Fall Break

This past week we had school on Monday and Tuesday, and then the kids had Wednesday through Friday off. We teachers sort of had Wednesday and Thursday off; we had a retreat at a hotel in a town near Brezno called Braväcovo. The hotel was called Penzion Schweintaal. Schweintaal was the German name for Braväcovo, where a lot of German miners used to work. We were told that Braväcovo means "pig town" in Slovak. There is also a "bull town" nearby.

We drove to Braväcovo on Tuesday after school and spent Tuesday evening, Wednesday, and Thursday morning there. The hotel was pretty nice, and it had some spa facilities that we could use, like a sauna, hot tub, and masseuse. There was also a swimming pool outside, but it was a bit chilly for swimming. The rooms were neat and clean, though ours was a bit oddly shaped. The bathroom made me sad, because it was about the size of the kitchen in my apartment and very nice.

On Thursday after breakfast we all departed our separate ways, which included two of my fellow teachers and me going to Liptovsky Mikulaš to visit some other Americans and go hiking. Unfortunately, public transportation was not on our side on this particular day. We tried to get on one bus that would have taken us straight there, but the driver basically wouldn't let us on because the seats were full. We could have stood, but we weren't able to argue that case. We waited for another bus, but there was such a crowd for it that we decided to try a train instead. We got on a train in Brezno and rode to Vrutky. The train was the kind with the little compartments, so that was cool. We got off at Vrutky and got on a train for Mikulaš, and we had to stand in the little entrance-way part for that ride. We finally made it there, but we didn't get to see much of the town because it was dark because this daylight savings time thing here means it's now completely night by 5:30.

I got up on Friday morning around 5:20. We ate breakfast, discussed the trails we might take, and got dressed to go. We went to the bus station (luckily the girls live about two minutes from it) and got on two different buses to take two different trails. Mine actually ended up being the larger group, doing an easier hike.

We got off the bus at Kvačany right around 7 and walked through the town to start the hike. It was very quiet, cool, and pretty. There were lots of leaves on the path; in some places they went nearly up to my knees. For most of the hike we could see or at least hear a river. I didn't jump in, but I did at least stick my hand in it. We hiked to a village called Huty, where the trail pretty much ended; then we turned around and met the others and all hiked back together. Slovak folk hero Juraj Jánošík, often called the Slovak Robin Hood, was from northern Slovakia, and there are many references to him throughout the country. On our hike we saw something called Jánošík's Face:

See it?

We hopped a bus back to Tisovec that same afternoon, and we were back around 6. October 31st isn't primarily Halloween here; it's more important as Reformation Day and All Hallows Eve. All this week people had been going to cemeteries, cleaning their relatives' graves and putting flowers on them; and last night they lit candles. We went up to the cemetery after dinner. Not all of the graves had candles on them, but a pretty good number did. It looked cool. I think it's a nice tradition, too.