2013-11-01: Day 2 - Slovakia weekend
Five weeks in an apartment bed no problem. One night in a plush hotel bed and soon as I get up my back complains. Marvellous.
On top of not arriving in town on Halloween you should also not have your exploring day be a bank holiday. I expected some places to be shut. I didn't expect almost everywhere to be shut. I had flashbacks to Kaunas and a similarly cold and grey time in a city that basically revolved around a single street. But I wasn't in Kaunas on a bank holiday.
There were a few things open, just enough to keep me in coffee and the discovery of Medovec cake (layered honey cake) alone was almost enough to justify the whole debacle.
This will sound dumb but there really isn't any other way to put it. In the middle of the main street is a large church, which was also open just enough to be able to have a little nose around. It's a very 3D building. Told you it would sound dumb.
there are words in Slovak which make the repeated utterance of something phonetically very similar to "fuck off" acceptable
Caught the train up to Štrbské Pleso which was a rambling climb of just over an hour. The most notable thing was that either there was the rudest bilingual child in the world behind me or there are words in Slovak which make the repeated utterance of something phonetically very similar to "fuck off" acceptable. The highlight was a sentence of "fuck fuck fuck oh my god oh my god oh my god off".
Found my hotel easily given that it was the largest building instantly visible from the train station. Hard to tell if it lived up to its name of Panorama given it was dark and I was only on the third floor and facing the car park... kind of made having a balcony pretty futile.
Really only time to hit the restaurant which I did for a very tidy starter of fried bread and a kind of mushroom, tomato, meat and sauce. Main was a steak. Really good piece of meat cooked adequately. The Ajvar sauce (Serbian in origin apparently) was splendid. Not as hot as I'd been lead to believe but very flavourful.
In the bar afterwards the most notable thing was a family of four with a dog. The dog was the largest of them and the family had no apparent genetic height impediment.
Big doggie.
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