nawl

Slovensky Raj and the Tatras

A weekend trip hiking with Gabor, Gabi, and Zsolt in Slovensky Raj, or Szlovak Paradicsom ("Slovak Paradise"), in Slovakia near the Polish border.

On the way up, we drove through the Hungarian countryside, rolling green hills and farmland dotted with picturesque little villages filled with red-roofed cottages, and a jarring city filled with ugly block-of-flats communist buildings and broken factories. It was explained that the communists thought every country should produce its own steel, so they built this huge city in northern Hungary to mine coal and produce steel, except that it was just a ridiculous money sink because there isn't much iron or coal in Hungary, and so when communism ended, there was absolutely nothing for all of the people who were moved there to work in the factory to do. It was filled with Chinese stores.

The Slovakian countryside looks much like the Hungarian one, except they have more mountains and the place names have fewer vowels. There's also some sort of lovely yellow wildflower that was blanketing the hills.

We stopped at the side of the road in Hrabusice, just outside the preserve, and soon enough a round old Slovakian lady came up, offered us a room in sign language, and hopped into the front seat of the car to guide us to her house. They called her mama. Once there, they negotiated the exchange in a mix of broken Slovakian, English, Russian, sign language, stick figures, and numbers. Gabor bargained her down 100 crowns just for the heck of it. It was about $6 per person per night for the entire bottom floor of the house, including the bathroom and kitchen. I learned that "privat" means "accomodation".

The communication fun persisted throughout the trip. Despite the fact that this area is a major tourist destination for Hungarians, and nearly every other person we met was Hungarian, none of the waiters, park staff, or store owners spoke any Hungarian. English was sketchy at best. One waitress told us she spoke English but actually spoke to us entirely in German. "Ja, das ist ohne Fleisch." Highly amusing.

My experience with Slovakian food included potato pirohy with sour cream, fried cheese with tartar sauce and a side of boiled potatoes, and some sort of deep-fried potato pancake from a sulky fast food stand attendant who refused to understand any form of non-Slovakian communication whatsoever. The one time I tried to order a side of what the menu termed "fresh vegetables/friss zoldseg/friche gemuse" (to the adamant protests of the waitress, who insisted it didn't go with my meal), it turned out to be sauerkraut.

On Sunday morning, we woke up early, when local residents were filing solemnly into the church in the center of town, and attempted to shop for some food at the local Potraviny. I'd never seen a store that worked like this one did. A counter runs around the entire inside of the store, and you wait in line to ask the shopkeeper to fetch everything you want. This is more effective when you actually speak the same language as the shopkeeper. Also, when there's actually something to eat in the store. Most mini-marts in gas stations have more selection. We did get an exciting sausage tube-shaped cheese product labeled "Bambino" that turned out to taste exactly like spray cheese.

And the hiking. The spectacular thing about this particular area is what the English signs term "technical aids", ladders and platforms placed so that the hiking trail goes across sheer rock faces and straight up magnificent waterfalls. We hiked along rivers, up a creek, into waterfall ravines, and then back down the mountain.

We saw an enormous ant hill that was at least three feet wide and four across. I also heard a cuckoo bird for the first time.

There are also beautiful views of the Tatra mountains.

On the last day, we drove to the Tatras for a half-day of hiking. Along the way, we passed a Gypsy town of poorly constructed houses connected by dirt footpaths. All I saw were pregnant women and children. I asked why they live that way, and how they survive, and the answer I was given was "They steal from the surrounding towns and get money from the government for having children." We passed yet another inappropriate block-of-flats city in the valley below the Tatras.

And then everyone in the car gasped, because suddenly on both sides of us were vast expanses of freshly clear-cut forest, raw brown stumps off into the distance and huge piles of logs by the side of the road. Except that all of the stumps had been either violently ripped out of the ground or snapped in half.

Last winter, wind storms flattened enormous areas of the pine forests here, but the story didn't get much coverage after the tsunami. They're still working on clearing it up. It's absolutely heart-wrenching. Cute hotels that used to look out on forest now look out on dirt. The metal railing along the road is ripped and twisted in parts from the trees that fell on it. I have no idea how many houses must have been damaged.

We had planned to go hiking along a pretty little path through the forest. This was the path. Not the view from the path, the actual path. We knew that this had happened, and had seen some areas of flattened trees earlier, but nobody believed that it was actually this bad.

Foiled, we drove further up into the mountains to the ski resort area, and hiked up a different path through a snowy pine forest that had for the most part survived to a waterfall still covered in snow. There were long traces of snow still packed into steep slopes on the mountain peaks lining the saddle we hiked up, winding snowboard paths still visible in every one.

Note the person above the waterfall.

On the way back, we passed more Slovakain villages, castles on hills, bewildering communist statues on the side of the road, and Hungarian traffic jams.