Advertisement
Published: September 5th 2010
Spis pleaser
The castle at Spis is the largest in Europe.Top Times
* Seeing some of Europe's best castles
* Getting the van exhaust fixed for next to nothing
* Glad to be in something more substantial than a tent during a ferocious storm
“A dainty of bungalow”. This was the helpful english-translated name of the dish Dave ordered off the menu (it ended up as chicken and sausage goulash). That sums up the only minor problem with travelling here for native English speakers; that the Slovak and Czech languages are almost the same (and close to Polish), but with the myriad of letter accents and unusual pronunciation, its difficult to communicate. Since German seemed well known and English less so, we generally resorted to communicate with a bit of Deutsch as best we could, and got by fine.
Campsites here by this time were getting wet and muddy, but we were in for a shock at our first stop Slovakia where an enormous storm occurred. Thunder was constant, as was the heavy rain and wind. Luckily we managed to get Trevor (the campervan) off the grass and onto the tarmac, but soon found we had to alter our plans as we rapidly became stranded due to
Slovak spitter
A bit of town square humour an encirclement of flooded roads. It worked out nicely though as we ended up in a little Penzion (hotel) and had great stay for only £30/$45. Prices in general were very pleasing here, especially in Slovakia. At one cafe we had two pints of beer and a massive pizza (as you do if you’re Dave) for just £5/$7… bargain!
What wasn’t so pleasing, and just a touch shocking to see in an EU country, were the shanty towns of the Romani people in East Slovakia. We accidentally passed a few while dodging showers on a cycle ride. It really reminded us of rural India, especially since this ethnic group originated from India a few centuries ago, and many still look Indian.
If we are honest, although the people in Slovakia were really nice, and the castles at Bojnice and Spis impressive, we were quite pleased to cross the border into Hungary and into some sunshine.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.29s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0631s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
