Beneath the Mountains

[Warning: There are very few pictures to accompany this post. That is because Lisa was off teaching in a town called Snina and is the keeper of the camera—seeing as it is her camera. I apologize in advance.]

Aerial view of Spišská Belá next to the Tatras.

We left Levoča and I made my way to a place called Spišská Belá for a week of solo teaching. Spišská Belá is a cute town that is situated along a main road that leads into the High Tatras mountains. Consequently, from the town, one can catch a breathtaking view of the mountains on a clear day. Fortunately for me, Spring decided that this was the week that it would awaken—ending this year’s brutally long Winter for good—and I was able to see the mountains most days during my stay. The walk to school was about 10 minutes long every morning, but it was one of my favorite parts of the day; once I got past the gas station, the landscape opened up invitingly and the mountains became available to any desiring onlookers.

Quite stunning.

A Winter Tatra Trip

On Easter Sunday, Lisa and I traveled from Kraków to the town of Zakopane which is directly over the Slovak border, resting right up against the Polish side of the Tatra Mountain chain. Zakopane is a charming mountain town that we had actually visited before—on accident, that is. We once took a bus from northern Slovakia into Poland and hiked through the national park, trying to spot a series of lakes that is apparently very gorgeous. We never found the lakes, though, due to two things. First, the fog was so thick that, had we been in the right place, we would have had no chance of seeing them anyway.

Secondly, we were not in the right place.

At any rate, after the 35 minutes or so that we rushed through Zakopane last time, we knew that it was a place to revisit.

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.

Ždiar, Giraltovce & Beyond!

Because I haven’t posted anything in a decent amount of time (I have a couple posts that I am working on simultaneously right now), I am going to have to squeeze a significant amount of information into this one post. I want to make sure that I do not get behind—the longer I wait to report on something, the less detail I will remember. Make sense? So maybe this post will be a real roller coaster of tales and insights. Maybe not, though.

***

So, like I said in my last post, Lisa and I made our way to Ždiar, Slovakia (pronounced: Zhih-dyarr) and stayed at the hostel known as The Ginger Monkey. Quite an experience, to say the least. The bus that took us up through the mountainous region did so after it had become fully dark outside. It wasn’t bad timing since I had a piercing headache at that point—I get dehydrated quite easily—but was semi-problematic since we had no idea how to make our way to the hostel. In fact, we didn’t even know when to get off the bus. To make a long and boring story short, the Australian girls sitting behind us that had been speaking English for the entire bus ride were actually going to the same place and were able to guide us there very easily as well as give us the low-down on the living arrangements. Things were good so far. They were only going to get better.