Yet Another Trip to Slovakia, Part 6: Final Post of the Trip

Continued from Part 5:

 

Sadly, the trip has ended, and we actually arrived back in the States about four days before I was able to complete this final post. This was the longest period of time we've spent in Slovakia since living there from 2011 - 2014, and overall I'd say the extra time was worth it. However, while Simon generally had a wonderful time, there were certainly a number of occasions when we felt he really needed to get back to school and his normal day-to-day routine. We never really got any "alone" time, if that makes sense (not even a date night), and we certainly all got on each other's nerves now and then.

Sorry for recycling this picture; I thought it turned out nice.

Sitting around a fire in Terezia's mom's backyard, grilling špekačka (like a fat, short, pork-based hotdog).

We didn't do a whole lot during our last week or so in Slovakia, so there's not much to report. We spent a lot of time with family the last weekend, as Tony, his very pregnant wife Silvia, and their daughter Tea, came and stayed at Terezia's mom's house, and we had a sort of lunch/memorial/get-together in honor of Terezia's dad at a nice restaurant in Lučenec called Biela Labuť, since we were unable to be in Slovakia for his funeral in late December. Terezia's uncle and aunt came too, as well as their daughter L'udmila, her husband Chris, and their two daughters.

Some photo collages of Tono that Terezia and her mom put together for the memorial/lunch/get-together we had at Biela Labuť on our last weekend there.

It was, of course, nice to spend so much time in the beautiful Slovak countryside. I feel my photos often don't do it justice. Sometimes I'm really struck by the beauty of the landscape, especially when the sunlight reflecting on it is just right.

What a difference a month makes! Compare this shot of Terezia's mom's backyard and garden, taken in the end of April, with the photo below taken in late May.

Terezia's mom's backyard and garden at the end of May, one month later. The potatoes, in particular, have really taken off.

Simon did significantly better adjusting to the time difference and getting over the jet lag this time around. We only had one night (the second night) when he woke up at midnight and stayed awake until four in the morning. After that, he did great and slept through the night, every night. On prior trips, it would take three or four hellish nights for his internal clock to adjust. Now that we're back, we're obviously dealing with the jet lag again, and for us, the adjustment is always a million times harder after returning from Europe than when arriving there. On our first two nights back, Simon and Terezia crashed involuntarily around seven in the evening and woke up at two or three in the morning. The third night was a little better. It's going to be a rough week!

The grocery shopping chain Lidl has these small shopping carts for little kids. Simon doesn't understand why none of the other grocery stores have them.

When we left Terezia's mom's place in the taxi (to take us to the hotel next to the Budapest airport; we were flying out early the next morning), Simon cried hard for the first half hour of the drive. We kept warning him in the days leading up to our departure that we were leaving, but I don't think it really hit him until the moment the taxi pulled out of the driveway and started driving away (and, of course, this was right after Terezia and her mom sobbed uncontrollably while hugging goodbye). I haven't seen him cry that hard and for that long in a while, and he never did that when leaving on previous visits when he was younger. So, he's finally at an age where he truly understood where he was and appreciated it; it made a lasting impression that will probably remain etched in his memory. He really loved his time in Slovakia, especially with his grandma/starka, his cousins Sasha and Tea, and his uncle Tony, who is really good with kids. He loved doing "farm work" in Terezia's mom's yard, as well as having such a big yard to mess around in. I think he also really loved the attention and affection he got from Terezia's mom.

The long trans-Atlantic flight back home felt fairly grueling, particularly since Simon decided he was not interested in any of the activities we brought on the plane for him, like Star Wars coloring books, a mini Play-Doh set, etc., nor in the big selection of in-flight kids movies. Once we arrived, we got a Lyft driver to get us back home from the airport. During the ride, when sitting in San Francisco rush-hour traffic that was backed up like a Slovak klobasa in the colon, I was hit with feeling massively unexcited about returning to the Bay versus the rush I feel when being in Europe. I was happy to be getting back to the comfort of our home, but bummed out about being back in the Bay.

Overall, it was a good trip. Each trip with Simon gets a little easier as he gets older, obviously, but challenges still arise (he's only five, after all), and we both still deeply miss and yearn for the kind of trips we used to take before we had him. We're hoping in a few years Simon will be old enough to leave him with Terezia's mom, even for just three days/nights, so we can take a short trip to Prague or something. But, of course, the older he gets, the easier it will be to take him to different places. I just hope we don't have to wait another two and a half years before we can go back to Slovakia again. Assuming we don't have another global pandemic in the next year, that shouldn't be a problem.

Battle of the Cukráreň

Just across the side street from the Záhradná ice cream shop in Lučenec is a cukráreň, or patisserie, that is about as close to a literal hole in the wall as you can get. Simple, no-frills signage marks the entrance, located a dozen or so steps down the street from the main road. Once you enter the doorway that's low enough to warrant a strip of yellow and black striped hazard tape along the top of the door jamb, you immediately descend a couple of steps into a tiny space with standing room for about four people, bare white walls, harsh bright lighting, and three glass display cases with shelves loaded with pastries and some savory baked items. Middle-aged women who look like they've been up since before dawn emerge from a larger back room to help you.

The shop's extremely wordy name is Domáce kysnuté knedle, Škvarkové pagáče, a iné domáce pekárenské výrobky (in English: Homemade yeast dumplings, pork crackling biscuits, and other homemade baked goods), which reads more like a list of offerings than a short, snappy, memorable shop name. (It's also a slightly misleading name in that it refers more to the savory products they sell, even though those are significantly outnumbered by the sweet pastries they offer in their display cases.)

The hole-in-the-wall cukráreň in Lučenec.

We noticed this place when going to Záhradná, so we decided to check it out. We initially bought some pagáče (essentially like flaky American-style biscuits, often with pork cracklings sprinkled on top and/or woven into the dough), one of the savory items they sell, and they were quite good. We came back to buy some pastries, and these were mostly excellent.

I'm by no means an expert on Slovak pastries, but I've tried them a number of times over the years, and I can say that the pastries that this shop makes were really good, freshly baked, and flavorful. Many of these traditional Slovak pastries involve cream, some more than others, as well as layers of oozing custard, creamy textured chocolate, sweet pastes made from ground nuts, cake layers soaked in honey or coffee, and many other varieties.

Excellent pastries from the hole-in-the-wall cukráreň in Lučenec. We got this big box of 'em when Tony and his family came to stay at Terezia's mom's place for a weekend. I can't remember the names of most of these, but the three things on the left that look like glazed cream burgers are called veterník, and they're one of my favorites.

When Terezia was getting a facial from the woman in Lučenec (the one who believes Ukrainian refugees are getting preferential treatment), she mentioned this cukráreň to her to see if she knew about it. The woman said she did, but she claimed to know of an "even better" cukráreň called Maggie's Cakes, across town by the synagogue. So, Terezia and I dutifully checked it out.

Unlike the hole-in-the-wall quasi-basement space occupied by the first place, this other cukráreň inhabits a ground-level space in a small building (which it shares with one other business) with a hard-to-miss pink shopfront. The owner appears to have spent a lot of money and energy on the look of the place, with its pink color scheme, stylized lettering, and supposed-to-be-cute/whimsical illustrated branding of a young brunette with a pink bow holding a cake. The interior was similarly decked out in shades of pink, with random vintage knickknacks on display along the walls. It looks like the kind of independent cupcake shop or food truck that you'd see in the Bay Area that's run by some young, ambitious hipsters.

The hard-to-miss shopfront of the not-so-great cukráreň on the other side of town.

The selection, however, was severely limited, with only four different types of pastries available (compared to the dozen or more varieties available at the hole-in-the-wall place). What we bought tasted old, like they had been sitting around for a week or more. The dough part of the veterník was noticeably stale, like chomping down on cardboard, while the cream filling tasted like air. Terezia also picked a couple of classic liqueur-filled, phallus-shaped špic pastries, not because we like them, per se, but because their selection was so limited, there was nothing else to try. The look of sheer disgust on Simon's face when he bit into the špic and tasted the liqueur was priceless! When his taste buds registered the flavor, he immediately started flapping his arms around in panic, and I had to quickly grab some napkins that he could spit it out into.

Adding insult to injury, it was quite a bit more expensive than the hole in the wall. At the hole in the wall, on one occasion we bought about eight pastries, half a dozen pagáče, and half a dozen of these small garlic knot things, all for a total of 16 euros. At the pink place, we bought six pastries only, which tasted stale and old, and it cost 14 euros! 

Maybe we went to Maggie's on what happened to be a bad day, but all it takes is one bad day to make a paying customer not want to return. I mean, an establishment, especially one that serves food, really has one shot to make an impression on a customer, and if that first impression is bad, what can you do but opt to take your money elsewhere?

Needless to say, we went back to hole-in-the-wall place a few more times during our trip. What made me admire them even more was they admitted one item we wanted was a bit old, and they sold it at a discounted price. Maggie's sold us ancient pastries without uttering a single warning or apology. So, I'm glad we know of a good cukráreň.

Slovakia's Health System Absolutely Failed Terezia's Dad (but He Was Complicit, Too)

A few years ago on one of our previous trips to Slovakia, Terezia was up at some ungodly hour in the morning due to jet lag when she heard her dad in the kitchen having the nastiest coughing fit she'd ever heard. He was turning purple and struggling to breathe, as he was hacking and wheezing uncontrollably with his lungs emitting the death rattle of a lifelong smoker. Terezia got him to calm down a bit by making him some hot coffee, but he clearly needed medical attention, as he did not have a cold or anything. This was the result of smoking a pack a day for his entire adult life.

Diagnosed with obstructive pulmonary disease in 2019, he never really followed up on his condition, despite Terezia's mom trying and often failing to get him to go to the doctor. When he'd have these sorts of attacks and she did manage to get him to see the doctor, or in some cases even called emergency paramedics, each time he somehow managed to pull himself together just enough to appear healthy enough to essentially fool the doctors and paramedics into thinking he was okay. Terezia's mom, as a result, was sometimes accused of overreacting: "He just needs to get out and walk more," said one doctor, while a paramedic who came to their house on one occasion told her, "He's fine. Just go inside, put your feet up, and have a cup of coffee. You have nothing to worry about." Tono died about two weeks after that.

Such an attractive couple!

Doctors consistently blew off Terezia's mom's concerns. Of course, it didn't help at all when Tono would lie to the doctors and insist he was fine. But the doctors failed by merely taking Tono's word for it and not running further tests or doing any sort of follow-up with him. I mean, one did not have to spend more than a few minutes around Tono to see that he was not in good health. Doctors who were apparently too lazy to look into it further would dismiss Terezia's mom for "blowing things out or proportion." But then Terezia would get deeply upsetting reports about her dad from her weekly Skype chats with her mom, and each time we'd visit, Tono seemed to be getting worse.

It was recommended that Tono use inhalers that asthmatics (or borderline asthmatics like myself) use to open up their lungs and ease coughing fits, but he could not wrap his brain around how to use one. He kept just spraying it into his face. I even demonstrated how to use one a few times, and he still wasn't grasping it. There's an attachment you can buy for inhalers - usually for little kids - to make them easier to use, called a chamber. You stick the end of the inhaler into one end of it, and the other end is designed to fit snugly over your mouth and nose, and when you press the inhaler, the spray enters the chamber and you just inhale it through that. That way you don't have to worry about pressing down on the inhaler while taking a deep breath at the exact same second. Terezia was sending web links to her mom and her brother Tony so they could find a chamber, but I'm not sure if something was getting lost in translation or if they just couldn't locate one, but he never got an inhaler chamber, and so never used an inhaler. Why on earth a doctor couldn't have thought of this and helped them find one is mystifying. Again, no one seemed to be taking this seriously.

The drinking was also causing pretty significant problems with his brain. He had become pretty spacey and forgetful, prompting one specialist to speculate that he might have alcohol-induced dementia. But when trying to follow up on that, the chief neurologist in their area shot the idea down and then had the audacity to accuse Terezia's mom of gaslighting Tono by "filling his head with bullshit to make him think he's losing his mind." Yet again, here was a complete unwillingness to take the problem seriously, and it was apparently easier to be a misogynist pig and blame the wife.

Meanwhile, his drinking was also resulting in all sorts of frustrating and embarrassing problems which I won't get into here. And it got to where you could barely hold a conversation with him; he'd often mutter one-word responses, and interrupt you by asking for change for the pub.

Because of what a lifetime of drinking copious shots of hard liquor every day had apparently done to his brain cells, it's difficult to know if he was even cognizant of just how poor his health had become. Was he in denial about how bad he'd gotten, or was he even capable of realizing it in the first place?

Another issue Tono encountered, of course, was because of the Covid pandemic, hospitals were either filling up to capacity, or at risk of filling up, and that meant that hospitals and medical facilities often blew off anyone who didn't have severe Covid symptoms, which sometimes had tragic consequences. But, it must be said, if Tono himself had been honest about his ailments and proactive about following up, rather than using every inch of his strength to pretend that he was fine, he might have gotten more attention.

Either way, though I risk stating the obvious here, I feel it is incumbent upon medical professionals to be more proactive and take the kind of symptoms that Tono suffered seriously (and listen to spouses when they insist that something is wrong), because we feel that if someone actually had, Tono might have been around for a bit longer. 

Finally, I absolutely don't want this to be interpreted as a dismissal of Slovakia's entire health care system. When we lived there, most of our experiences with the health care system were positive or at least acceptable (though I certainly had a few negative and/or absurd experiences too), not to mention quite affordable. It's just that, for whatever reason, the doctors and medical professionals that Tono encountered in Lučenec mostly sucked.

Terezia HATES Slovak Drivers

Every time we're driving in Slovakia, we're instantly reminded of the difference between Slovak drivers and California drivers. Now, to be clear, California drivers have their own set of serious problems (mostly they are distracted and flaky [usually from messing with smartphones], they have a weird tendency to drive super slow in fast lanes and/or cut people off and then drive super slow in front of them, and speed up from behind on your left and (quite dangerously) cut you off when you're merging onto a freeway, etc.), so I don't want to pretend that we live in some paradise of perfect driving. But there's something noticeably distinctive about Slovak drivers, which really does make the experience of driving feel different in Slovakia.

The overarching problem is they tend to be extremely pushy, hyper-aggressive, and impatient. And Slovak drivers take the concept of driving directly on someone's ass - regardless of how fast you're going - to an entirely new level. I'm sure most Americans think everyone drives like this wherever it is that they live, but the aggressive and pushy driving truly is much more heightened compared to what we typically encounter in California.

A typical two-lane highway serving as a major artery in Slovakia.

Slovakia relies a lot on narrow two-lane highways and country roads for several of its major arteries, which means people will inevitably try to pass each other. This (over)reliance is due largely to the country's woefully still-incomplete system of multiple lane "freeways" to connect either end of the country (I'm revealing my California roots with the word "freeway"; the correct term is dual carriageway). So, you frequently end up in situations where you're stuck behind one or (likely) more slow-moving big-rig freight trucks, or sometimes even slower farm tractors, and the sections of road where it's safe and legal to pass are often maddeningly scarce and fleeting. As a result, passing is often necessary, but Slovaks take it to a new and sometimes dangerous level when they get impatient, which seems to be constantly.

For example, it's not uncommon to find yourself on a major two-lane highway stuck behind two or three slow-moving big rigs with half a dozen or so other cars in between (i.e., a veritable convoy of vehicles that would take forever to pass safely and legally in a leapfrog kind of way), and someone will be riding your rear bumper so closely that you can make out the color of their eyes in your rear-view mirror - as if you somehow could magically go faster or had somewhere you could go to let them by.

Another two-lane highway.

They may try to pass you - and however many other vehicles in front of you they can get away with - if they feel they have the opportunity, but there are times when an oncoming vehicle is suddenly approaching while someone is passing, and the person doing the passing suddenly has nowhere to go! In these instances, which we've witnessed several times, both the oncoming vehicle(s) and the cars or trucks in front of you that are being passed will all move as far to the right of the road as they can, creating a narrow corridor in the center of the road for the passer to drive through until he/she can shoehorn themselves back into their crowded lane. And no one is slowing down; this is often occurring at higher speeds. The first few times we saw this, I was certain I was about to witness a nasty and fatal head-on collision, but it was narrowly averted by this quick sort of dance.

But we see people passing when they shouldn't all the time, often at great risk to themselves and other drivers on the road, all just so they can get ahead of one car or truck, only to get stuck behind more slow-moving big rigs just up the road.

Naturally, you see a lot of makeshift crosses and shrines along the sides of Slovak highways, marking where people have died in car accidents, often from someone attempting to pass when they shouldn't have.

Slow trucks on a two-lane highway.

Another common phenomenon: When driving down any street and drivers are pulling up from a side street or parking lot to your right to turn onto your street, they always roll up super fast and then stop abruptly only after their front bumper is well into your lane in a way that honestly feels like they're not going to stop. You may think you see this in California or elsewhere in the States, but no - this is honestly different. It really feels like they're going to roll right out and cut you off or plow into you in a way I seldom actually encounter in California. They almost never do, of course; once you get attuned to the rhythm of Slovak driving, you realize they're usually not going to dangerously cut you off or plow into you. They're just aggressively and impatiently nudging themselves into the road as far and as fast as they can.

Slovak drivers do the same thing in roundabouts. Like other countries in Europe, Slovakia is filled with roundabouts, which are a safer and more efficient way to deal with intersections than four-way stops. When you're in a roundabout and you have the right of way, Slovak drivers approaching them on your right do so in a way that looks like they're going to barrel right into you - even big-rig trucks do this. They do ultimately stop, but if you show even the slightest hint of hesitation, some of them will just charge on through and cut you off, even if it means you have to slam on your brakes. Again, there's a certain rhythm to it that you have to get attuned to, but it can nevertheless feel unnerving.

Parking lots are another place where you can catch a glimpse into the dark soul of Slovak drivers. When you're crossing a parking lot to get to the store and you feel you have time to make it before the car approaching in the distance reaches you, it often feels like they're deliberately speeding up to nail you, as if they're playing some kind of game that involves driving over pedestrians for points. There's this very palpable feeling that they absolutely cannot wait that two extra seconds to get to the Tesco or wherever, and you are majorly inconveniencing them, so they're just going to mow you down.

Slovakia is a beautiful country.

In Senec, as we were following Tony to the Slnečné jazerá (lake), a woman made a left-hand turn into our lane directly in front of us, as if she didn't see us at all, very nearly plowing right into the front, driver-side fender of our rental car. Terezia reacted quickly and swerved around the right of the car, thereby passing her just as she realized what she'd done. But if it weren't for Terezia's lightning-fast reflexes, and the fact that we had space to the right of us to swerve around this woman, this could've been a nasty collision.

So, for these reasons, Terezia hates a large number of Slovak drivers, and I totally get where she's coming from.

Covid

A few weeks before we arrived in Slovakia in late April, the country abruptly ended all of its Covid-related mandates, such as wearing masks in all indoor public settings or places of work, and having to get weekly tests if you wanted to enter any indoor public spaces. They didn't ease the mandates, they just ended them abruptly and completely. I'm not sure if this was the wisest move, per se, as the country's vaccination rate stagnated at just over 50 percent (unfortunately, Slovakia experienced even more baseless and conspiracy-fueled vaccine resistance than the US). At any rate, by the time we showed up a few weeks later, people were going about their lives as if Covid had never happened. Pretty much NO ONE was wearing masks anywhere, save for the occasional elderly person in a grocery store or the odd foreign tourist entering an old church or something.

In the US, there have been three broad camps of attitudes towards masks during the pandemic: people who wear them seemingly everywhere all the time, even outdoors in situations where it's unnecessary (like walking down the street); people who refuse to wear them unless they're forced to; and people who fall somewhere in between, i.e., people who take it on a case by case basis and wear masks when entering a situation that's potentially higher risk, but not in places where the risk seems low. We fall into the latter camp of taking it on a case-by-case basis. Nearly every time we ate out on our trip, we sat outside, and on the few occasions when we ate indoors, either the place was nearly empty, and/or we weren't sitting in close proximity to anyone else, and/or we sat by open windows, all of which felt pretty low risk.

We tested for Covid a few times during the trip, including within 24 hours of our flight back to the US (as was required to enter the US at that time), and we kept testing negative, so either we were lucky or we were good at accurately assessing risk. Either way, I'm obviously relieved we didn't have to deal with Covid during or immediately after our trip.

Next Time

Hopefully, on our next trip, we'll be able to do more traveling or exploring. Tony mentioned the possibility of renting a big van and all of us going camping on the Croatian coast for a week. I'd also like to revisit Košice, as well as explore some of the High Tatras. You can take a gondola up to a platform at the top of the Lomnický štít peak, which is good way to experience the Tatras when you have little kids who aren't able to hike up it.    

At any rate, hopefully it won't be too long before we'll be back in Slovakia and I'll have more to write about here. To my dwindling audience, thank you for reading this blog and sticking with it! I'm sure some people thought (or wished) I'd have packed it in by now, but I'll continue to revive it when we travel in the future.

Click here to see all of the photos from this trip.