It's getting to the point where I'm thinking things like 'we're in Slovakia, so this must be Friday', which I thought would happen much, much later in the trip. Photo of the day was taken at 5am when the train from Poprad-Tatry (at the mouth of the High Tatras) took us to Stary Smokovec, which is the first major ski resort area of the mountains. Apparently everything is considered part of the ski resort, even though summer is the most popular month and everyone comes to do the hikes.
We arrived at 5.30am when nothing was open not even the toilet (the toilets cost 30 eurocents, usually worth it because they are quite nice compared to other train station toilets I've been to, but I can't think of how little the toilet attendant must earn, and what a subsistence!).
Boff, Kathleen and I sat down until 7am in the dawnlight catching up on journals, blogs etc and then went to see if the hostel had any beds available. It didn't, so we ended up having breakfast at a weird cafeteria/buffet place and then seeking the assistance of a very funny (thankfully English-speaking) information lady, who booked us in at another place that was half the price down the road.
By 'down the road' she meant one station away at Horny Smokovec, which was a 10-minute walk. Yes, I am writing this from a hostel in a town that has the name of a porn star. The rooms weren't ready so we washed up as best we could and headed back into town, took the funicular up to a place called Hrebienok and commenced a walk that took us past four waterfalls (vodopad; 'vodo' means 'water', 'pad' must mean 'fall').
We were all light on sleep, and bad sleep at that, so we opted not to do the full day walk and instead wandered around until we got hungry and took the funicular down to to town to have a late lunch. There are a bunch of couriers who work the mountain carrying things on their backs. The kinds of things they carry: crates of beer, propane gas, bar fridge—sometimes all at once. I don't think you could pay me to do that job.
At the hostel, which was actually a room above a Polish restaurant, we had a shower and a nap that took us to dinner, which ended up being the Slovakian specials at the Polish restaurant. Including blueberry dumplings.
Am finding Slovakians quite hard to figure out. The ones I've encountered have tended to be abrupt or slightly frustrated with our inability to speak Slovak (caveat: I don't even have Lonely Planet to help me grasp the language, the closest is Czech). We've managed, so far, to find our way around using Bahasa Tarzan (ie charades), money, and people with some words of English to have had a decent time. The only truly helpful person was the info lady. I was surprised at how good her English was considering she was quite old and most others who have a few words under their belt are young wait staff (all with an attitude).
One saving grace is that everything here is quite cheap (if you don't talk to Boff about how cheap Romania was). We're talking 12 euros for a hostel bed with free internet, 7 euros for a breakfast for two, and 1 euro for 500ml of beer (or 1,20 euro water/tea if you prefer). Let me order another pint...
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