Apologies for being so late with this final post on our 2024 trip. We've been back in the US for a couple of weeks now, as I post this, and due to dealing with the jet lag and getting thrown right back into the grind of work and life more generally, it took me much longer than I planned to get this out.
After returning from Croatia, with just slightly more than a week of our trip left, we set about doing some things we'd talked about doing for a while, but hadn't gotten around to.
Swimming at Dolná Strehová
First, on Simon's insistence, we had to return to the big Hotel Aquatermal pool complex at Dolná Strehová, about a half hour drive south of Podrečany, that Simon loved so much the previous year. On our first visit, Simon loved the two smaller water slides, but was afraid to try out the bigger ones. This year, he was ready to move up and tackle all of them but the biggest/highest one, and he spent nearly the entire time going down them, so I'd say we probably got our money's worth.
I got into a bit of trouble for going into the heated/thermal pool wearing a swimming shirt. A bit of context: I am as pale and pasty as mayonnaise, I burn very easily and badly when in the sun too long, and when I get a bad sunburn, it comes with this horrifyingly awful and persistent itch that lasts until the burn starts peeling (it's a somewhat uncommon condition known as "hell's itch," and is a result of damage to nerve endings after a serious sunburn—look it up). If I'm swimming, I have to keep reapplying sunscreen every 15 minutes, or else I will fry—even with 50 SPF and "water resistant" sunscreen.
Last year, sitting in this exact same thermal pool, I went too long without reapplying, and I got a nasty sunburn on my shoulders and upper chest. It burned and itched so badly that I had to buy this special cream which kind of eased the itching until the peeling started. Determined never to let this happen again, I got a snug-fitting light-grey short-sleeved swimming shirt, made from stretchy nylon/spandex material that swimming attire is often made from.
Anyhow, I was relaxing in the hot thermal pool, minding my own business, sitting on the bench along the edge with the powerful jets pulverizing my lower back, when a young life guard came up to me and said that I'm not allowed to wear a shirt in the thermal pool. Initially assuming it was obvious to anyone with functioning eyes that I was wearing a swimming shirt and not some ratty old t-shirt, I first gave the guy a bit of a smart-ass response, saying, "This really isn't much different from any of the tankini tops and one-piece swimsuit tops many of the women in here are wearing—this just has short sleeves instead of shoulder straps. Why aren't you asking them to remove their tops, too?" The guy stammered a bit, and his facial expression looked like he had no idea how to respond to this, so I quickly added, "This is a swimming shirt. See? It's designed to wear when swimming. If I don't wear it, I will sunburn very badly." He then said, "If it's a swimming shirt, then it is okay," and walked away.
Of course, I was literally the only male in the entire facility wearing a shirt (Slovak men of all ages take their shirts off in public in hot weather every chance they get, totally irrespective of their physique), and I may very well been the first male to ever don a shirt in this joint, but—call me crazy—I really hate getting sunburned, and I'd rather enjoy my time there without having to worry about reapplying sunscreen every 15 minutes.
For what it's worth, I've seen many Slovak men over the years, even at this very pool, parading around shirtless in hot weather with lobster-red sunburns, looking totally unconcerned about it. Come to think of it, pretty much every male at the campground's beaches and pools in Croatia was shirtless as well, a few of them with horrifying sunburns. So, it seems that those European men who are pasty like me and more prone to sunburning take a more tough-it-out approach to it, which is incomprehensible given the resulting pain and eventual skin cancer risk.
Short Trip to Košice and Levoča
Tuesday we decided to take a road/day trip to Košice, which is something we'd talked about doing for a long time. Terezia and I hadn't been to Košice since 2013, and I had been there one other time that same year on a special overnight trip with my then employer, the Slovak Spectator.
Košice, in the eastern part of the country, is Slovakia's second largest city, with a population of only 230,000, less than half of Bratislava's population of roughly 475,000. As I've mentioned in the past, it's a big
university town and home to the massive US Steel factory
(which employs thousands), and reportedly a burgeoning IT industry, so even though
it routinely gets overshadowed by Bratislava, it's not some
isolated Deliverance-style backwater, as I wrote back in 2013. I feel like more tourists would visit it if it wasn't so far off the beaten path.
The first written mention of Košice was in 1230, when it was a Hungarian royal town. The city's ornate and unique Gothic St. Elizabeth cathedral is a reflection of the wealth the town had amassed back in the medieval period when it sat along a major trade route between Hungary and Poland. The city was also reportedly the first in the Kingdom of Hungary to have artisan and merchant guilds, so it was a booming place back then.
Perhaps somewhat irrationally, both of us really quite like Košice. Apart from having a beautiful and well-preserved historical center, it has a bustling pulse with locals—not just tourists—out in large numbers, strolling (and cycling) up and down the length of the gorgeous and atmospheric lenticular main square. This is a marked contrast from Bratislava, where sometimes it feels like it's only tourists wandering around the pedestrianized historic center. And Košice's historic center definitely rivals Bratislava's in terms of looks and atmosphere.
The Gothic St. Elizabeth cathedral at the center of this square is perhaps the most Gothic-looking (in a French/German/English Gothic style) cathedral or structure in all of Slovakia, and easily the most beautiful cathedral/church in the entire country. It is actually said to be the easternmost Gothic cathedral in Europe (east of it, it's apparently pretty much all Baroque or Eastern Orthodox styles). There's really nothing else quite like it in Slovakia.
The cathedral was built in the mid-1200s on the site of an older Romanesque church that dated from the mid-11th century, and had to be rebuilt after a fire damaged it in 1380, with many subsequent additions, repairs, and remodelings occurring up into the 1900s.
Sadly, we couldn't convince Simon to ascend the cathedral's clock
tower, which is a shame, since the views from there over the city are
spectacular. We did go inside the cathedral, however, and it still looks
like it's had a recent scrub down, which was the case back in 2013.
The town's opulent National Theater, which faces the north side of the cathedral and sits opposite the "singing fountain" (a large fountain with hundreds of thin streams of water that shoot up in a kind
of rhythmic undulation set to inoffensive elevator-music versions of top-40 radio hits) is also quite striking, as are the colorful and ornate old facades that line the square and adjacent side streets. Košice's attractive historical center is super inviting, and I could spend all day there with a cappuccino or, later in the afternoon, a beer, just taking it all in. In fact, the main drag is lined with cafes and pubs with inviting outdoor seating.
We had lunch at a place with outdoor seating on the main square, with the best dish being a delicious, tender pork shoulder that was a cut above the usual Slovak lunch menu fare. We had ice cream at Arthur Gelato, which had a long line and high prices, but was worth the wait. Simon got chocolate ice cream all down the front of his shirt, which is nothing new, but he got such a big brown stain that he was, for the very first time, actually embarrassed about it, so we ducked into a nearby souvenir shop and found a blue Slovensko t-shirt that fit Simon perfectly.
I managed to trick Simon into going down my favorite narrow, curving side street with the "old" synagogue. I got to see the synagogue's beautiful Moor-ish interior on the trip I took to Košice back in 2013 with the Slovak Spectator, who had arranged for us to go inside (you have to make arrangements in advance). The synagogue is no longer used for that purpose (only the "new" synagogue remains as an actual synagogue; another synagogue in the town center is now a concert hall), but it does occasionally host art exhibits and other functions.
We had honestly missed Košice, and it was nice to go back and revisit it, if only for an afternoon. I wish it wasn't so far from the parts of Slovakia that we normally spend time in, because I'd want to go there much more often.
On to Levoča
We decided to do this Košice trip very last minute—literally the day before—but that meant we couldn't find a room for the three of us in downtown Košice, as everything was booked. So, we found a room in Levoča instead, the lovely medieval town about an hour west of Košice, which I've written about here. We booked our room at the Hotel Arkada, which is right on the town's main square, and the room was one of the nicest we've ever stayed in.
There's an advantage of staying in one of the country's most beautiful and well-preserved historic towns when that town is a little too off the beaten path to attract large numbers of tourists (and already in a country that's not drawing droves of travelers). You have local businesses that are trying hard to lure (and keep) tourists, and even Rick Steves wrote about the town in his Eastern Europe guide, but there is just never going to be that many people flocking here, especially for anything more than a day trip. So you get these incredibly nice hotels in 500-year-old buildings where three of you can stay and have breakfast the next morning for 124 euros per night (with breakfast; would've been 91 euros without).
When driving to Levoča, we opted to take the scenic route, which leads you through steep and winding mountain roads and lush, beautiful forests, eventually coming out in Kromprachy and the Spiš plain, where you drive past the spectacular Spiš Castle ruin, but also some Roma settlements which look like scenes straight out of deeply impoverished developing countries in the global south.
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| The spectacular Spiš Castle from a distance. |
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| Spiš Castle. |
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| The cathedral at the Spiš monastery, just on the other side of the small town of Spišské Podhradie from Spiš Castle. |
The Richnava Roma settlement is nestled in a steep ravine, filled with a dense tangle of shack-like dwellings with patchwork roofs made from scraps of corrugated metal, wood, and plastic tarps. A labyrinthine network of dirt paths runs through the settlement, connecting the homes. A massive cascade of garbage flows down one side of the settlement, as it seems the local municipality won't pick up their trash. The inhabitants' homes there have electricity, but no running water or indoor plumbing of any kind. Their sole water source is from two outdoor wells. When you see these ramshackle dwellings and clusters of kids running around who look like they haven't bathed in weeks, it's really shocking and sad, especially when you remember you're in an EU country.
I've been wanting to do a post on Roma in Slovakia for years, but I just haven't had the time to do all the research necessary to do justice to this complex and controversial topic. For some context and a great, accessible primer, I strongly recommend that you read this two-part graphic novel-style history of Roma in Slovakia by the talented Marek Bennett: Notes on Roma History in Slovakia, Part 1 and Part 2. (Bennett has written an entire graphic novel on his experience in Slovakia, which you can find here.)
Levoča occupied a key position along important trade routes in the Middle Ages. The town had strong German roots: after 13th-century Tartar and Mongol invasions blew out a big chunk of the population in the region, Hungarians invited German-Saxon settlers to repopulate towns like Levoča, and the region became prosperous from mining. By the 1400–1500s, commerce was booming. However, in the late 1800s, when the first railway line was being built through the region, Levoča had to compete with nearby Spišská Nová Ves for a station on the line. The latter won, which meant that the railway completely bypassed Levoča. As a result, Levoča's economic importance diminished and the town became a forgotten backwater in the 20th century. But this also meant that modern development within the town was minimal, and it retained a great deal more of its historical fabric (much like Banská Štiavnica), making it a uniquely well-preserved destination in Slovakia today.
One of Levoča's biggest tourist draws is the 60-foot-tall Gothic wooden main altar in the town's main St. James church—said to be the tallest Gothic wooden altar in Europe—carved by Master Pavol, Slovakia's Michelangelo of Gothic wooden altars. Chartered busses deposit groups of tourists by the buttload in Levoča's main square to see Pavol's work. Unfortunately, the church's absurdly rigid hours and rules for visiting (which I wrote about in my last Levoča post) are still in effect, so we weren't able to just hop inside and check it out.
We piddled around the gorgeous main square, then had dinner at the hotel's restaurant in their outdoor seating out front.
One of Levoča's draws is that the medieval defensive wall that encircles the whole town is still largely intact and is one of the best preserved in the country. The walls are said to date from the latter half of the 13th century, built after the region was ravaged by Tartar and Mongol invasions, though they were repaired, reinforced, and reconstructed many times over throughout the ensuing centuries.
I'm not sure why, but I was fascinated by this German motorcycle couple that arrived at the hotel shortly after us—the only other guests we saw there, apart from a couple of German guys in hiking gear, and a group of two elderly and grumpy-looking German couples. We noticed the biker couple checking in shortly after we arrived, clad in matching head-to-toe black leather motorcycle gear. They appeared to be on a motorcycle road trip through Slovakia. The couple consisted of a man, likely in his mid or late 50s, who looked like how Judas Priest singer Rob Halford looks today, i.e., shaved head, long grey beard, and his ears loaded up with small hoop earrings. His wife/girlfriend/significant other looked about 15 years younger and had short, bleached hair.
We saw them later at the hotel's restaurant, when we both showed up there at the same time, with the guy having changed into a Hawaiian shirt with form-fitting slacks and pointy leather shoes, and the woman into a t-shirt and jeans. The next morning, we saw them again when they, yet again, turned up at the same time as us for the hotel's breakfast. Maybe I was fascinated by them because they were a bit of a colorful departure from the usual fanny pack-, khaki-pants with zip-off legs-, and sunhat-wearing older folks who are usually bussed into towns like this.
Dinner was solidly mediocre. I ordered the "grilled trout," which turned out to be oven baked. I waited 40 minutes for it—we were making obvious jokes about how someone must've had to go and catch it first—and Terezia and Simon were practically done with their food by the time it arrived. It was fine, and a lighter alternative to all the usual meat-and-potatoes fare, but Simon was endlessly fascinated by the still-intact fish head, which he kept playing with by moving its jaw up and down.
Levoča is a pretty quiet town, but it was nice to see locals congregating in the outdoor seating of a couple of pubs on the main square that evening, injecting a bit of life and color into the scene. Were it not for those locals, you'd have had only a handful of tourists, and it would've felt like a ghost town. However, I was alarmed by one young couple with their toddler that we saw heading to the square that evening, with the father covered in tattoos of esoteric neo-Nazi symbols and a shaved head. I wouldn't say you see people like that all the time in Slovakia, but you do encounter them now and then (unfortunately, Slovakia does have its contingent of fascist neo-Nazis), which is nevertheless way more than you would see them in the Bay Area.
In any case, Levoča is emphatically not some burgeoning foodie destination with a colorful wine bar scene and vibrant nightlife. It's a beautiful but sleepy old town that will probably never gain much of a pulse.
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| Simon in front of the town's cage of shame. |
We piddled around in the morning after breakfast before checking out. The hotel restaurant's coffee was outstanding and strong (Lavazza beans in an espresso machine), which is unusual in Slovakia, where, in our experience, most people and establishments seem to prefer this weak, kind of sweet-tasting Nescafe or Nespresso stuff. The woman working the hotel restaurant that morning had to keep tending to the espresso machine's various and frequent demands, but for us it was worth her effort. The off-brand Cheerios were inedibly stale, but the jam-filled pastries were delicious and fresh as can be.
The hotel room's shower was a joke. (See my post about the abundance of strange, inadequate shower situations in Slovakia.) The bathroom was quite nice—large, modern, and spotless—and the bath/shower should've been a home run, but all they had to keep the water from spraying out all over the room was a single rectangular sheet of glass placed directly across from where the shower head was mounted on the wall. If you put the handheld shower head in its holder on the wall and tried to take a shower that way, that single pane of glass did very little to prevent water from spraying all over the room.
As I detailed in my old shower post from 2013, many Slovaks don't take showers standing up; rather, they're happy to crouch down in the tub and hold a handheld shower head in one hand while somehow managing to wash themselves with their lone other hand (which to me is a juggling act I've never been able to master), as their tubs often lack shower curtains or glass doors.
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| View from one of the hotel room's windows. |
We drove back home via a series of circuitous winding roads through forests and mountains that lead mostly south/southwest down to Podrečany. We went through the small towns of Vernár, Telgárt, Muráň, Muránska Huta, Tisovec, Hnúšťa, and Hrachovo. It's a genuinely beautiful drive with these quaint, weathered, run-down yet still weirdly attractive middle-of-nowhere towns and villages nestled in the hills and ravines. Some of these towns feel so remote that I struggle to understand what people are doing there or what the life is like.
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| Spišský Štvrtok |
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| Vernár |
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| Chmaroška Viaduct |
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| Muráň |
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| Tisovec |
Final Thoughts
This was a good trip overall, though it started off feeling a bit blah and slightly less than inspiring, in part due to all the rain we got in those first few weeks, and the fact that I had to work remotely then as well. This trip didn't feel as hot weather-wise as the 2023 trip, at least initially, probably because we arrived in Slovakia a couple weeks earlier this time. But temperatures were definitely heating up, especially the last couple weeks of this trip, when that horrifyingly hot and humid heat that causes you to melt like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark that's typical of Slovakia in summer started to set in.
We were really happy, though, that we managed to take a few more out-of-town trips this time, like the one to Croatia, and the short road trip east to Košice and Levoča. It's not a whole lot, but it's still progress from the prior few trips!
Many of the things I said in this 2023 post still hold true. I'd still want to move to Slovakia if Terezia had a job offer there that was worthwhile and paid her what her skills are worth. But the chances of that actually materializing seem slim.
I really look forward to when Simon hits his teenage years, which is still a ways off, but it's only then when I think we'll really be able to do some more serious traveling.
I'd also love to do another trip to Croatia, but only if we drive (or fly) there on our own so that we can have more control over our movements each day, and wouldn't have to be reliant on Tony and his family, or be at the mercy of their whims.
Simon played with his Podrečany friend Mirko again, which was great to see, though they had a few conflicts arising from wanting to do different things at times. The trip to Croatia meant Simon spent a fair amount of time around his cousin Tea, and they mostly got on well. Sometimes they'd play really well together, and other times they just felt like doing different things, which is fine. Even so, they seem to be developing a nice bond, and I hope that continues to grow.
At any rate, I would love to visit Slovakia for a couple of weeks over the winter holidays, during Simon's winter break, but I don't know when that will happen. It would be nice to visit Slovakia in winter again, or at least not in late spring or early summer again.
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