Two weekends ago, I went with basically all the other Americans here, and a few Slovaks and a British guy as well, to the High Tatras, a mountain range in the middle of Slovakia. We stayed in Tatranska Lomnica in a penzion. We left Bratislava Thursday evening (we had school off that Friday). Friday morning most of us went skiing or snowboarding. The rest went on a hike. I went skiing.
Now, I haven't gone skiing more than a half a dozen times in my life, but I didn't think it would be much harder than the other times. Let's just say that I couldn't have been more wrong. There were so many times when I thought I was going to die. When I went skiing before, it was on little mountains or hills, nothing spectacular.
It took a good eight minutes on lift to get to the top of the hill. I exaggerate things quite often, but this is no exaggeration. The first time we went up, the lift just kept going and going and going. We went into clouds. It was absolutely ridiculous. The temperature must have been 20 degrees colder on the top than on the bottom.
It was so cold that ice froze in my beard, as you can see in the picture on the right. Lying on the ground is also how I spent about half of the day. I didn't make it down the mountain without falling once. One trip down the mountain must have taken a good 20 minutes with about 5-7 of those minutes falling down and trying to get back up.
Though the skiing was very difficult, the best thing about skiing was the view from the top. I could see for miles and miles. Simply amazing.
The next day we went hiking. I was quite sore from skiing, mostly from falling down, and from not knowing exactly how to ski. I was told that it would be a two-hour hike to a cottage that serves food. This sounded like just the right amount of time for me. Nevertheless, this time estimate was highly exaggerated and it took twice as long to get there. Though the hike wasn't what I expected, the area was quite beautiful with the pure snow and land nearly untouched by humans.
On Sunday, we returned to Bratislava, refreshed and ready for another exciting week of school.
2 comments:
I'm happy to see you are getting to experience a lot of the country while you are there. We were in Europe this summer and I loved seeing all the new places.
Our congregation continues to think about you and pray for you.
dan, don't be silly, the hike on saturday didn't take 4 hours! it was 2,5 hours to get there. i know, i was there :-) and that was the easy destination, jozi had planed something far worse...
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