Bratislava does not offer the wide variety you’d expect in a city in West Europe- say Paris or Vienna- but it’s surprisingly full of culinary adventures for anybody who’s willing to search a bit. Most popular, of course, are the ubiquitous cafés of Bratislava- they spill out onto the streets, the squares, just about everywhere- and are perfect places to relax and have an espresso, a Turkish coffee (watch out for the thick, bitter grounds!), or a Viennese coffee, frothy, rich and topped with whipped cream. Restaurants serving Slovak fare- dumplings, pork with cheese sauce - are aplenty, but virtually none of them have menus in English, so go prepared. For a city that was, till a decade ago, communist and almost completely isolated from the rest of the world, Bratislava is today pretty well equipped with international restaurants. It has lots of restaurants serving international cuisine, including Japanese, Austrian, Hungarian, Arabic, Italian, French and English. For those who just can’t do without fast food, there are a number of American style burger outlets, where you can get familiar fare.

For serious drinkers and particularly for those who love their beer, there’s plenty of choice- Slovakia’s known for its beer, and you’ll find some sort of beer hall, pub, tavern or roadhouse down almost every street. Catering to more refined palates are wine bars at different wine cellars where the end result will be worth the wait.

Llovaks, if one may be allowed to generalize, are a race that is very fond of music and dance. Although Bratislava has few `dance halls’ exclusively devoted to dancing, there are dance floors in most pubs and taverns, and once the beer starts flowing, almost every pub becomes a dance hall with feet stomping and cheering locals urging the dancers to greater frenzy. Bratislava offers very lively entertainment- almost every street has a pub, a restaurant or a beer hall, and there are plenty of discotheques, casinos, cinemas and nightclubs too.

In addition, Bratislava’s many performance venues host cultural events- dance, music and theatre- almost 365 days a year. Listings appear in the daily newspapers; watch out for performance at the Slovak National Theatre and the Reduta which houses the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra; a number of restaurants and hotels too have daily performances of folk dances and songs.

Bratislava’s cultural calendar too is chockfull of events; the better known of these are the Bratislava Music Festival (in September), Bratislava’s Jazz Days, the Organ Concerts and the J. N. Hummel International Piano Contest.