Still in Slovakia and seeing the Soviets

Well, not actually seeing the Russians, but what they did in 1945. There is a very large monument to  the Soviet Union's Red Army in memorial to the approximately 6,700 Russian soldiers who died in the fighting to liberate Bratislava from the Germans in the spring of 1945. The hill this monument is on was heavily fortified and fought over before the German Wehrmacht retreated into Germany.

Atop the 30 meter high monument is a figure of a Red Army soldier crushing a swastika with his foot.  

There are a number of individual graves around the monument, a few with small photographs as the one below. The majority of the fallen are buried in mass graves in the four raised grass areas in front of the monument.

And like we have seen so many of at other battlefields, long lists of names. Take a close look at the birth and death dates of the soldiers. One of the amazing things to me was the age of many of the soldiers. I would have thought they would be young, instead many were older.

The town hall, or should say the old town hall, is amazing. It has been serving as such for over a 1000 years. It has stacks of documents We saw some that go back nearly 1000 years.  

This is the charter of a guild, forget which one, that went back to sometime in the 1200s. There were charters for button makers, butchers, weavers, shoemakers, and about any skill you can name.

The front of the hrad (castle for those of you who have already forgotten the Slovakian lesson from yesterday), was seriously updated for one of Maria Theresa's daughters in the 1700s and that led to much of the city being reconstructed to what is still present in the "Old Town" today. Yes it is the Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria-Hungary, we heard so much about in Vienna only 67 kilometers away.

For about 300 years, from the 1400's though the 1600's, Pozon then Pressburg (former names of Bratislava) served as the capital of the Hungarian Empire. Nineteen kings and queens were crowned in the Church of St Martin below. 

That is St. Martin, helping a beggar, not being militaristic, despite what it looks like at first glance. This statue was on the main altar for years but is now placed in a corner.

The Church is quite large and was the coronation hall for the Hapsburgs while the empire was ruled from here.

The last still standing tower gate, St Michael's Gate, on the old city wall. The buildings on the street date from the early 1700s.

 Seat mates on a bus ride. Great conversation, not.

Our hotel across the street from the police station, with the police cars reflected in the windows. Best internet yet and great breakfast too, just on the edge of Old Town.