Novo Mesto nad Vahom!

I shared a train car with two ladies who, I think, were on their way to Bratislava, but both fell asleep immediately after boarding, and didn’t wake up the entire journey. As a result, I spent the 2 or so hour train ride looking out the window and admiring the Slovakian countryside. It’s so much fun to see buildings nearly a millennium old still shooting up out of the trees or adorning the rock faces, and I began to feel deeply “at home” as so much of the terrain reminded me of Russia, and correspondingly, made me miss it a bit as well.

Around 8:30 a.m., we rolled into Novo Mesto and I walked into what appeared to be a rather industrial town with virtually not another human in sight. I noted that there was a small hotel near the train station, and I desperately wanted to drop my gear, get some rest and prep a bit before figuring out how to get to Csjethe. I walked in, talked with the concierge (who spoke Slovakian and Russian, the latter of which we used to discuss business), and found that they had rooms available, but that they only took Slovakian currency. Having none, I hunted down an ATM and withdrew the equivalent of about $50 ($1 = 23.85 SK), then returned to the little hotel. On my way, I noticed that the town still didn’t have any activity at all, and by 9 a.m. wondered what the deal was. None of the shops were open, no people milled about, and nothing was going on. Then I remembered, “oh yeah, it’s Sunday! Duh!” In small cities in Eastern Europe, there is no Wal-Mart, no 24-hour pharmacy, no “open every day except Christmas”. The entire city shuts down for Sunday, and many places for Saturday as well. I was just grateful for ATMs, or I would have been seriously out of luck.

At the little hotel, I paid about $30 for a little room which was clean and had a shower (Hallelujah! I hadn’t had any kind of bath or shower since I left the US! Whoof!), dropped my gear, took a 30 minute shower, and then crashed on the bed. It was 9:30 a.m., so I set the alarm for 1 pm, figuring that such would give me enough time to wake up and figure out how to get to Csjethe. Unfortunately, however, I must have been really wasted because even with the alarm, I slept hard until 4:30 p.m. I jumped out of bed, grabbed only some “essential gear” like my journal, flashlight, thermal underwear, jacket and iPod, and headed out of the hotel to the train station to see if I could get a ticket to Visnove. If I had been thinking, I would have made “essential gear” more…uh…well… “essential” and would have taken my knee brace, a lighter (to make a camp fire if I got trapped up there without a way to get down till morning), and some water, but atypical for me, didn’t think of any of those things until I was already on the train. Alas.