Slovenska

I have been spending much more time than I initially anticipated in Slovakia - and it has all been marvelous fun.

I went to a tiny town called Banská Štiavnica (home of ERB beer and pickled cheese), and enjoyed the beautiful views and the hourly music-box-esque concert emanating from one of the church steeples. It was very relaxing. One of my favorite moments was sitting on an obliging wall for several hours, just soaking it all in.

Then I went to Ždiar, a village in the High Tatras mountains of Slovakia, right next to the Polish border. The Ginger Monkey hostel there was absolutely fantastic, full of fun people, beer taken straight from the fridge and tallied up on an honor system, a hammock with a perfect view of the mountains, and a happy dog named Wally. The main attraction here is the hiking, so I did a 7-hour trek up the saddle trail, into a (literally) breathtaking alpine meadow, then down to some gorgeous lakes and a forest that could have sprouted overnight from the pages of a fairy tale.

*I am writing this from my phone and formatting options are limited, so please find photos at the end of the post*

The best part of the hike, for me, was the abundance of wildflowers. I can confidently say, without the slightest whisper of hyperbole, that I saw over 100 species throughout the day. It was the most spectacular sight, the rolling grass peppered with thousands of tiny, perfect specimens of every different color. There were even multiple shades of blue represented, which blew my mind since true blue is not an easy color to find in vegetation.
The variety of fly species present was also quite stunning - high altitude ecosystems often rely on Diptera as pollinators, and it was fascinating to witness that first hand. Also expletive-inducing at times, as some of those flies have a mighty painful bite.

My next foray into Slovakia was to Trenčin, to see the town and Bažant Pohoda, a music festival. I stayed at a new hostel there called Elephant's Castle - my friend and I were the very first guests, and I have to say it was quite an honor. The individuals running it have worked at and stayed in hostels for years, and they really are doing it right. None of this industrial, impersonal crap that so many places have become. They know that it's all about community and meeting new people, sharing experiences and enjoying travel. Our first night they cooked us dinner and we ate on the terrace with a view looking right up to the castle - the terrace is the best feature of the premises.

The town of Trenčin is quite lovely, nice and small and quiet, watched over by the huge castle, right next to a river where you can go swimming (at night, even, which is what we did to celebrate the hostel's opening). And, for 3 days every year, it is home to a sweet music festival.

Bažant Pohoda means chilled-out pheasant in Slovak. I suppose it depends on how one approaches these sorts of things, but I found it to be an apt name. I had so much fun, discovered some new bands, and was generally chill and relaxed.

To give you an idea of the eclectic mix of music at this festival, here is a list of the groups/people I saw:

Plastic People of the Universe (a Czech group)
Lou Reed
Caribou
Two Door Cinema Club
The Heavy
Villagers
Eskmo (this guy was a human personification of the essence of LA)
Kasabian
Orbital
Anna Calvi
Emiliana Torrini (my single favorite act, she was incredible)
Warpaint
The Kooks
Public Enemy (to be fair, I only saw a couple songs before I laid down in the grass outside the open-sided tent with the intention of listening but the result of sleeping soundly through the entire set (which went an hour over schedule).)

Some things that really surprised me about the festival were how relatively clean it was (they had a slew of volunteers in orange vests picking up trash and a deal with the beer stands that anyone who brought in half a meter of stacked cups could get half a liter of beer in exchange) and how on-time everything was. Public Enemy was the only group I saw that went over their slot by more than a minute or two, and everyone started right on time as well.

There was so much more going on in addition to the music.
There was a silent disco every night, which I had never heard of before but enjoyed thoroughly. No music is playing inside - instead, you're handed a pair of huge headphones with two channels when you walk in. There are two DJs playing, and you can switch between them at your leisure. This leads to everyone listening to, dancing to, and singing along to different music - which is incredibly entertaining to see. I took of my headphones several times to listen to the crowd singing along and dancing in the music-less dome, it was quite a sight.
They had movies projected onto a makeshift sheet-screen late at night (Midnight in Paris was awesome), tents set up for poetry and literary discussions, classical music concerts, tea-houses with carpets and cushions and low tables to set a hookah pipe on, showers for those camping out, a communal art station with paint and canvases available to anyone walking by, a massive row of foosball tables and, of course, massive amounts of festival food.

When I left Sunday morning the train station looked a bit like a refugee camp - hungover festival goers, looking miserable in the heat, curled up on any available patch of platform, some laying on sleeping mats, some sprawled out on top of backpacks and camping equipment, and so many of them that they spilled out the door and down the street to the park. My train was so crowded that I couldn't get a seat and ended up crouched next to the WC for my 2 hour ride. It was, all in all, a fantastic weekend, marred only by the sadness of saying goodbye to Monica and Viktor of Elephant's Castle.