, without waiting on the passport control. Thanks to joining the Schengen Zone, together with The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland and Slovenia.



Not very surprisingly, there is the other pole, so called “train community” – the same faces on 6:33 train (generally students and punctual people) 7:33 train (students and flexible people), 8:33 is for chronically late people, with 9:33 connection Roma people go. There are many motifs why people decide to spend at least 2 hours daily on train, most of them normal: university, work and various events. But doesn’t the same happens inside of London, Paris or Madrid – 1h to work and back? It is true that in 1 h even in one city you can be in a very different places, like if it was not the same city at all. In this case you move from 1 capital to another, at some points with similar history, but in the end different.

From the Austrian point of view, Bratislava is either:
a) small city with cheap beer (up to 40 years of age) “Beer cheaper than a coffee!”
b) small city with cheap opera (40+), they say Eugen Onegin is better in Bratislava
c) like Vienna, but cozier, filled with friendly, beautiful people (long legs)

And finally, from the Swiss point of view*, Bratislava is better than Vienna. “You know, you have all these houses, we don’t have them”. 2 Swiss girls spent 5 days in Bratislava, at least one full day photographing the communistic-block houses.



My weekend suggestion. Do those 60km, both living in Bratislava and Vienna. For the others, you have to see both.

* Statistics based on my Couch Surfer-research: 4 girls said so independently.