Goodbye warm showers, Ahoy to The East. I reached the border crossing from with Slovakia with no fuss or fanfare. You imagine that crossing the border from one country to the next would be like a momentous thing where armed guards scan your papers and a smiling official warmly welcomes you to their proud nation but in reality their's either nothing at all until you see different number plates or there is a long since empty customs building and suddenly the signs are in a new and incomprehensible language. So like a muffled fart we arrived in Slovakia.
If I'm honest my creative juices have run a bit dry. They once flowed like the rivers I followed, now they trickle like a leaking tap. In the beginning all the experiences are new, but after nearly a month sleeping in a tent, putting it away, cooking breakfast and rotating the feet over a axis for 6 hours a day, this becomes all part of the everyday. It's comforting however and it's a very simple way of life. Usually the most pressing question is when's my next meal. But I think I've actually always lived like that.
We woke from our river side beach paradise and lit a fire with the embers from the night before. I cycled to the nearest town to buy eggs and bread and make some good English scrambled for everyone. These Europeans only know sweet brekkie so looked a little concerned but they loved it. We packed up camp and headed back out onto the cycle way. It has been running across the top of long arrow straight dykes for the last 100km and this was no different. We were restricted to a leisurely Spanish pace so took until late afternoon until I'd worked off breakfast.
As for my new residence, my experiences so far of Slovakia and Bratislava are that a) the beer is jaw-droppingly cheap (my jaw did actually drop when I saw my first bar bill) and b) they love ice-hockey. Even in the summer people are still wearing ice hockey jerseys and every other shop sells hockey pucks. Maybe I'll get one as a souvenir and give it to an Indian boy as a useless toy.
Bratislava is a very charming city however. The streets are clean and the old buildings are well maintained. It's not as touristy as Vienna, where every other person was dressed as Mozart and trying to flog you convert tickets, but there are still boards of aimless pensioners gawping at buildings whilst a guide holding an umbrella recites some fact about pasteurised cheese. Our dinner in town was pretty much as expected: we wanted Slovak food and I think we got it. Except most of it was out of a tin. But I like tinned food. A bit like the blitz. The waiter did give us 30% off for some reason so we gladly ate the heap on the plates in front of us and left full but a little underwhelmed.
It was a Friday night and usually I'd have the in built body clock signalling its time to go and drink oneself into a coma but instead I was content with cycling to a campsite in the dark along a dual carriageway, erecting the tents and playing a Spanish card game. I didn't really understand the game but one suit of the picture cards seemed to be holding an aubergine. Maybe I will teach them some of the more choice school common room games.
The camp site we chose was on the edge of town by a huge lake. Under a cloak of darkness it was less than cosy. The toilet blocks were like something out of Shawshank Redepmtion. You had to open the creaking iron bars and once inside it was a very minimalist style the interior designer had chosen: concrete walls to ceiling with some lovely graffiti daubing the basins. I did make me wonder what prison showers were actually like, these had no curtains or anything and I half expected someone to try and shank me with a sharpened tooth brush.
On the way back to the tent, was broken glass from a smashed car window around the tent which is slightly worrying but I will sleep with a weapon next to me just in case the locals try and get me. These are strange uncharted lands..lets hope i make the morning.
Bye
Ben
