High Tatras, one year later

The silence in this blog during one week was caused by my business trip to High Tatras, in Slovakia and subsequent stay during the weekend in Bratislava. Last year I also made the same business trip to High Tatras, with enormous amounts of snow and other difficulties (see the post http://antsanch.blogspot.com/2010/12/in-slovak-mountains.html).This year was different. My plane to Vienna was not delayed and was not landing amidst a snow storm. I could take the taxi easily and drive without further problems to Bratislava, where I had time for a quick, although not very nice, lunch. Then, we took the van to High Tatras, with no snow in the horizon. This time we took the highway to Banska Bystrica, which was completed just few months ago. One could even smell that it was brand new (like in cars).

From Banska Bystrica to Ruzomberok, we faced some difficulties in going uphill to Donovaly, a sky resort, which were under a snow storm, which took by surprise trucks drivers, which soon found themselves trapped in the snow or trying to go downhill. But our driver is a master of driving under snow; I would like to see some Formula 1 drivers driving in such conditions. For a few seconds, I had the perspective of a truck going backwards downhill and my window was too close to its expected way. There were a few seconds only, but certainly it was an experience hard to forget.The remaining of the trip was easy and quick. Of course we had some snow in Starý Smokovec, but it was fully under control. The stay there was very pleasant, specially the visit to the spa area one day after the sessions of the seminar were over. For the way back, we took the same route and this time the trip was easy... Well, not that easy, in the new highway I mentioned before, we felt the need to stop for a visit to the restroom but the highway is so new that there are no petrol stations yet! So we had to wait 50 kilometres for the next petrol station, in the oldest part of the highway.

Concerning my stay in Bratislava, it was very nice, as usual. I somehow do not feel like a tourist there, even if I cannot feel like a native either. For the first time in my life I ice-skated and I enjoyed like a small boy. I even managed not to fall down a single time and in the end I was able to skate on my own, hands-free and, needless to say, not very fast.

However, not everything those days was nice and wonderful. The weekend was a period of great turbulences in my heart, but that story belongs to a different post...