Blogs from Slovakia, Europe - page 45

This trip was early in November. The Aberdeen guys went through Amsterdam then onto Vienna.They then had a short bus trip over the border to Slovakia where they hooked up with The Lithgae Lads who had taken the a flight from Edinburgh to Pargue where they stayed overnight. They then took the train into Bratislava the following morning. This was our first venture into Eastern Europe where we found it very hard to spend our money with beer being 40p a pint!!... read more

3/6/08 Ahoj kamaradkas! It has been a long time since I checked in with you all. This is partly due to an increased workload in my academic studies with CIEE and FAMU, although they are hardly rigorous in the traditional sense. This week I was required to attend an Open Mike Concert featuring my professor. It was a strange evening of performances by people who were once highly subversive in the Czech Underground scene of the Communist Era (ala Plastic People of the Universe, Egon Bondy, Vaclav Havel, etc) and can’t seem to get over being strange for strangeness’ sake. For instance, there was a woman in a silver alien body suit with silver wings, who attached herself to a rope and was flailing around, meanwhile another twirled strings with fire balls at the end of ... read more

My friend Milka was very kind in inviting me with her friends to a village in the Slovensky Kras national park for new years. It was a spectacular time with wonderful people! During New Year's Eve the wine, Hungarian cherry liquor, and champagne flowed merrily down the old gulliver. And even a village with maybe 100 people had fireworks!! The following day we got over our headaches and spent the afternoon in the hills. We brought a sled which was the key to our joy out there. We happened upon some dried, thick vines which we used in creative ways: limbo, tug of war and Tarzan activities. Then we carried a 10m strip of it up a hill which we used to collectively carry the lucky rider on the sled!! To je proste zabava, vis? ... read more

Just after Christmas I travelled to a village called Podmanina near Povazska Bystrica, which isn't far from Trencin or Zilina. Since the whole country has beautiful nature this place is no exception. The mountains might not reach as high as the Tatras there, but the rock formations and beech forests more than make up for it. Sadly, there was no snow so I couldn't try cross-country skiing. The best way to travel in this region is lightly- take a train and go to tourist info to find privats or pensions for as cheap as 10 or 20 euros. Local grandma's will provide the accomodation, and you'll also support the local economy. Thanks Dominika and her family for showing me around. I was at this stretch of my trip for about 3 days... read more

The Argentian born Sicilian sitting next to me just said something about that, so I thought that'd be a fun title for today. So I left off in Prague. The 2nd, we went to Prague Castle and wandered around, despite that fact that it was absolutely freezing. The first thing we saw was the Lobowitz musuem which is a musuem about the Lobowitz family. They were a family of princes in Prague for about 6 centuries and incredibly rich and powerful. Their musuem was interesting, just because they had Beethoven's original manuscripts for his 4th and 5th symphonies because one of the princes was Beethoven's patron. Other than that, it was basically just a family history musuem. The rest of the Prague Castle was an effort of the Czech to prove how old Prague is. We ... read more