Home » Slovakia » Slovakia

Summer 2003 cycling

Slovakia

Agelasto
2004-05-18 20:22:46

Displayed times (last time: )

I cross over from Poland at what must be the nicest border town I've ever experienced: Chocholow (PL). Border crossings are often fairly sleazy affairs. Here the town - a regular farming village - is 2 kms from the frontier. The only recognition given to its international status is a pension ($5) and excellent restaurant (http://www.sliwa.chocholow.pl). Plenty of traditional wooden houses set against the Tatre mountains. What more could a cyclist desire?

Southern Poland and northern Slovakia have the only mountains I encounter on this trip. Most of the route, however, meanders in river valleys and along rail tracks. It's the most scenic section of the 8-week trip. This is a land of wooden houses and churches, cobbled squares and castles, with an abundance of heavy industry dotting the landscape.

The Slovak Republic is a country that has been beat up by history, not unlike the other nations along my trip (one might say that Russia's wounds were mostly self-inflicted). The people here are friendly - not so outgoing as the Polish - and I continue to notice tight-knit families, with less generational divide and general disfunctionalism than in the US, not dissimilar to China.

I also witness more vestiges of Soviet life and thinking. In towns, not too much service with a smile. I notice village-wide PA systems, something I've not heard since visiting Viet Nam. Many rural roads are lined with fruit and nut trees which drop their apples, plums and the like to rot at roadside. Where they purposely planted - a directive from central planning - to create jobs or provide nourishment in times of famine. Now a wasted resource.

Slovakia has a fine system of bike routes, well-signed, for both on- and off-road. I begin to see more recreational and touring cyclists. Hiking maps of 1:50,000 scale are available, with cycle routes marked, but these are too detailed for my needs ...