Bratislava is a town with very rich history and you can find many historical buildings there. The most famous is the Bratislava Castle, which is situated above the river Danube. At present, it is a representative seat of our Government and there is the partial seat of the Slovak National Museum. Other famous building is St. Martin's Cathedral, which is situated below the castle. Above the confluence of the river Danube and Moravia we can find ruin of the castle Devin. Bratislava as the capital of Slovakia is very important for our economy. We can find there many factories and companies. The biggest are Slovnaft, VW, Palma, etc. The town has unemployment just about 3 per cent.
Bratislava has very good position on both banks of the Danube. It lies near the borders of Austria and Hungary, and because of this it is a big crossing of transport. We can find there the biggest Slovak airport, ship port and train station. The second biggest town is Kosice, which lies in the east of the republic and we can say that it is also a centre of this part. Other important towns are Zvolen, B. Bystrica, Zilina, Trnava, Nitra, Trencin, Presov, Poprad. Although our country is not very big, there is much to see. Foreign tourists especially like our nature, which is very beautiful. We have nine national parks where the nature is protected by law. You can do skiing in winter and hiking in summer in our mountains. You can also visit old towns and villages and you can see how people lived here in the past. For example, Vlkolinec, where you can see very old wooden houses. This village is classed among UNESCO monuments. There are very nice caves in Slovakia. The Dobsinska Ice Cave is the largest ice cave in the Europe. It is very interesting to see so much ice. I think it is impossible to speak about the caves. Everybody should see it! There is much to see in Slovakia, but foreign people don't know our country very much.
What can we say about history? The first empire of Slovak people was founded by French businessman Samo in the 6th century. When Samo died, the empire disintegrated. In 9th century, there was big empire of Slovak people. It was called The Great Moravia Empire. In 863 Byzantine brothers Constantine and Methodius were invited to come to Great Moravia. They invented an alphabet called Hlaholica and they taught Slovak people writing and Christian religion. They translated liturgical books into Old Church Slavonic. Because of this people could understand these books and they could learn new religion.