Eastern Europe: The Second Leg

In order to start writing this post, I felt it would beneficial for me to step back and take a look through my own eyes back to September when I originally took off to Europe. I managed to do this by rereading my first blog post, Eastern Europe: The First Leg. Not too much was different from how I remembered it—the airports had still been stuffy and frustrating, the people I met had been singular in every way imaginable & the windmills in Wolkersdorf, Austria are most likely still beautiful in their very ominous sort of way. And even now, as I lay in my bed here in Trenčín, Slovakia, it’s amazing to me how similar some of the aspects of my life are to how they were six months ago. My daily routine is fairly similar—I generally pack my backpack the same way, wear most of the same clothes, teach the same sorts of lessons, wash my hair in the sink the same sort of way when I don’t feel like showering, eat the same kinds of yogurt every day for breakfast, speak the same minuscule amount of Slovak, etc.

It’s fair to say that I took to this lifestyle rather rapidly.

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.