Magnolia 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 ...

... bus to Kralovy. Some classic street urchins... They boiserously ran through the crowd at the bus station where one of them (maybe 12 years old) managed to bot a cigarette and a light from someone waiting for a bus. The audacity of it all no doubt gets him as many cigarettes as he wants. They then swarmed all over an old locomotive at the nearby railway station. Back at the Esperanto school it ...

... 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!

... one of the badminton players... but in reality the badminton comp didn't really go ahead. Anyway, just about all the interest was in the table tennis as it turned out. The final turned out to be between me and a young fellow from China. Luckily for me he'd obviously been spending his time in China learning Esperanto rather than hanging out with his mates and playing table tennis so I snuck in for a win. In the evening the program ...

... evening was pretty good. Geir, my Norwegian mate, spotted one of the teachers (from Hungary) at the bar. He thought it made for a good photo opportunity... No wonder Esperanto is so popular in Hungary. I still haven't quite trained my doorman back at the pension well enough yet. He's been leaving the big gate open, but the door's always still locked and the bell doesn't seem to work so I end up napping on a seat in the garden until he comes and wakes me up.

... a made up word in Esperanto - Lorenzo's place. I'm not sure whether he chose to sit outside every night because he's a smoker, or because it's a nice open space to sit down in, something that seemed to have been lacking inside. It was usually him, the two Portuguese girls and anyone else that dropped by. A very welcoming group. Finally though there was just me, the greater of the two Danes and a bottle of some Slovak spirit left. And yes ...

... she did have me standing next to her which probably (no doubt) didn't help. Or maybe Slovaks just aren't into giving people lifts. I walked back to the congress-centre with Solenne and then I decided that as I didn't have anything else to do other than sit in the restaurant and sink a few more beers, I might as well walk to Budmerice, the next town, by myself. It turned out to be a pretty boring walk with lots of fields and sunflowers by the road ...

... 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.