Danny Beer - Danny Beer. Tourist on Wheels. A European Adventure

You want to make it to Tatranska Strba, a town with nothing there but it is sign posted. You make it on dusk and find a nice motel to stay in. Your clothes, bags and bike are dirty from the road. The front bags are quite frosted. You try to wash your ski pants in the shower but they are so dirty they need a heavy duty wash, as does the rest of your clothes, your bags, your bike, not lest yourself.

The day starts out alright even if the highway is very busy. Traffic is generally courteous but often a truck would come by too close and too fast pulling me into is slipstream. Buses are the worst. They never give room and they never wait. At least they don’t try to force you off the road like they do in Taiwan though.

By lunch time you get a flat. This time it’s the front. But that’s okay. You’ll just put on the spare and fix the puncture in the evening. But wait. Why is the valve so fat? It doesn’t even fit through the hole. Looks like you’ll need to repair the flat now after all.

So you put on the patch but the tire doesn’t seem to want to inflate. So you try again. And again. You manage to inflate the damn thing a little. Enough to walk the bike but you can’t ride it.

So you walk. Five km to the next town, Levoca. There you’ll be able to find a service station and perhaps even a bike shop. On the way you find a restaurant and stop for lunch. Your one embarrassment is that you leave the seat up in the women’s bathroom.

You find a service station just out of town and inflate the tire easily. But just one km later it goes again, totally flat. Once again you start walking. This town is quite attractive. Why isn’t it in the guide book? Oh, it is. Lots of pretty buildings and even a 16th century cage for putting impure women in. You ask for directions to a bike shop and sure enough, success! A pretty young girl even follows you to make sure you find it.

So you buy two new tubes and a bike pump. You even get the guy to inflate it for you, after yet another unsuccessful attempt. Yet again the tire blows after riding it for a little while. You go back to the shop and the guy finds the reason why. There is a hole in the actual tire itself. So you buy a new tire. You think it is a little smaller than the old one but you’re sure it will be fine. You hope.

But now it is almost five. It is starting to get cold and dark. So you’ll stay here tonight. You don’t want any frantic searching for accommodation on dusk like last night.

28—2 91 km

You awake again to blissful snow falling down from the heavens. Breakfast and a quick (ish) trip to the town hall museum and you’re off. The first point of call is the neo-gothic cathedral just out of town. This turns into a ten km plus detour up a hill you really didn’t need to make.

Spisske Podhradie is the next point of call, sight of Spissky Hrad, the largest castle in the country. There is also a magnificent cathedral there so you stop there first. But alas you have to wait half an hour so into town for lunch you go.

The cathedral is great, like its counterpart in Levoca. The castle is closed for winter. But by then it is already two and it’s a long way to Kosice.

Just out of town you see your first evidence of slums. “Gypsies’ you think. The sun bids you hello but snow abounds. You are slower than time allows for. A mountain hinders the final few km to Kosice. It gets cold and dark. The final descent is no fun at all. It is however eerily beautiful.

Eventually you make it into town and eventually you find a place to stay, the same place you stayed five years ago with your then girlfriend. Riding for just a few minutes without your gloves chills your fingers. You put the gloves back on.

No cycling tomorrow. It’s a rest day. Besides, you have a lot of tourist stuff to do.

Ah, the first day of spring and the first day in a week it hasn’t snowed. Today, the last full day in Slovakia, is a rest day, to be spent doing tourist stuff. There are a couple nice museums in town and many chances to take photos of pretty buildings.

This year marks the 800th anniversary of the town’s cathedral. A climb up the narrow tower stairwell affords great views of the city.

You buy a bike pump but it doesn’t work so you exchange it for one which does. Another bike shop has the same bike, a Giant OCR 3, for sale. It’s the newer model so has a few better features. It also has a price tag almost double what you paid.

Slovakia is a great country. Kosice is a nice city. But it is time to move on. Hungary beckons. Hopefully the cold Slovakian winter is left behind and a warmer climate is found.

You see a bum peeing in the middle of the street. Oh. How lovely. You don’t think before crossing hurriedly.

Fairwell Kosice. On the outskirts of town you spot another of the numerous dogs, ready to attack and yet fenced off from doing so. It runs along yapping until it runs out of yard. Then it pops through a gap under the fence and keeps going. “Oh shit!” That wasn’t supposed to happen. Eventually it tires and you slow down to a more relaxing pace.

It is too difficult to find a restaurant open for breakfast so you elect, instead, to find something on the way out of town. Fifty km and near the Hungarian border later you find somewhere. By now it is lunch time.

A look at the menu doesn’t help at all so you choose something at random. It must have been a lucky guess. Yummed up and ready to go the border check point proves slow yet eventually painless. It is certainly easier than five years ago when you had officials from both countries follow you through five train carriages to retrieve your passport from your bag.

And welcome to Hungary! And wow, a bike lane just for you. How convenient. Haven’t seen one of those for a while.

Blue skies and a quiet country road makes for a happy cyclist. But this cyclist is hungry and doesn’t get to eat until lunch, 45 km later. You see a couple horses pulling a cart. You get out your camera but they pull into a yard. Never mind though as this will certainly become a familiar site over the course of the day.