Friday, September 7.
I got up early in the morning with my family and we headed to a nearby mountain in the town of Terchova to hike for the day. The first hour of the hike was all ladders and platforms over a river below. We were hiking through a small canyon created between the mountains. The next two hours of the hike were up a mountain getting higher and higher. We stopped to have lunch at a clearing of the forest with a beautiful view of the two mountains we were in between. We chose to climb the slightly shorter one for time reasons, and made our way to the top. The view from the top was absolutely beautiful and was full of Czech and Polish tourists! We hiked all the way down into a super tiny village, consisting of no more than 10 homes, but was so lovely. Once we walked back to the nearby town, we ate at a traditional Slovak restaurant and then visited the town of Terchova. Terchova is the town of which "Janośik" (Slovak version of Robbin Hood) was from. The town had a beautiful statue of him overlooking the entire town. We made it there at sunset, the perfect time! It was a really long but nice day! Saturday, September 8. Today my host family took me to a (or an? I literally cannot speak English anymore, sorry) historical train which was used to bring wood from the forest into the town. Today, it is just a tourist attraction which shows tourists how it used to operate. We rode two types of trains until we got dropped off at an old Slovak village, a replica of what the villages used to look like. Surprising all the houses looked extremely similar to those of old towns in USA. There was such a beautiful church in the village and many wild sheep, which I loved. After we finished with the train and the village, we went back to our cabin and played Slovak board games. I still love how clean the air is there. It's amazing! Sunday, September 9. Today, we packed up to leave our cabin and went to the nearby village to visit a mini trampoline fun-park. My host brother and I both a high just from some tower, which was scary, but I'd done before in USA! There, I heard two women speaking Spanish and started speaking with them! They're both from Venezuela and one of them had married a Slovak man. We joked about how bad we could all speak Slovak haha! After leaving, we drove another 30 minutes along the Polish border to get to a beautiful castle, Oravsky Hrad! The castle and town below was absolutely gorgeous. It was something straight out of a movie, literally. We were in a tour group which brought us on a 2 hour long tour of the castle. In our tour group were 3 American men! They were all from the West Coast, but one of them moved there from Slovakia when he was just a young boy. It turns out, he's from my city, Trencin, and his second cousins wife is my school teacher! How crazy! It was truly so nice to talk with another American, I forgot that feeling hahah! At the end of the tour they brought us to a room that showed all the movies that were filmed in the castle. It was probably the most beautiful castle I've ever visited. After we walked back to the town, which was filled with Polish tourists! I spoke to some of them as I'd missed the Polish language. Sadly for me, my Polish has gotten so bad as I confuse it with so many Slovak words. We went to another traditional Slovak restaurant where I had a Slovak meal and FRENCH FRIES! Something else I'd missed about USA. On the 2 hour drive back to Trencin, we stopped in the nearby town of Dubnica Nad Vahom, the youngest city in Slovakia. It was built in the 50's and consists entirely of communist buildings. Two of my host uncles live there and I got to go into my first communist flat. My mom explained life under communist rule to me for awhile. It was really fascinating to learn about.
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AuthorNick Bilotti Archives
March 2019
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