ahoj slovakia

so we finally made it to slovakia, and alot has happened in the mean time. i'll try to catch you up on our latest adventures..

best news so far: THE PACK IS BACK!

so - by the grace of something above - joslyn's luggage came in. who knows how they actually found it, considering we had no tracking number or flight information to go off of, but it did arrive. it was quite a long wait, though, calling the airport multiple times and crossing our fingers. during the wait, we managed to meet up with a friend/past language teacher of mike's and walked around budapest. walked in circles quite a bit, but eventually found our way to a turkish restaurant, before making our way back to the hostel to await the lost pack.

afterwards, grabbed some food and made our way to the train station to get our train to bratislava. it wasn't a bad ride there, but as we were to find out, our adventures were only beginning. we managed to walk around the city for 2 hours looking for our hostel. don't ask.. because i'm not telling. we saw parts of bratislava i don't think even the locals go to. exhausted, we finally found our way and checked into hostel blues. definitely slept well that night. the next morning we headed out to explore the town, which actually is quite beautiful. it reminded me alot of the towns in czech republic. we saw the castle, various churches and historical buildings - the usual european deal.

the next morning proved to be the start of another long day of traveling and mis-adventures. i seriously think we're just cursed with bad timing in slovakia... we just missed a tram to the train station (we were not about to walk and get lost for 2 hours again..), and when we got to the station, we were told we couldn't get on the 10am train we wanted. so we had to settle for an 1147. which meant hanging out in the stations for 2+ hrs. later we discovered that we were in the wrong line - we were in the reservations only line, and since reservations weren't required for the 10am train, that lady couldn't sell us one. so the train wasn't exactly full, just not available from that line. ah well.

arrived in poprad, a mountain town, without too many problems. then easily found the electric train to stary smokovec, from where we were supposed to catch a bus to our hostel town of zdiar. but of course, nothing can be that easy, right? the bus was supposed to come at 1815, so since it was 1730, we headed inside a pub for a cup of hot tea. back at the bus stations at 1800 and waited. and waited. and waited some more.

the bus never came.

so we tried to call the hostel b/c that was apparently the last bus to zdiar. but the number didn't work. so back to the train station to try to get some help. not much found there. back to the pub to try to get some info on taxis. even though we just provided them business a short while ago, not much help was found there either. back to the bus station. found some locals, and in broken english and broken russian, managed to get out that another bus was coming in 30 mins. well, that bus came, but it was not going where we wanted to go. the bus driver told us another bus in 10 mins would take us to zdiar. but after 20 mins, not another bus was to be found.

so we gave in and called a cab. boy what an experience that was. it was actually just a local's car, and he merely put up a lighted sign on his roof. he also had a tendency to drive on the wrong side of the winding mountain road. i just kept my seatbelt tight and hoped we'd arrive in one piece. got to zdiar, but couldn't find the hostel b/c the driver wasn't familiar with the town, and obviously neither were we. eventually found the church the hostel was near, and drove up a steep driveway to what appeared to be our hostel. YAY! we made it. but the car did not. it was stuck in about a foot of snow. so out we all got, and pushed the car while the driver floored it. it took a little while, but we eventually got it unstuck.

cold, tired, hungry. after an entire day of traveling and not eating and standing in the freezing temperatures for hours on end, we had arrived at the Ginger Monkey. more on that experience later.