Hotel Odevak 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.

... or whatever you want to call it was like a booster shot that totally cleaned the Madrid malaise right out of me. I really feel like I am back on track again and it turned out to be one of the smartest travel decisions I have made on this trip. Oh yeah, before I forget, I should mention that the Germans have an absolute love affair with rules and bureaucracy so the extremely humorless check in frau forced me to pay the €5 fee for my 20 second interaction ...

... just about tea time so as usual I headed up to the restaurant up the road. My Norwegian fellow drinker joined me for a few drinks and he was pretty impressed that the waitresses were much more friendly than usual. After telling them that we were finally leaving the next day they even kept serving us beers long after the usual last drinks. It's always refreshing to see the human side of things.

... Ak by ste vsak chceli viacej vzruchu pridite sem v case konania sa filmoveho festivalu a uvidite davy ako sa patri. Takze horsa do prace! Zajtra budeme spoznavat krasy polnohospodarstva. Po 2600 km okolo Slovenska to bude ina forma relaxu. Bol to super vylet!

Finally the day that all Australian Esperantists wait for... the sport day. Table-tennis, tennis and badminton. Unfortunately the table tennis bats were far from ideal and the lighting was a bit dodgy too. They really only had one playable tennis raquet but the French Canadian Esperantist brought her own raquet with her so that made it two. The badminton conditions were actually laughable and a badminton tournament should never have been ...

... is only one Chinese language and all regional variations are only dialects, they probably believe that this helps to unify the country. The trouble is that they always argue so strongly but don't really know what they're talking about. I bet they have no trouble calling Swedish and Norwegian two different languages... Yet they are almost mutually comprehensible but Cantonese and Mandarin are far from being so. On the basis of that their argument is ...

... kept looking out for me which is why eventually he came out to let me in. In the car yesterday he asked me when I'd be back to the hotel and I said... who knows? Luckily he seems to be pretty good natured. At lunch there was a whole cheering team at a near by table. Great set up when you can seat a whole big group around one table. There seemed to have been only one bloke amongst them all, and he seemed to be their coach when I saw ...

Another day to kill before the start of the Esperanto school. My hotel room seems to have no tv... so I had to find somewhere to watch the Olympics opening. It's usually the same old stuff at these openings... lots of balloons, crackers, boring speeches, cute little girls singing. But the idea of the Chinese organisers to pick the cutest girl, and then have her lip ...

... 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.

... of the city and Hungary is just 16km away. Many beautiful monuments survive in the old town to tell of its past under Hungarian rule. The old city and the castle are the best parts of Bratislava. Climb up for the great views from Bratislava castle. The castle, built above the Danube, was a frontier post of the Roman Empire from the 1st to the 5th century. Since the 9th century it has been rebuilt several times, most recently between 1953 and 1962.