Slovakian Mountains & Poland

Sorry for not posting for awhile, but our beer intake has been very high this last week taking away from our evening posting time. Beer is so cheap around here, you can't afford not to drink it!

Our visit to Slovakia ended with one last stop in the High Tatras mountains near the Polish border. Over the previous few weeks we had many many people tell us we MUST go to the Ginger Monkey Hostel in a tiny mountain village called Zdair, Slovakia. It did not dissatisfy as it was one of the (If not THE best hostel) we have ever visited. They have a friendly hostel dog named Wallie who is the luckiest dog in the world recieving between 200-300 belly scratches per day from all of the guests. The hostel took some effort to get to, therefore all of the 18 year old "children" who stay along the rail lines within the big cities were not present.

We went on a terrific 4 hour hike the first day coming across lots of fresh bear tracks, and great views. The next day nearly the entire hostel (10 of us) undertook the 8 hour hike up and over a mountain range. It started rough as a couple of group members were smokers requiring a smoke break 150 m into a 20 km hike....nonetheless we made it to the top resulting in amazing views. The evening reward was playing fetch with the hostel dog (Wallie) followed by a few liters of cheap beer and 12" pizzas for everyone. The hostel keeps 1980's one-piece snow suits available for sitting around the fire. Made for great fun!

In most of these Central European countries communism only fell 19 years ago and as a result several things still remain from that era.  Some of them are sombering while others quite intriguing, our favorite is 'Kofola'.  During Slovakia's Communist time some outside products (especially western ones) were not allowed into the country.  Well apparently the people were envious of what little they saw of the outside world as westeners relaxed with a refreshing Coca Cola and to appease the people the country developed their own version, Kofola.  It tastes nothing like Cola but is dark and fizzy (The tourists call it "Communist Cola").  I taste jagermeister while Renee says it's like ice tea; others say medicine, either way it's kinda grown on us.

We were sad to leave but needed to carry on to Poland. We crossed the border, 10 km from Zdair into Poland leaving our tiny, quiet village behind. Our bus passed through the crazy mountain town of Zakopane, which essentially is a Banff on radioactive steroids. Lucky for us our stop was the beautiful city of Krakow. The city was very lively, but crawling with tourists. The best part of Krakow was the affordable food...we pigged out; perogies, cabbage rolls, polish sausages, potato soups, and more perogies! Krakow was also a great place to grab a beer on the patio.

Our last day in Poland was a sombering experience as we visited a very sad, but important part of world history, Auschwitz.

Poland was a quick visit, as our next stop is central Czech Republic. We have a very highly regarded Hostel to visit off the beaten track run by some of the guests from the Ginger Monkey Hostel, so we are looking forward to meeting up with the same group of great people.

Colin

Small scale Slovakia

Slovakia has been a real treat.  Before coming here we spent a lot of time in cities and getting to see more rural spots was a bit of a hassle but since leaving the quaint capital of Bratislava we're been seeing the quieter side of things and really liking it.

From Bratislava we took a train (and then a teeny tiny train) to the hill town of Banska Stiavnica which used to be the mining capital of central Europe back in the day.  Since being in central Europe, Slovakia is one of the first places we have had a real language barrier which proved to be interesting when we took the guided mine tour. We were given trench coats, flashlights and helmets (I thought the helmets were a little overkill until we got inside and I smacked my head every 30 seconds, you'd think I'd learn but no) and then we listened to our Slovakian speaking guide give what we assume were some pretty important safety instructions.  We figured if we just made sure we stayed in the middle of the group (aka surround our selves with people who did understand the safety instructions) we wouldn't get lost.   We were in the mines for over an hour and were happy to take some deep breaths when returned to the world of sun and fresh air.

As our tour of the mine was only in Slovak we figured we'd go check out the mining museum to see what we missed. We bought our ticket and were led into the museum only to noticed there was no written explanation on the displays.  It was then that the women who showed us and a few other guest in started her tour of the museum...in Slovak.  From both tours we gathered that they have mined the area for a long time and but not any more.

Wanting to get even further away for it all we decide to do some hiking in what is known as Slovak Paradise.    We took the train to a tiny little town in what felt like the middle of nowhere and as the rain looked looming we decide to hike the next day.  We woke up early, checked the forecast, ate a hearty breakfast and set out on a 6 hour hike into the mountains were you need to use ropes and ladders to scale rock faces.  We made it 500 meters from hostel.  An absolute downpour started and we took refuge in a bus shelter (more of a tin shack).  We kept thinking it would clear  up but ended up staying in the shelter an hour and a half before it got decent enough to walk to town and warm our cold bones with soup and tea.  The rain stayed all day so back at our hostel we hunkered down with a bottle of wine and played several rounds of Monopoly near the fire place, not too shabby of an alternative if you ask me.

We been having quite a bit of rain while in Slovakia but the good thing about the cold weather is that it makes the Slovak food taste so much better.  Slovaks eat a lot of dishes that are different variations of potatoes, sauerkraut and sheep cheese, lots of sheep cheese.  On a hot summers day it's not really the kind of food your craving but when it cold and wet outside a hot plate of potato dumplings smothered in sheep cheese accompanied by a pint of dark beer it really hits the spot.

R

Austria & Slovakia (Schnitzel + Hockey)

Our original plan was to avoid Austria, but how can you skip Vienna when your right beside it? Lucky for us the "Tour de Austria" was finishing up its final stage while we were there. Following these guys whizz by, you almost get dizzy! Vienna is full of culture and history but the thought of visiting another church wasn't getting us too excited so instead we opted for the not-so-famous "Sewer Tour" deep below the city of Vienna. The rainwater from the streets, along with the...ummm "waste" from the homes mixes together and funnels its way through a series of tunnels which are  one of the most sophosticated sewer systems in the world. It sounds gross and it is gross, but the complexity of the tunnel system is truly amazing. And yes, many brown floaters cross your path.... 

Following the tour we took in a movie called "The Third Man" made in 1947, staring Orson Welles. The movie takes place in post war Vienna, with many scenes shot within the sewer system where our tour took place. Later in the evenings we took in the free film festival at the Parliament square where thousands of locals gather to drink and watch an outdoor movie on a huge screen. Once again we were a bit under dressed, but after a couple of beers, everyone is the same.

We found Sunday in Vienna to be very strange as almost everything was closed, the city got very quiet. We couldn't get groceries so settled on some giant smokies from the hot dog stand, tough life I know. To escape the rather quiet city we took a bus up a hill outside the city and treked down the big hill overlooking the entire area through forests and vineyards, back into the city. We loved Vienna for it's great public transit but Watch Out! In Vienna they have transit police (young boys - mid 20's) checking tickets wearing street clothes. Fine for free-riding is 100 Euro cash on the spot, if you cant pay, you get off and walk to the nearest ATM with the officer. Tough love eh?

 Next on the hit list was Bratislava, Slovakia. The country also uses the Euro, BUT prices here compared to Austria are cheap cheap cheap. We went to the most famous (for good reason) pub in town, ate 2 mains of potato dumplings with sour cream and goat cheese along with a couple of pints of beer for 8 Euro. Slept like a baby after that meal.

We took part in a 2 hour walking tour of the city with a very charismatic tour guide full of knowledge. The history of this area of the world with WWII, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Occupation, Iron Curtain, Czech/Slovak separation, etc is fascinating making North America seem quite boring in comparison. As part of Czechoslovakia, under guidance from Prague, they built a bridge across the river within Bratislava. The great idea was to put a big "UFO" (complete with two green aliens sitting on it) on top of the bridge because they thought it would look cool. The Bratislava people thought this was absurd, but Prague held the power and so the UFO was built. It was events like this that led Slovakia to separate and form its own country.

COLIN

Bu-Da-Peeeeeest, Budapest!

From our quiet little town on the lake we made our way to the happening city of Budapest.  We heard fabulous things about it from other travellers and not long after our arrival we too fell in love and having planned to stay three nights we ended up staying five!  

Hungary´s history is pretty heavy with a lot of oppression and suffering so we learned what we could during the day at museums and such and to lighten things up at the end of the day we explored the cities night life.  Our favourite find was what is known as a ´ruin bar´, which is exactly as it sounds, an old ruined building from the last world war transformed into a night club complete with quirky lighting and odd stairwells and rooms all left in the condition they were found...really fun atmosphere.

The next morning with little energy to do much of anything we visited the Turkish thermal baths.  The place was amazing with outdoor and indoor pools.  The indoor pools had crazy architecture and even though it was stinking hot out we went in the warmer pools just for the experience.  One place we did not go in was the 100 C sauna!  We found it while exploring the building, and being packed with very large, hairy older men we thought how bad could it be....Colin took two steps before burning his feet and running out while I opened the door felt the heat and promptly shut it again. 

While in Budapest we also celebrated our 1 year anniversary! We joke that it hasn´t been a real tough year to get through as the majority of the time we´ve been travelling but feel very proud as spending 23.5 hrs of every day with one person for 9 months can be challenging at times ;)  To celebrate (because we haven´t been doing enough of that lately) we went out for cake which Budapest is famous for and then joined our hostel mates at a club underground to dance the night away.

Wanting to see a little more of Hungary before leaving we took a train two hours out of the city to Eger a place famous for it´s powerful wine referred to as ´bulls blood´ and spent a couple nights.  On our first night out we got caught in a flash flood!  It started to hail which clogged the drains and the streets turned into rivers as the rain came down in sheets.  It seemed like it would never stop but this wasn´t really so bad for us as when the rain started we were in the small street of the city with 30 some wine cellars on it and while being ´trapped´ we simply went from one to the other sampling their fabulous wine until the rain cleared.   It turned out to be a great afternoon with our only issue being the rather long walk home which was only longer with the staggering zigzag walk we acquired after all that wine. 


                                                                             our train driver :)

Eger was fun and for the heck of it we spent one last night in Budapest before leaving Hungary.  We really enjoyed Hungary with our only complaint being their ice cream.  All other countries thus far have had cheap ice cream with generous serving size except here where everywhere we went we got a pitiful scoop that was gone way to fast.  We officially went on strike after Colin ordered a single scoop and it fell into his cone requiring him to eat an inch of cone before he could enjoy a taste...

R

Off to Hungary

Our next leg took us to the little known Slovenian city of Maribor. The 100,000 residences proudly display their award as 2012 Cultural Capital of Europe. Lucky for us their annual Lent Music Festival was going on while we were there. The music was terrific being a great mix of everything including light jazz and heavy metal (loved it!). 

We were lucky enough to catch a tour of one of the largest underground wine cellars in the world located 50 feet below the city. The cellar is the size of 4 football fields, built 100 years ago or so. The tour guide informed us the oldest bottle of wine in the cellar is from 1946; reason being during German occupation in World War II the German soldiers drank the cellar dry. (may have contributed to losing the war, not sure?).

Onward into Hungary we made a stop at Lake Balaton, a locals favorite holiday getaway. Renee and I couldn't decide on which sight to visit with our afternoon so she took in the Royal Palace, while I opted for the "man pick" - International Hunting and Model Train Museum. Renee said the Palace was amazing, and I was blown away by the greatness of my pick. There were artifacts, skeletons and mounts of almost every animal you could think of. Many were shot by the Royal Family in the Palace over the previous 150 years.

 The model train museum was mind boggling with 30 trains continuously running up and down the tracks run by a complex computer system utilizing GPS tracking in each of the engines. The total track length was 2.5 km spread over a 150 x 50 foot floorspace. I wanted to run the computer so so so badly, but the engineer at the helm said no way! ....Boooooo.

Our host at the guesthouse was a treat, as he greeted us with a glass of wine and a great visit. In the evening we stumbled upon a wine festival in the street. All of the wineries in the area had booths, with a full glass of wine costing $1.00. We tried to get through the 13 booths but had to stop at the halfway mark to ensure we could find our way home to the other end of town. We grabbed one more for the walk home, off we went (Drinking on the streets is encouraged in most European countries!).

The next morning we tried to go down to the beach for some relax time. The lake has 220 km of waterfront (massive lake!), but yet every inch of beach was private requiring payment for use. We thought this was stupid so hid under a tree in the far corner. It worked until a young man came over asking for money in Hungarian - English (kind of). We pretended that we didn't know what he was saying and eventually he walked away...worked great!

Our journey has now taken us to Budapest, Hungary.