Szombathely - Zagreb

Well, quite a lot of things happened lately but we just didn't have time to write about them. Szombathely was actually not that small as we suppossed it would be - we were not really in the centre yet when I was writing the last post ;) When we finally got there, we were very positively suprised, cause the city looks really pretty and it has a lot of interesting places to visit - for example an old cementary where the graves are all in ivy.

After some hours of sightseeing we met our host - Beata and we realised that we had met her in France exactly two years earlier! We had really great time talking with her and her other 3 guests - a girl from Germany, who spoke Polish incredibly well and a Polish-British couple, who came on Saturday with their dog. It was so nice, that we've decided to postpone our traveling to Zagreb, so that we could spend more time with them. We chilled-out for the whole Saturday, went to the lake and a village museum and finally drank some beer. It's difficult to say if this was a good decission, cause we had quite a lot of problems due to it later...

When we left Beata's place on Sunday morning we went straight to the road and after less then half an hour we got a ride to Kormend. People who took us were really nice, though we didn't really understand each other... The next person was a nice lady who took us about 10 km, unfortunately we left our marker somewhere on the road hurrying to get into her car. Then we waited for some time and a family stopped and took us closer to the border. All the time I had to practise my very poor German, but I think it's time to start learning some Hungarian... It's quite a shame not to be able to say even "thank you" when you hitchhike through a country. The only Hungarian words I managed to learn where words such us "cheers!", "truck" and "for sale" :))) Plus some names of fruit, which are actually amazingly similar to the Polish ones...

Anyway, the sun was shining as crazy, we started to get sun-burnt and tired. But that was just the beginning, cause in the next place we waited for more than an hour. The motorway from Hungary to Slovenia and Croatia was almost empty, the few cars that were going this way were full packed for the holidays... We were really loosing our hope, we didn't know if we should start to walk to the border (10km!). And there was no sign of shade anywhere... Finally somebody took us to the gas station near the border, where we could at least drink something and use the toilet. But all the trucks that were there couldn't move till 10 p.m. (Sunday!) so we waited another 3 hours...

At last we decided to walk and we crossed the first border, then several kilometers of Slovenia and with a little help of one local driver, we finally got to the Croatian border. There we also waited some time, but fortunaltely (yes, yes, yes!) a girl took us to Zagreb! We were so happy in the end but the whole day was really awful... we started hitchhiking at 10 a.m. and got to Zagreb at 10 p.m. And it was less then 200 km!!!

But Zagreb is really beautiful! When we saw the first buildings, we decided to see some more and instead of looking for accomodation, we left our luggage in the lockers and went sightseeing. It's such an amazing place even (or maybe especially) at night when it's almost completely empty. We've even decided to look for Ph.D. studies here :))))

Bratislava and Szombathely

So finally we got to Bratislava (it wasn't that easy - it was raining and after an hour we've decided to go back to the bus station... But it wasn't bad, cause buses in Czech Republic are cheap and after two hours we were in Bratislava. The city is still beautiful :) We had been here two times before and we still don't have enough of it. We stayed at a camping place in Zlate Pieski, but the weather wasn't good enough to take a bath :(( The good thing is that there's quite a lot to see in Bratislava even in the rain, and we saw some interesting exhibitions, drank home made beer in Slovak pub and finally went to a folk concert, which took place in an open-air library (I wish we had one like this where I live!).

So, today we woke up very early (for us) and took a bus to a little town or village South of Bratislava, where we waited less than half an hour for a very nice woman to stop. I don't know if she was Slovak or Hungarian, couse she spoke both languages, quite a lot of people in this region do it...Even the radio was Slovakian all the way to Gyor :) Our driver was so nice that she took us to the road going to Csorna. We got to this place with another driver and shortly afterwords we where in Szombathely. The two last drivers didn't speak any other language than Hungarian, but still we managed to exchange a couple of sentences ;))

Now we're in Szombathely somewhere in the centre I guess, cthe place looks a bit small but nice. We're sitting in an internet cafe, that we;ve found after some efforts and after a little bit of sightseeing we're going to meet our host, Beata.

Tomorrow we'll probably get going, still don't know if we should go to Zagreb or directly to Ljubljana...We'll see :)))

Brno

Our trip to Brno didn't start very well, cause when we woke up on Monday after the night with a concert, exhibition and some Kirgiz theatre (Brave Festival), we really didn't feel like going anywhere. Fighthing with ourselves and the rain, we went to the road going South and luckily after half an hour a car stopped :) The driver was a Hungarian, but he spoke Czech and a bit of Polish, so we could communicate without any problems and the four hours we spent with him were really nice (Piotrek even felt so good, that he fell asleep :))). The driver took us all the way to Vyskov, very close to Brno and after waiting a while and drinking coffee at a gas station, we got a lift to Brno - the driver was really kind to take us to the centre, even though he was going to Vienna and just passing Brno.

Anyway, Brno is a really beautiful place! Smaller than Prague of course and very calm at this time of the year, but there are a lot of things to see. We went sightseeing, then relaxed in a park and in the evening we met our host from HC - Monika, an incredibly nice and helpful person, full of energy and good humour - who took us home together with to French guys, who were staying there. We were talking for several hours, it was really great!

On Tuesday Monika took a day of work and showed us the city, we've visited the castle and a very good vegetarian bar (yummy!). Then we went to a museum and later Monika took us to a medieval pub were we tasted some delicious honey wine (medovnica, I think). It was a great evening, we went also to a pub were everybody, including the bartender, was smoking grass :)

Today we'll visit some museums and go to Bratislava :)

What a beautiful day :)

That was a beautiful day! First we went to the New Agora symposium and listened to an interesting discussion, then we've heard and seen Bourderland Fundation's plans of creating International Dialogue Center in Krasnogruda - I hope they'll succeed!

In the evening we went to the Brave Festival. The aim of this year's edition is to show "drowned songs," the traditional music and art of cultures at the edge of marginalisation and "drowning" in the so called progress. The profit from the festival will be used for projects, which support traditional cultures, for example for education of Tibetan orphans (let's hope it will be in the spirit of pedagogy of place).

The festival's programme is so impresive, that it'll be a pity to leave Wrocław... We were lucky to take part in athe concert of Alim Qasimov and Fargana Movlamova, mougam singers from Azerbaijan - really extraordinary! Today we're going there again - I can't wait!!!

Wroclaw

When we were leaving Ustka it was so cold and rainy that we burdened our bags with some useless warm cloths. On our way to Wroclaw, nobody disturbed us in our train compartment - who travels back from the seaside at the beginning of the season?

Unfortunately we overslept the first part of the day. We didn't manage to come to the morning session of The International Symposium New Agora, where the star of the day was probably Zygmunt Bauman. And the topic of the day was "Religion versus civil society: The role and place of religion". The afternoon part of the session was good enough. Unfortunately, even though the participants spoke the same language, they didn't seem to understand each other. At the end some people were confused because a distinction between "church" and "religion" was blurred too often. Others were shocked that religion was too easily employed by speakers as a tool to build civil society. As a result, they had to remind each other why the state and the church had been separated.

We will come there tomorrow again :)

Besides, Wroclaw is charming as usually. When you stroll with somebody here, it is very easy to start kissing :*

Two more weeks and we're starting the trip!

We've already started planning the trip :) We'd like to set off from Ustka the 5th of July (my birthday!) and spend 2-3 days with Piotrek's parents in Wrocław. Then we're going to head for the Czech Republic... To see more places that we're planning to visit, click on the map on the left. We'll try to update it whenever we change the plans :))