Part 3 of 3

The Day Everything Went Awry

The PLAN was to get on a noon train and connect to Egar, Hungary which would take 2.5 hours. We ended up on the train until 11pm (11 hours later). It was about 40C on the train. Did we mention the 5000 people on the train with us? They filled the compartments and were packed in the aisles. Hot hot hot. But we had to laugh through it all. We ended up in Kosice, Slovakia where we were turned away at the hostel and ended up in a hotel after midnight. We were severly sweaty, dirty and tired and dirty. Did we mention dirty? The nice security man who looks after the desk at night took pity on us and gave us a key to a beautiful room and it had its own bathroom which we used to its full advantage.

On to the Tatras!

Happily refreshed and wonderfully clean, we had a big Slovakian breakfast which always seems to include lots of ham, cheese, and bread (and exactly 30mg of vegetables) at the hotel and then went back to the train station. After asking 4 people if we were on the correct train, we sat down and headed to the Tatras mountains.



Saturday afternoon found us hiking up a beautiful trail to our chata (chalet) in the hills. Spectacular views everywhere, waterfalls and deliciously cool air - we were in heaven. The beer is a little flat and warm but you can have a contest on how many big yummy dessert dumplings your stomach can handle; Shannon won at five. After a hearty bowl of garlic soup no vampires will get us but we'll also make no friends, except the group of ten year old girls who befriended us here with their teacher and are loving to try out their limited English. They're very excited that we're from the land of Avril Lavigne, Shania Twain and hockey. There's also the "short shorts guys" here who are running the chata; they're wearing the shortest darn shorts we've ever seen and speak not a word of English. Really looking forward to the morning hike. Happy trails.