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At 4 am on 26th july 1997 the most people had already been sleeping. Two boys from Szolnok ...

An adventurous bicycletour to the Tatra (1997)

Gyorgyigabor
2004-02-05 20:06:24

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For that day we planned to climb only one ascent: the 890m high Harmanec pass towards Banska Bystrica. Hearing the name of this town our heart were beating faster because we thought more and more about our family and land, Hungary. Sometimes we looked back on the days of our tour and talked about our memories. It was nice to hear from the guys that on such a light and pleasant ascent they could bike up to the sky. J Banska Bystrica was a surprise in that summer too: with its beauty, order and with the fresh painted houses it „rose above” the other sloakian towns (In the year 1999 we visited Kosice; that is an other town which is very beautiful). The main square was closed from the cars and it was covered with nice paving-stone. In the square there were a lot of clear shop-windows, restaurants, confectioner’s, parasols, and flowers. We could see this beauty only in the center, but I think that was only the start of how to lure the tourists there. In the evening we set up our tents not far from a lake near Zvolen, which is the birthplace of a famous hungarian poet, Bálint Balassi. We spent the evening with toasting bacon. That was our last evening in Slovakia in 1997.

For the next day there were hardly any scenic beauty, but we had reason for being cheerful. After a short climb we were bicycling on the side on the Javorosky mountain-range, when I saw a ca. 3m high „man and woman”. „They” we built from three straw bale and were put on some traditional clothes. It was funny. In the villages not far from the hungarian border we could often speak hungarian with the people, so the main „problem” was how to spend our slovakian money, bacause there wasn’t any place in our packs. We found our last place for our tents on the shore of the Lake Nyírjes, next to Balassagyarmat, in Hungary. There were a lot of mosquito there so it was the best thing to escape into the tent. It wasn’t a problem to sleep early in the evening, because on the following day the boys had to cycle 160kms to their home, at Szolnok. In our last morning it was good to buy in a hungarian shop, and hear hungarian voices again. With arriving at Hungary there weren’t too high mountains, long climbes; we could feel the heat again; we finished our adventures. Until our next tour, that was planned for the next year, we could only see the photos, or the videofilm and speak about the memories.

Summarizing the 14 day long tour we biked 1250 kms with 9300m heightdifference. I could suggest to cycle in Slovaky because of the beauty of the landscape, the good shaped roads and the friendly prices