At this
moment I’m still recovering from last week in Poland. That country has really
impressed me with its beautiful cities and sculptures. A country I’ll never forget. But enough about
Poland, now it’s time for our next destination…. Slovakia.
For the
people who don’t know much about Slovakia, I’ll give some general information
about the country. The Slovak Republic is located in Central Europe with an
area of almost 50,000 square kilometres. Slovakia is a member state of the European
Union and joined the Eurozone in 2004. The Republic is bounded by Poland , the Czech
Republic, Austria, Hungary and Ukraine.After an 8 hour bus ride 2 days ago we arrived in Bratislava, capital of Slowakia. We didn’t have to put our clocks forward because there's no time difference between Poland and Slovakia which was handy.
During our bus travel we were reading books to learn the basic conversation words and phrases in Slovak language. In the big cities, such as Bratislava, the most people know the English language but in the smaller cities the most people speak only Slovak, a member of the Slavic language family, and use German or Russian as their second language. At this moment there is just one word I can remember: “Dakujem” which means “Thank you”.
While looking at the outside we were all very impressed by the beautiful landscape with its mountainous nature. We could see a part of the Carpathian Mountains, which is the second-longest mountain range in the Europe. At this moment it’s still winter so all mountains are covered in snow. We already have made plans to climb the High Tatras. I’m really looking forward to it !
On our way to the youth hostel we were driving through the slum in the East. We hadn’t expected this poverty so we asked the bus driver for an explanation. He said that there is under employment because of the bad railway-connection and the bad road facilities. This under employment is one of the biggest problems of Slowakia. Actually, it’s mainly a regional problem, because in contrast with the East, the unemployment rate in Bratislava is much lower.
We’ve got a very warm welcome when we finally arrived at our youth hostel. In the hostel we met another bunch of friends who were also travelling around the world. They were almost 5 days in Slowakia so they could gave us some tips and interesting information about the country. First of all they warned us of the large number of gypsies, because they are experts in stealing stuff. They mentioned that we may never take their pictures, because they’ll harass you until you give them money. Good to know !
They also gave us a list of places they had visited the last 5 days. They advised us to visit the city Košice, the economic and cultural centre of Slovakia. This city has a well preserved historical centre, with many protected buildings in Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Art Nouveau styles. They said it's very nice to walk through the little streets with its beautiful boutiques and charming cafés. They made us very curious so we decided to visit this city tomorrow. I hope it’s as nice as they said !
There is
still more to come with our busy schedule. I’m sure it will be fantastic !
Until next week with another story !
Until next week with another story !
Dobrý večer (which means “good evening”)
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