Groundhopping24

With the first quarter of the year behind us, I decided to bring in the month of April with yet another trip to Prague. Previous readers of some of my other blogs may recall some unfortunate encounters from previous trips to the capital (check out the Slavia blog for more on that), but this trip would thankfully be less problematic.   It was to be a solo trip in this instance too, which gave me a bit of time to have a walk around some parts of Prague I’d been yet to see. Namely Letna, which was a lovely spot to just sit and read for an hour as I bided my time before kick-off. On arrival, I’d chosen to walk from the station to Sparta’s ground, gradually taking various spots in along the way.                I made the initial mistake of choosing an Italian restaurant which was an obvious tourist trap, but it filled the necessary hole. I took in all the usual sights, not venturing too far off-the-beaten track on leaving the Italian pla...

We’ve already had three Slovakia related football blogs in a row, and now here’s a fourth in the form of MFK Skalica, though they are situated right on the Czech border. It was almost walking distance from Hodonín as we discovered on a particularly mild Saturday, but more of that later.   We’d chosen a slightly later train to get us to our first stop of Hodonín under the assumption that there would be a bus from there to get us to the ground in time for kick off. Oh no. That would have been far too convenient.   On arrival to this charming border town, we’d discovered the next bus to Skalica would arrive well after kick off time. Plus we had to walk to the ground. We could have taken a taxi which would have been reasonable and wouldn’t break the bank too much, but we decided on a much more unconventional route to Skalica.   Given that I’ve mentioned the walking distance, you can probably tell where this is going, but yes we walked there. In actual fact, we wal...

  The final instalment of my long weekend in Vienna and Bratislava sees the trip culminate in a visit to one of Slovakia’s biggest sides in Slovan Bratislava. Having witnessed a decent 2-2 draw between 2 nd tier Petržalka and Tatran Prešov earlier in the day, Slovan’s home game against MŠK Žilina had a lot to live up to.   I’d purchased my tickets during a brief wander of the city at the reasonable price of around 8 Euros, though during that particular wander, I’d discovered that Bratislava perhaps wasn’t as enjoyable as it had been during my first visit last year. Perhaps it’s about where you are in the city, or the fact it was a Sunday, but there didn’t seem to be a lot to do or see where I’d been.   Granted it can’t have helped that it was a solo trip, or that I had little money to spare at this point, but I’d expected slightly more from my trip to the Slovak capital this time. There’s no denying the city’s modern veneer, but beneath that it seems to only be s...