SeanTerrill.com » slovakia

Zakopane

webmaster — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:51:22 +0000

I left Poprad on schedule; I was actually too excited about the hike to sleep well. Poprad, incidentally, is as far east as I’ll ever get; it’s all homeward bound from here on out. Rysy, where I crossed the border, is so steep that the last 500 m took 45 minutes, much of it spent climbing on all fours (with no safety equipment, of course). The view from the top, though… for a few minutes I knew what it was to be a god. Aesthetic properties aside, it was so damned tough it almost killed me.

Anyway, I arrived at Morskie Oko, the Polish trailhead, at 7:30, exactly 12 hours after I started. A Polish guy I met up top, and who buddied up with me on the descent for safety, was nice enough to pay my share of the (horse-drawn) cab, and I got to Zakopane at about 10:30. Due to a misleading map on the hostel’s website, however, it took three hours and all of my remaining cell phone credit to actually get a to a shower, and bed.

After a good night’s sleep, my bad left knee (old news) and right ankle (a recent development) have stiffened to the point that walking is both painful and funny-looking. Good thing I’m out of money, or I’d be pissed about not being able to do anything. Oh, and my favorite hat blew off my head and landed in either Slovakia or Poland, so all in all not a high point on the emotional roller-coaster that is backpacking.

I'm headed for the one on the right. With the snowcap.

The Aussie who gave me that stick probably doesn't know he saved my life.

This seems like a nice vacation spot, but it was deserted.

About here I figured out my trail map wasn't to scale.

Pretty neat trail overall

I think some of these people were using it as an illegal immigration route.

First view of the true summit

I really loved that hat.

Not something you see every day

Poprad

webmaster — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 02:51:15 +0000

One strange thing about Europe in general: sales tax, which is very high by US standards (in the 15% range), is included in all prices. This is a fantastic idea from a practical standpoint, although I can’t quite square it with the informed-citizen, government-oversight thing. Bottle deposits, though, which are also high (10-20 cents), are not. In the Czech Republic, and now Slovakia, the result is that the price of beer can be as much as 50% more than what’s on the sticker. If you’re doing the math and wondering if I made a mistake, don’t; a pint bottle of cheap beer is indeed about 30 cents. Obviously, I’m just back from the grocery store, having laid in provisions for tomorrow’s hike: bananas; potato chips; pears; Snickers; and 2 L of Coca-Cola. The hypothesis being that an abundance of caffeine and simple sugars can’t be a bad thing when you’re engaged in what I’m conservatively estimating will be 12 hours of exercise.

Tonight I’m staying in this hot-sheets hotel in Poprad. The only things it has going for it are that a room is $20, and it’s directly across the street from the train station. Handy for when you have a 6:18 AM train.

Incomparable luxury

Budapest

webmaster — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:33:54 +0000

My Eastern European blitzkrieg has bogged down, as is typically the case. I spent the last two days in Budapest, having decided that Ljubljana in just too far out of the way (9 hours, and no night train). So the plan for now is to hike over the Slovak-Polish border at 2500 m, and then relax in Krakow for a few days before heading home on what will no doubt be a hellish six-day gauntlet of international trains, intercontinental flights, and interstate driving.

Actually, I’m crossing out of Hungary right about now. I speak absolutely no Magyar, which is what Hungarian is called by people who aren’t ignorant Americans, but the procedure is the same everywhere: the one with the gun wants your passport, the other one, your ticket. In most of Western Europe (the Shengen countries) border crossings are seamless, and the gun-toting passport-checker doesn’t even board the train, but I’ve crossed the Iron Curtain several times now, and by local standards it’s almost hassle-free.

All told, then, I will have been in 14 countries (12 of them for the first time) in 53 days, about which I can’t help feeling a little proud.

Grazer Schloßberg

Graz and the Kunsthaus

ATOs are EVERYWHERE.

Serving absinthe the badass way.

Nicest. Hostel. Ever.

Crappy weather in Budapest

Bratislava is known for wacky sculptures...

... this being the most famous.

'UFO bridge' and Soviet-era tenements