East to West: Koŝice to Bratislava

So, after visiting Prague for the second time (the subject of my last post), Lisa and I made our way to Koŝice—where our company is based in eastern Slovakia—to work on a few things: paperwork regarding work permits, the opening of a bank account so I can be paid, and attaining a cheap phone. All of these things happened and, while they took an entire week, don’t really seem worthy of taking up a substantial part of my blog. There are a couple worthwhile things about Koŝice that deserve some attention, though. First, we found possibly our favorite restaurant so far—Med Malina. It is a Polish restaurant and its name literally translates into “Honey Raspberry”, which is apparently a phrase that is uttered by Polish people when they eat something that tastes really good. Like ‘Mmmmm’—but more creative. The menu is very reasonable in price and they offer all the traditional dishes that you’d want to see—haluŝky, pirohy, garlic soup, goulash with cabbage and sausage, etc.

We may or may not have visited it three times in two days…

Secondly, situated in the main square of Koŝice’s Old Town (right next to a Gothic cathedral which is very impressive architecturally but pretty eerie at night since they don’t keep it lit) there is a fountain known as the musical fountain. Basically, it is a pretty generously sized fountain with anywhere from 15-20 streams of water that shoot randomly up in the air like geysers. But, like the name clearly implies, they do so while accompanying music blaring from the speakers which are located behind various benches around the fountain. It’s kind of a pleasant idea, really—maybe if accompanied by some solid orchestral pieces or something poignant like that.

But this is not the case.

The musical fountain in downtown Koŝice doesn’t spring up and down, dancing effortlessly to anything classy like Beethoven or Bruckner. No, instead they decided to play such gems as “Hello” by Lionel Richie and that one really dramatic song from Cats. To make it worse, they weren’t even the original versions of the songs. They sounded like bad MIDI files or cheap ringtones that come free on LG flip phones (I know these all too well.) And to make it even worse, at night, when the fountain does its thing (with flashing, irregularly-paced rainbow lights, may I add), it is always surrounded by couples ferociously making out—to the point where it doesn’t even look enjoyable. It was like witnessing a kissing competition with the objective of seeing who could make it more uncomfortable for the other person.

I guess poorly synthesized versions of 80s songs will do that to you, though.

***

We knew that we would be heading to western Slovakia the next week, so we did the sensible thing and returned to our favorite destination thus far: Ždiar —home of The Ginger Monkey hostel in the High Tatras mountain chain. This experience was quite different from the first one, though (which, if you recall, included a fair amount of alcohol consumption ending in everyone dancing around in onesie ski suits.) This time, there were only four people staying at the hostel including us—a nice opportunity to unwind, have some hot cocoa (free to all guests) and spend some true, quality time with Wally & Kevin, the hostel dog and cat, respectively.

The weather was beautiful when we arrived on Friday, so we decided to get a proper hike in while we still could enjoy the mountains before winter. The hike we chose to take is known as the Polish Lakes—a five to six hour trek that allowed us to cross into Poland by foot over a small bridge (with an abandoned border control booth)and check out some pristine lakes fenced in by the park’s numerous, looming peaks. This all sounded pretty fantastic, but the air was inopportunely misty, allowing for little to no visibility. Really, we couldn’t see more than twenty feet away. In addition, we ended up taking the wrong red trail (who has more than one trail designated by the same color??) and didn’t even do the hike that we intended to do. It was still nice to get out and stretch our legs, but at the time we were a little skeptical that we would make it out of the forest that night. Once we did escape, though, we were faced with the difficulty of having no Polish Zloty, their currency. We eventually made it back, though, and treated ourselves to some well-deserved pizza and beer, followed by a hostel screening of the Johnny Depp classic, Chocolat. Not actually a bad flick.

For a full account of the hike with accompanying pictures, check out Lisa’s blog post—A Return to Ždiar: A Quest for the Elusive Polish Lakes — http://incurablystircrazy.wordpress.com/

If nothing else, our hiking mishap (and the fact that I left my pants and towel there…) only gives us another reason to head back to the charmed land of Ždiar.

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We are currently residing in Bojnice, Slovakia (pronounced: Boy-nitz-uh) which is a small town fixed under a mammoth castle that is 850+ years in age. It is apparently a get-away, touristy sort of place for lots of Slovakian natives as well as other European travelers. Certainly, it has a charm to it that is unmistakable. The main street is dominated by two rows of perfectly lined trees & charming shops/restaurants. There is a small park which lies directly between the foot of the castle and the entrance to the zoo—one of only four zoos in Slovakia. We took a tour of the castle last week (which was in Slovak, but they gave us an English brochure) and were lucky enough to get free entry to the zoo since the teachers at our school gave us permission to take the kids on Friday during the day. This killed three birds with one stone; I wanted to see the zoo anyway, I didn’t have to pay, and I got to skip out on almost an entire day’s worth of English lessons with eight and nine year olds. Can’t ask for much better than that.

***

This weekend, we took the three hour trip over to the capital city of Bratislava to find a little more dynamic of a night life to celebrate Lisa’s birthday (Monday, Oct. 22^nd.) I sort of expected it to be a lackluster city—a remnant of the Soviet Bloc that might have some cool things to offer but could never dream of holding a candle to a place like Vienna or Prague.

I was dearly mistaken.

Bratislava, while severely smaller than the aforementioned cities, has a very rich past (we took a free walking tour on Saturday morning) and a very attractive historic center. Apparently, in the last twenty years or so—after the fall of Communism—the government of Slovakia has really been working on promoting tourism in the city. Especially now—after the Velvet Divorce officially split up Czechoslovakia—the Bratislavans have come to realize their own pride and have eagerly been working to make it known to the world all that their capital city has to offer after spending generations of existing in the shadow of Prague. They are justified in their efforts, too. Bratislava is a relatively inexpensive, but still a clean and comfortable alternative to those who are put off by the mobs of tourists that are unavoidable in larger cities.

A couple highlights from the weekend—

1) We went on a pub crawl put on by our hostel (meeting plenty of interesting people from England, Australia, South Africa, Slovakia, Poland, etc.) I was a little worse for the wear on Sunday, but rallied pretty quickly—which takes us to my second highlight…

2) There is a café chain (only 3 of them—not sure if that actually constitutes a chain?) in downtown Bratislava known as Shtoor. Apparently, Ludevít Velislav Štúr was the leader of the Slovak national revival and wrote a book that has since been recognized as the main influence in the creation of the modern Slovak language. Apparently, he liked coffee too, because this café chain is named after him—though they did it in a way that, I think, would allow tourists like me to pronounce his name correctly. Kind of like how Led Zeppelin left the ‘a’ out of lead so that Americans wouldn’t botch their band’s name. This café has a really cool vibe and was one of the first places that we were able to snag coffee that wasn’t instant—in fact, all of the coffee they serve is bought from fair trade sources. It was a nice refresher, especially on a rough, hung-over Sunday morning. Plus, instead of conventional lampshades, they use top hats. It makes it look like there are five or ten invisible, hatted men standing in the room at all times. Pretty cool.

***

I said in a relatively recent post that Autumn here has been a little disappointing. I was wrong—it just took a couple weeks to catch up. The tints and shades of Fall colors in the trees are thriving powerfully here in Bojnice. Maybe some pictures will surface soon.

Today’s Recommended Song: Mumford & Sons – “For Those Below” – This is a bonus track off of their new album, Babel. As far as long-awaited follow up albums go, it is sort of disappointing. But this song is pretty awesome and is followed by a heart-wrenching version of “The Boxer” recorded with Paul Simon & Jerry Douglas.

Keep it real.