Balnea Grand Piestany

... some of the countryside. Trenchin itself is only a small place but quite peaceful and the castle again rests above the city. After having a walk around the castle we headed back to the train station to catch the train. I didnt bring that many warm clothes with me basically because I dont have any from working in Africa so the ones I was wearing were getting well used all the time.

... idea to head into town by bus and I met a guy from Porto of all places who was headed to a hostel. I decided that was as good a place as any to stay and we found our way there with his confusing directions from the internet. Somehow, and I have no clue how, we managed to get off the bus at the right stop, and then two helpful Slovakian guys from the plane pointed us in the direction of the #14 tram. We then discovered that the tram we were waiting for would ...

... and strange sausages. It was nice to observe the young dancers really enjoying themselves. There wasn't the slightest feeling that they were doing this because they were pushed into it by their parents. They just seemed to be having so much fun. Yes, there were some impressive churches and nice looking narrow streets as well. I had one last walk around the old town wall then hopped back on ...

Nasu turu okolo Slovenska koncime stylovo - a to v kupeloch. Nasa posledna zastavka pred tym ako skocime do auta a zajtra do sklenika v Zabokrekoch je kupelne mesto Trencianske Teplice. Oproti ostatnym kupelnym mestam posobi velmi zaspato a mozno prave to je jeho ...

... It would be nice to hope that she'll continue with Esperanto, but unlike most of the other participants she was probably talked into going along by her teacher. And as is generally the case... her reasonable knowledge of English made progress in the language away from the classroom not so quick as it could have been. Though it must be said that she and her friend were often asking about Esperanto words so they were definitely interested.

... the afternoon, in Esperanto, on various topics. This was one given by a Slovakian Esperantist from my class, on the nature of language or something. Following that I managed to make one of the Chinese at the course really angry by insisting that Cantonese is not just a dialect of Chinese but a language. It seems to be that everyone from mainland China has the same attitude. I suspect that it's part of the brain-washing from the government. By insisting that ...

... in the country... no idea where, but the two blokes seemed to be having a good time. And eventually we got dropped back at the congress centre. I suspect that both of our heads were spinning a fair bit by then so probably don't remember that much of where we'd been. Back at my pension, the front-door bloke told me that he'd had a look for me at 2 in the morning, at 4 in the morning... I rather sheepishly made my apologies and... went to bed.

... I needed some change for the ticket vending machine and I tried the newspaper kiosk but the woman there refused... so I bought a newspaper. She asked which one do I want? I said any one will do. I suppose the sare sort of thing happens everywhere but if you have vending machines near the Central Station surely you need to make it easy for travellers to make change. Anyway, where was I off to? Well, a (the) major website into getting ...

... over Trencin. Walked back down to the train station and caught the 2.50pm train back to Bratislava. Arrived back at the main train station in Bratislava at about 4pm and caught the tram back down to Obchodna then walked back to the hotel. Went out for dinner at 6pm and ate at Slang Pub on the main square before walking to Tesco for more supplies then back to the hotel for the night.

... european tourism (a lot of foreigners from the West and from Middle East), well developed touristic infrastructure. I had another chance to visit Piestany for few hours in June 2004 (short visit to Slovakia for work). And I felt disappointed ta that time - the city looked kind of empty, there seemed to be no new infrastructure and it did not look appealing any more. Maybe that's the contrast of how much the whole region changed in that 10 years...