Slovakia how misunderstood you are

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Today I left Prague and it was not good, I started riding and the bike felt like it was underpowered. I don’t know what was wrong with it but all I could think was oh crap I hope it doesn’t break down. But I inspected it and it seemed good so I carried on and it was all good. I rode to Nové Zámky, Slovakia; it was about a 6 hour ride so I just chilled out on the motorway. Shortly after I crossed into Slovakia I decided to take the side roads and that was a good idea it was nice weather and the road I took had a lot of trees that were bloomed and it was really nice riding. I didn’t know much about Slovakia besides it was in Eastern Europe and all I heard about that was it was poor and bad. Like in Eurotrip when they get off that truck and the guy tells them they are in Bratislava and it is like the slums. So I was definitely worried but I had a friend that lived there and she wouldn’t let me come by if it wasn’t cool so I was like let the adventure begin. The countryside was nice sorta flat with rolling hills and lots of farmland. There was although one town I passed through and it had me worried and I was like if I break down here I am gonna die. But I was good and carried on until finally I got to Nové Zámky and found my friend’s house.

Naturally I forgot the house number for where I was going so I passed by and had to turn around, and when I was coming back she had the family out there to flag me down, guess the pipes on the Harley are a bit loud. That night we walked around the town and they showed me that there used to be a castle wall thing around the city and the roundabout in the town is where the walls were for this. And there is still a little bit of a tower remaining although it is a bit overgrown by plants, still cool to such a small town with such cool history. We had a beer at a local bar and I learned that Budweiser is not American and it comes from this country. So naturally I had to try this because American Budweiser is on the top of my list for crappy beers and they said this was good stuff and it was I was totally surprised. They also have this drink called Kofola and basically it is the rival of coke and Pepsi in CZ and SK. It apparently was a huge success when it was originally made because it was much cheaper than coke or Pepsi and its good so that is a huge point to be made. It is a little more syrupy than normal soda but the flavor is defiantly good. That night they made some dumplings for dinner and it was so good, and me being the food critic I am didn’t even think twice about eating a bunch of them because they were so yummy.

The next day we took a road trip to the border of Hungary and Slovakia to see the Danube River and all the cool stuff surrounding it. The river was quite wide and it looked like it had a pretty good current to it. But as I mentioned while there that in the states if there was a river like this people would be boating and swimming in it regardless of the current it had. Anywho it only had some shipping barges and other random boats traveling through it. On the Hungary side of the river we walked up to an old church that looked pretty big and cool from the other side of the river but once there I was amazed at how big and awesome it was. We went inside and checked it out and there was some immaculate paintings on the walls and the ceilings and a totally bad ass pipe organ too. I always wonder how and how long they did all those paintings and tile work back in the days this place was built. We just stood there for a while and took it all in I mean the whole place was made of marble it was sweet. We eventually left and headed back to Nové Zámky where we grabbed a pizza for dinner and then I helped them remove a deck that is getting taken apart. I had to help out what is more fun than destruction of stuff? But it was slow going till I got a method that seemed to work pretty good then it was less slow going. Good times though.

I was going to go to Bratislava that next day but my bike was acting strange on my trip from Prague and I didn’t know if it would be a good idea to be going too hard on it by going there so I decided to just stay back and help out with the deck some more and we made some pretty good progress on it that day. I figured that I can stop in Bratislava on my way past when I headed to Austria. And I really didn’t want to push the bike too much because I have bad luck and it would be super expensive and difficult if something internal was to go out. Besides now I have an excuse to go back to Hungary and Slovakia, gotta see Budapest and Bratislava. But as of this writing in August my bike is still running fine but has a strange tick that I am trying to diagnose. Anyway so we worked on the deck for a good chunk of time and then we all took a drive out to a river and an actual beach with real sand. Naturally I forget what river it was. But it was cold and apparently the water level goes way down later on and you can walk way out into the river, it seemed odd because it was pretty wide and looked deep but there are some sand barges out there that keep it shallow’ish. So that night I was asked to make dinner and since I am a cook it is only natural that I cook at least once for these nice people for letting me stay in their home. So I thought about it for a bit and was trying to think of an American dish, but America doesn’t have a specific dish that we call ours since there are so many different cultures and foods that make up the country. That being the case I love Asian food so I made some Thai chicken curry and finding curry powder was a bit of a task but we eventually managed to find something that worked and it was good.

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Photos

Sweet forest
I was just riding along and the forest was calling out take a picture

Danube River
This was taken on the SK side of the river looking at the church on the hill

Outside the church made a pretty sweet photo op

Freaking sweet! How did they make it so awesome?

Seriously the entire ceiling? amazing

Border Crossing
I mean really who wouldn't wanna take a picture at the border crossing to Slovakia.

That sandy river
This place was pretty cool it was like a park/rec area.