Skiing on the Dark Side

My brother is keen to ski in as many countries as possible, so we took off this afternoon to ski at 'Relax Center Plejsy', about 35km west of Presov. Plejsy may be highly rated by local standards but we found that 3 hours was plenty. The rental shop didn't have any telemark gear, so I went over to the dark side and rented (gasp!) alpine equipment. It was the first time in about 10 years that I'd skied fixed-heel - I had a couple of close calls where I tried to lift my back heel and it wouldn't come off the ski, but on the whole I was able to give a pretty good impersonation of a downhill skier.

Here's the entire upper half of the resort (the lower half is just one run leading to the hotel):



After skiing we stopped in Krompachy for some tasty cakes and cappuchino.



We'd spotted a couple of Roma communities on the way into town (one of which is described in the book 'Bury Me Standing') and wanted to take some pictures, but I was afraid that we'd be stoned or hexed or worse. We pulled over by the first village with my brother's camera at the ready, just as 3 Roma men with wheelbarrows came walking up. They started calling something to us and I got nervous and drove off, only to realize a moment later that they were just saying "Hi, what's happening?" (or the Roma equivalent). The next village was farther from the road so we got some pictures. Notice that every house, no matter how decrepit, has a satellite dish.