Day 37: We found the Eastern Europe we had imagined – Kosice, Slovakia

(Him: Charlie)

We may be biased, but we had our own imagination of what Eastern Europe should look like. For the first time in this trip, we've found it. The last few countries that we visited are great, but they are also, shall we say, quite “Western Europe”. However, this is not the case in Slovakia, which is a bit more conservative and reserved.

Perhaps for the friendly people, perhaps for the beautiful sceneries, perhaps for the tourists, or the combination of various factors, we found Slovakia to be satisfying and very enjoyable! It is hard to articulate, but we just feel that Slovakia better resembles the Eastern Europe that we had imagined.

Day 35: Trekking the High Tatras, Poprad, Slovakia

(Him: Charlie)

As our bus passed through the Czech-Slovakia border, there was an almost instant change to the landscape. What was vineyard on the Czech side are now rugged mountains on the Slovakian side, in a matter of a couple hours. Maybe Czech and Slovakia are meant to be two separate countries?

Slovakia is famous for its mountains, with High Tatras being the most well-known region. The High Tatras is part of Alps. Even though it is the smallest mountain range amongst Alps mountains (at around 2600m at peak), apparently, it dwarfs many others in terms of natural beauty (I need to verify this on another trip). And this is precise the reason why we are here.

We spent 3 days trekking on the High Tatras. Unfortunately, since it’s still early in the trekking season, some of the trails at high elevations were closed. However, the flip side is that the trails were lightly visited and we got some really quality time to admire the pristine mountain lakes, glaciers, majestic mountain peaks, and gorgeous valleys. The hike was quite strenuous, but still manageable. In total, we hiked about 14-15 hours up and down various routes. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll let the pictures speak for the High Tatras.

We stayed at a mountain hut (Zamkovsky) for accommodation on one of the days. Despite being isolated from towns and access roads, the hut was surprisingly cozy and the food was excellent. We had a chat with a boy working at the hut (he’s probably a university student). What caught our attention was that everything they sell at the hut has to be carried here by porters. I automatically thought that the hut may have hired labourers working as porters, just like porters on the Inca Trail. But I was so wrong... Little did I know that, by porters, the boy meant everyone working at the hut! Every morning when they go to work, they’d carry the supplies with them – water, beers, bread, you name it! Everyone does their bit.

I was humbled. I even felt guilty for thinking intensive labour works are done by “others”. From that moment on, we became more appreciative to everything that was offered by the hut.

(See the porter?)