Today we packed up, got some cold cuts, cheese and bread from Billa Supermarket and took a trolley to the station. But OF COURSE with our luck in matters of public transportation, the train is late by 90 minutes (even though the next train is 83 minutes after this one but that one is late too) and changed platforms. Changing platforms is not all that bad IF you know they changed the platforms. We got there just in time to catch the train to the capital of Slovakia. Bratislava Now I'm in the hotel writing up all the entries for the [View Full Entry]

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Islovakia [View Full Entry]

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Bratislava feels like a Sunday everyday: not because its relaxing and you don't have to work, because let's face it when you've been travelling for as long as we have everyday is a weekend. No, nothing is ever open!!! We arrived in Bratislava two years too late to get the really cheap eastern europe prices. But still the old city was pretty and there was a fair bit of sightseeing to be done. We arrived in the afternoon from Budapest not having too much hope for our hostel as nothing was available on Friday night due to the Euro 2008 cup [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Bratislava late enough from Vienna. The train station was a lot smaller then the others we had been to. The only perceptions I had of the place, were the ever so dark and gloomy ones, I got from watching the film "Hostel"! In the film the director Tarrentino perceives the place to be a dangerous city in which the locals kill off any tourists one by one. Within a few hours though of being here we realised the city was far from anything like this. We stayed in the "Patio Hostel", fairly central and even though it was [View Full Entry]

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Today I had one of the more interesting experiences I have ever had. Syvlia's aunt is a teacher at a special school in Slovakia. While these schools were originally intended for students with learning difficulties, they quickly became schools in which Roma (gypsy) children were placed. The principal of the school agreed earlier this spring to give me a tour and talk to me about the school when I came this summer. We toured through the school which has an enrollment of 400 students. Of those 400, 389 are gypsies. Many of the children live in horrible conditions and attend the [View Full Entry]

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Today Sylvia, her brother, his girlfriend, and I traveled to the village of Bojnice to see Bojnice castle. It is the most popular museum/castle in Slovakia and has been shown in several movies. The castle was constructed starting in 1113 and was continually modified through the 17th century. It was owned by King Matthius of Hungary who enjoyed the location and spent a large amount of time there. The last royal owners were the Palffy family, who after several centuries, sold the castle to Jan Bata, who had this property confiscated by the communists. After seeing the castle, we went next [View Full Entry]

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Sylvia's cousin Marian invited us to come with he and his girlfriend to an outdoor Punk Rock concert happening in Roznava, a few blocks away from where Sylvia lives. It was held near the new pool in town and although it was raining, quite a few people showed up. The types of people were exactly what you might expect from a punk concert (not that Ive been to many), so it made for an interesting time. The first group was a Hungarian group called Romeo Verzik that played way too long. The main act was a famous Slovak punk/heavy metal group [View Full Entry]

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Today Sylvia and I drove to the village of Stitnik to see one of the oldest remaining churches in the region. The church was built starting in the 1300's and unlike many others from the same period, the inside of the church has been largely untouched, including many of the original wall paintings, which date to the 1300s and were copied after Italian works. The church also houses the oldest remaining pipe organ in Slovakia, which is from the period and amazingly, still works. Each prominent family in the town had private boxes for services, and a place was saved high [View Full Entry]

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Sylvia's dad drove Joyce, Sylvia, and I to Bratislava for the day while he was in meetings. We spent the day walking around the Old Town. We started at the President's palace and took a bus up to the hill where the castle is located. Unfortunately it is being remodeled (it was burned in the 1800s and has never been fully restored). We walked down from the castle to the original part of Bratislava and saw the original square. The highlight of the day was St. Martin's Cathedral, which was the location of many famous Hungarian coronations, including Maximillian II and [View Full Entry]

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Today we spent the day in the villages of Janik and Moldava. Sylvia's mother's family lives in these two towns. We ate lunch in Janik with her Aunt's family and one of her favorite cousins, Ka. For lunch was my favorite soup, liver dumplings. This area of Slovakia is very near the Hungarian border so most towns are heavily mixed between Slovaks and Hungarians. Most village signs are bi-lingual and most people speak both languages although they are quite unrelated. [View Full Entry]

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