Slovakia- "We survived Bratislava"

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Long time no blog, we know... But here is an account of our adventures in wonderful Slovakia.

We got a train from Krakow to Zakopane, in the hope of only having to wait a short time before the bus to Zdiar, a little village in the middle of the High Tatras mountains. Unfortunately the bus was delayed by about 5 hours, so we ate all our snacks we bought the day before, waffles with cream that pitifully defeated us both, and then pizza (yes it was a logical order), and then felt soooo very ill. We were beginning to imagine hostel hunting in Zakopane, the weirdest little Polish town when, to our immense relief, the bus arrived.

At the hostel we met Wally, the dog, Kevin the cat, and Michael and Jackson the chickens. It was the most beautiful log cabin with a view over the mountains, we couldn't believe our luck! It was so homey, that evening we snuggled with our hot chocolates and watched Angry Boys. The next day we got up early to go for a walk, despite sniggers at our inappropriate footwear. We refused to be deterred by the keen hikers and survived a gentle walk along the river and in between two mountains, we didn't even get rained on. There was a traditional Slovakian festival happening whilst we were there so we saw all the locals dressed in their folk outfits, with horses and carts, which was an unexpected treat.

In the afternoon we did sweet f.a and it was wonderful. We sat out in the sun on the decking and were entertained by the hostel manager Dan's beautiful guitar playing. We were also entertained by a hilarious Dutchman; he got very excited about making a film "I'm making a mooovie!!!!!", and kept saying that the house was like Pippy Longstocking's. I think the mountain air went to his head!

That evening, we had a few beers, which somehow turned into a lot more, and a very intense game of Pass the Pigs. We played in teams, and our team-mate got so angry at Jenna when she threw them off the table: "ITS LIKE THROWING A SAUSAGE DOWN A RUN-WAY! HOW DID YOU MISS!!!!!"....

The next day we had a really chilled out journey to Bratislava, and were so pleased with ourselves on the way to the hostel. We tempted fate, we had booked the wrong day, and the hostel was full for the night. Luckily it wasn't too much hassle to find another hostel, but it was a bit shit. Especially as we had ShitBrit No.what feels like 100. He told us he terrible travel scehdule- one night in every city. So basically his holiday was training it round Europe seeing nothing. Greeeeeat! He then hung around like a bad smell, so escaped at the first oppurtunity and went to the Slovac Pub. Once there we drank beer and shit wine in a date like scenario, and out-stayed our welcome like we did in the coffee shops of Hungary- we just chat shit until someone throws us out!

The next day we went to a different hostel, and were given welcome shots at 1pm. We then walked around the old town in a slight haze, had the best ice creams and then planned to go to Devin castle by bus. We waited at the stop for over half an hour, the bus turned up, we got on and asked the driver if we could have a ticket. He pointed to the machine outside by the bus stop which we hadn't seen in the last half an hour, closed the doors behind us, and drove away.... We somehow managed to convince ourselves we didn't want to go there, and went to the little city castle instead. We got so into it, we even went to an archaeological exhibition, which was pretty dull!

We decided to have an evening in at hostel Possonium, which was named after the hostel in the film Hostel. There was a basement bar decorated in the Hostel theme: there was a bath full of blood as a table, posters of the film everywhere, a stuffed manikin in a cage, and door with 'torture chamber' scrawled onto it, and a shackled head. They even sold t-shirts which said "I survived Bratislava- Hostel Possonium". We met a group of singing Frenchmen, that did a lovely rendition of Jessie J, and enjoyed singing one word in harmony- such as "nipples". Four boys, singing barbershop harmonies to the word nipple, said with a french accent- hilarious, and slightly strange! We then played a ridiculous game of 21s- the highlight of which was number 19, where we all sang 'if you're happy and you know it'. One of the boys, a fitness coach, then told Jenna that she needed to tone up her arse, so we all went to bed!

And on that note, we leave you. Blog on Croatia to follow, and a list of lessons learnt over the last 4 weeks. Over and out

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