Biking to the top of Slovakia

One of my cycling goals for this trip was to ride my bike to the top of Kral'ova Hol'a (the Kings Mountain) in the Low Tatras. It's not actually the top of Slovakia (that's Gerlach in the High Tatras), but I think it's the highest spot (1947m/6386ft)in the country that you can ride to, and the climb up there is rated as the most difficult in the country. I waited as long as I could hoping that all the snow would melt off, and finally set out on May 18 from Presov. It was a beautiful day, but as I approached the Low Tatras, I could see a huge cloud bank - sure enough, Kralova Hola (KH) is big enough to create its own weather. I parked in Cervena Skala (the lowest place around at about 770m) and rode the 3km up to Sumiac in a light drizzle. Above Sumiac, the official KH road begins - it's closed to cars and motorcycles, but bikes are OK.

I was surprised (and irritated) to find that the road was dirt and gravel - I'd seen pictures of pavement. But I'd come a long way to do this, so I kept going. After a few km of dirt, I heard voices and came around a corner to find another biker talking to a hiker. The hiker assured me that the asphalt started soon, so the other biker (Martin from Kosice) and I rode on together for a while. At the saddle (where the asphalt finally started), Martin stopped to let his heart recover

while I ate a banana and then kept going alone.

Pretty soon I got above treeline and the wind picked up.

(I have no idea who was doing all that heavy breathing on the soundtrack to the video - I don't recall hearing it at the time.)

Much of the time it was a tailwind, but as I came around to the north side, it turned into a headwind. The summit was still lost in the clouds, but every so often they'd blow off so I could see how far I had to go.

The last stretch to the summit was still covered in snow,

but only required a couple of hundred meters of walking. (And it didn't seem nearly as steep as the 15+% that the web site promised.) By now the wind was howling and I was in the middle of the fog, standing up in my 34-32 lowest gear and barely making progress. As I approached the TV antenna building, the wind was so strong it blew me off the road, and I had to do the last 50m on foot. Fortunately the lee side of the building was completely calm, so I was able to change into a dry shirt and put on the rest of my clothes. I got a couple of pictures of the summit obelisk

and then decided to get the hell off the mountain before the weather got worse. As I walked out from my sheltered spot, the wind grabbed me again and almost blew me into a large puddle. My bike was flying out to the side at about a 45-degree angle as I was leaning into the wind the other way. Once I got away from the building, the wind dropped a bit and I was able to slowly ride down to the snowfield. Below the snow, the wind was considerably less and I was out of the fog. Martin had just reached the final switchback (he made it to the top too). My next trekking bike will have disc brakes. 12km of hanging onto the brake levers with cantilever brakes is hard on the hands! But I made it down in one piece. Much to my disgust, when I looked back at the summit, it was clear up there! (But clouded up again later.)

Romania

We've now been to all the countries that border Slovakia, so it was time to go a bit farther. Romania seemed like a likely candidate, and it didn't look far on the map. To paraphrase the warning on your rear-view mirror, "Objects On Map Are Farther Than They Appear". Or at least it will take you a lot longer to get there than if you were driving I-70 or the German Autobahn. We headed out Friday morning, going south into Hungary and taking a very scenic (and very slow) road over the Zemplin Hills to Tokaj. This is where they make the famous Tokaj wine (the wine that the bums' favorite is named after) and you can't swing a cat without hitting someone who's there to buy (or taste) the wine. We saw a bike tour group of a dozen happy people, one of whom tipped over and crashed on the bike path while we watched. They must have already visited a couple of cellars...

Unfortunately, we had no time for wine-tasting, so we headed east through Nyiregyhaza and out into the plains of eastern Hungary. Flat, boring and lots of traffic. At the Romanian border, they seemed more interested in our car than in us,
but after 10 minutes or so, they let all three of us in. We'd heard that ATMs are hard to find, so we headed for downtown Satu Mare, which has more ATMs on the central square than any other place I've seen. Fortified with 500 Lei (2.39 to the dollar), we headed east to Baia Mare. Roads in Romania make Slovak roads look good - you have to keep a constant watch for potholes, uneven railroad crossings and lots of horse-drawn wagons. In Baia Mare, we realized that we'd lost an hour - like Ukraine, they're in another time zone.

Our destination in Romainia was the town of Botiza in Maramures, the poorest part of the country. I've seen it described as 'medieval' - I wouldn't go that far, but it's definitely early 20th century. We stayed with a delightful couple, Ioan and Maria Manta. (In Romania, all the men are named Ioan (John) and all the women are Maria (Mary). In our first 5 minutes in the local cemetery, I spotted at least half a dozen Ioan Mantas, although our host showed no signs of being deceased.)

There are no restaurants in Romania outside of the major towns, so we had our breakfast and dinner at the Mantas - some interesting (and tasty) sheep cheeses, polentas and other good stuff. And of course, a glass or two of palinka (only at dinner). The rooster got us up the next morning, and after breakfast we checked out the local market and then went up to the Orthodox church where some kind of ceremony was in progress. The local ladies forced loaves of bread and cabbage rolls on us -

finally a nun took pity on us and got us a plastic bag to carry all our bread.
Wine plays a big role in Catholic services, but we're not sure about the theological significance of Coke...


After Botiza, we visited a pottery shop in Sacel, and the monastery complex in Barsana. I thought monasteries had monks and convents had nuns, but this monastery was exclusively nuns.


On Sunday, Cindi got to dress up like a Romanian peasant, after which we hit the road. There's not much public transportation in Maramures, so we picked up a couple of little old ladies (Maria and Maria?) who were hitchhiking down to the big Orthodox service in Stramtura. We decided to check it out ourselves, and were wandering around outside the church when I was accosted by an old gentleman. I'm not usually addressed as 'Boy!', but something about him seemed interesting. He quickly invited us back to his house for a drink (more palinka). His house had all the signs of being the home of an aging drunkard, but it turned out to be his 'museum' - he has a perfectly normal house next door with a perfectly normal wife. His name is Ioan Stef, and he's very interested in the Jewish history of the area (he himself is Greek-Catholic, but he had many Jewish friends who were deported to Auschwitz). Despite his affections for the Jews, he seemed rather intolerant of the Orthodox Christians ("Orthodox bad!") He and his wife served us coffee and lunch, and we probably could have stayed for dinner, but needed to get on the road.


Last tourist stop in Romania was the famous 'Merry Cemetery' of Sarpanta. A local woodcarver started the tradition of carving humorous tombstones with little poems, and it continues today. This fellow drank and smoked himself to death,

while this poor boy fell under a train.

And this guy appears to be performing an unnatural act with a sheep.


After spending our remaining lei on ice cream, beer and diesel (in that order), we crossed back into Hungary. There's a new superhighway that we missed on the way out, so the trip back to Presov was a bit quicker. Still a long day (470km) in the car...

Caves

The karst area of SE Slovakia and northern Hungary is riddled with caves, and we've been to a couple of them. The first was the Aggtelek system in Hungary (which connects to the Domica cave in Slovakia). We joined a bunch of Hungarians for the 2 hour tour - the guide spoke only Hungarian, but they had a printed English description which gave us some information about the cave. The tour started with a seemingly endless set of steps leading down an artificial entrance to the cave. At the bottom you could go left (towards Slovakia) or right - our tour went right. The entire tour was on a well-paved, well-lit pathway with lots of 'tites, 'mites and other stalags to look at.

In the 'Great Hall' they turned out all the lights and then played the 'Chariots of Fire' theme music over a large sound system while various lights flashed on and off. You come to the surface again a couple of miles away from where you started, and take the bus back. Not a bad tour, but a bit on the 'prepared' side.

For a change of pace, we also went through the Krasnahorska Cave in Slovakia. This one is run by the local caving club and is a lot more basic. You start by putting on your red coveralls, your helmet and your miners light. A short artificial entrance leads to the cave proper, where you scramble over rocks, cross small wooden bridges, go through a tight squeeze,

climb ladders and cross a large pool of water on a couple of steel cables.

At the end, there's a larger chamber with the 62m tall 'Dripstone of the Rozhnava Cavers', at one point listed in the Guiness Book as the worlds tallest.

Then you turn around and go out the same way.

Back in the USSR....

Well, not really 'back', since I'd never been in the (former) USSR. We'd heard a lot of contradictory information about going to Ukraine, ranging from 'totally impossible' to 'we do it all the time'. We finally decided to try it ourselves. And the answer is: 'no problem, but time-consuming'.

Our car isn't insured in Ukraine, and new cars have been known to disappear there, so we took the 7AM bus from Presov to Uzhgorod. It took a couple of hours to reach the border and then the waiting started. First, the Slovaks took our passports and checked us out of the EU. Then we crept up to the Ukrainian customs office

where they took our passports again. Most people got their passports back, but a Ukrainian customs official got on the bus calling for 'Scott! Americanski!' so we took all our stuff and went into a small office for a personal interview with a very nice customs agent who seemed quite surprised that a couple of Americans would want to go to Ukraine for the day. After verifying that we didn't have any guns or drugs, he gave us our passports and we got back on the bus.

Ukraine has some nice socialist monuments

and some nice Orthodox churches (sorry about the lamp post)

We made our way up the the castle (more of a 'chateau')

where we could see the largest collection of preserved slugs in western Ukraine.

They also have a 'skanzen' (open-air museum) with the ubiquitous (in these parts) wooden church.


We bought a few souvenirs (mine are all the drinkable kind, one of which is described on the brewery website as "red, transparent, has scum without secondary inclusion") and headed back to the bus station. As we boarded, the driver asked for 2 hrivna apiece (about 50 cents) for the mandatory bribe for the Ukrainian customs agents. Getting out of Ukraine took even longer than getting in, mostly due to the Slovaks searching everyone's luggage for cigarettes. Apparently smokes are dirt cheap in Ukraine, but you're limited on the number you can bring in. We thought about financing our trip by buying a couple of cartons, but we don't know who we'd sell them to. Two hours later we were finally on the road heading back to Presov.

Mayday! Mayday!

May 1 seems to mark the official beginning of tourist season here in Slovakia, so we got into the swing of things with a visit to the Stara L'ubovna castle an hour up
the road to the northwest. You can visit both the castle and the 'skanzen' (open-air museum), so we started with the skanzen. They have lots of rural buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries that they've moved to a large field below the castle. You can go into each one and see how people lived back then (and probably how some are still living).


After the skanzen, we walked up to the castle where we were just in time for the falconry exhibition. A couple of guys from the local falcon club were showing off their trained falcon, owl, raven and black eagle. (I didn't know you could train owls and ravens.) After the show, Cindi got up close and personal with the eagle.


The castle itself was pretty interesting - it had been through at least four stages of (re)construction over the last 700 years. You could climb all the way to the top of the tower

and get a nice view of the skanzen and the countryside.


On the way back to Presov, we stopped to see the ruined castle at Plavec - no admission fees, no guides, just castle ruins (and a rainstorm, and lots of snails).