Our plan for the day was leave the High Tatras early and visit Spissky Hrad, one of the largest castles in Eastern Europe. After visiting the castle, we would take an evening train to Kosice where we would spend a night before making our way to Budapest. Unfortunately, the day didn’t go as planned.
We took the train to Spisske Vlachy which is the closest station to the castle. From there, we saw online that a bus runs every couple hours to Spisske Podhradie where we could walk to the castle. After hopping off the train, we realized that we were in the middle of nowhere and the station was minimal. The station attendant didn’t speak English, but after she pulled out an English-Slovak translation book I managed to communicate that we wanted to store our bags. She pointed to the back office where the station conducer allowed us to keep our packs.
There was a sign across the street for the bus, so we waited almost an hour until the scheduled departure time. No bus came. Twenty minutes later, still no bus. Sara and I made a game of guessing if the loud vehicle approaching the corner was the bus or a tractor. It was always just a tractor. After waiting another hour in the sultry summer heat for the non-existent bus, we decided the castle was a bust and opted to take the next train.
The next train to Kosice was only twenty minutes later and arrived on time – at least something went our way that day. The train meandered through beautiful valleys with mountains rising high on either side of the tracks. A few hours later, the hills flattened as we pulled into Kosice station. Our hotel, Alessandria, again didn’t have air conditioning or a fan making us crave modern convinces. Even thought the room was hot, we did find that Slovakia sells giant beers in stores for an incredibly low price – 1.5 liters for only $2.00!
View of Downtown Kosice
Kosice seemed to be a quiet city until we went exploring for dinner. We were walking along deserted streets then all of a sudden we stumbled upon the main street filled with bustling restaurants, ice cream shops and many people enjoying the evening. Sara found Med Malina where we indulged in traditional Slovakian food. We enjoyed the Farmers Pot which was full of meat, potatoes, and veggies, as well as a very flavorful veggie risotto.
That night, I noticed on Facebook that one of my friends was vacationing in Italy. Sara and I tossed around the idea of a long train journey to Rome instead of Budapest, and eventually decided why not? We were focusing on Eastern Europe so had not planned on seeing Italy on this trip, but seeing our friends would be the perfect excuse. Plus, with the Eurail pass, long distance rail travel seemed easy and almost encouraging of spontaneous decisions. Then we figured after Italy, we could take a ferry to Greece (using the Eurail pass) as a shortcut back to our Eastern Europe adventure.
The next morning, we packed up, caught a train and headed back east past the castle we couldn’t visit, past the High Tatras, and past Poprad on a 26 hour journey to Rome, Italy.
