Eastern Slovakia

After COS, at the end of August, I headed across one last border before my traveling adventures as a PCV were over.

Slovakia, as we found out, has a border that must be crossed via transportation. We taxied to two different borders before realizing that we would not be able to walk across it. Taking an afternoon bus from the Western Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod, we made our way across the border smoothly arriving in the city of Kosice by nightfall.

I can't remember the first place that we went to for lodging or exactly what the story was (were they full? did it even exist?) but it was in the middle of nowhere and everyone we encountered was super helpful in trying to find us lodging. Helpful to the point of abandoning their job to point us in the right direction which led to more wrong places.

Somewhere along the way, we ended up by Soviet buildings and trolley tracks and headed towards an abandoned hotel. We guessed it was closed for repairs. Considering that was our third or fourth attempt for the evening, we moved closer to the old center, where hopefully the presence of more tourists would mean more hotels or pensions.

Finally, we found a place--a pretty nice place actually, with our own bathroom and television. After getting a cheap bite to eat we went back to the hotel and slept. It had been a tiring day.

I woke up early the next morning to try to see as much of Kosice as I could. It had a cute old center and a beautiful church in the center. It looked really different in the daylight--and we were in a completely different part of the town than the night before. Our pension ended up being located amidst the market, which were simple permanent wooden stalls. The old town was quite tidy and compact--easy to see everything within a twenty minute stroll.

After getting a really tasty breakfast--we headed back to the buses, taking off for Spissky Hrad, one of Slovakia's UNESCO sites--an old castle nestled in the mountains.
The town itself did not have a whole lot going for it, and again we ran into difficulty securing a room. Eventually we did and headed up a steep hill to the castle.

It was rainy on and off and cool--the perfect sort of weather to view a castle--but alas, we did not have the proper attire. And I thought that I'd die on the trek up. Arriving finally at the entrance I plopped down and waited for either imminent death or restoration of breath. The beauty of the surroundings overcame me and kept me going. The town itself sat below the castle in the valley, and everywhere else was rolling green hills and mountains. The castle had a small museum below which we checked out and lots of touristy things and a working potter. Despite how out of shape I realized I was--it was a perfect place.

We returned to the small village and took a walk to the monastery across town before deciding to find a restaurant, of which there was none. Not as in we were too snobby to eat at certain places, but literally there were none in the small town. They all had their doors padlocked. And we were starving.

We went back to our pension, which was hosting some sort of event and begged for food. The woman brought out two steaming plates of whatever they were feeding everyone else. It was some beef with beet sauce and bread. It was absolutely delicious. Mostly due to being famished.

Afterwards, we went back to our room and each got under our set of covers--it was cold and we were beat. We knew that we'd have to start our trek home the next day, sad to leave.

The next morning we got ourselves out of the pension and headed up to the small train station. On the way back into the city we passed mountainside after mountainside. Content with the trip, the company, and the scenery, I laid my head back against the seat and thought it all just perfect. It is my plan to come back after my service and explore the country a bit more.