EuroQuest: Day 6 - Slovakia

Hi everyone! So this was sort of our first and last day in Slovakia! We had to get up really early, which on the one hand, was an opportunity to leave the creepy hostel, but on the other, was  at 5am! One of leaders has a girl in her unit whose Mum (Marianna) is from Slovakia, and they happened to be on holiday in Slovakia the same time we were staying there, so we went to visit them!

It was a long bus journey to their house as they lived in Smolenice, outside of the capital Bratislava where we were staying. When we got off the bus we were told we were going off on a little hike through the forest, but thankfully Mariannas husband was there to take our huge rucksacks off us and take them straight to their house! We walked a little bit up the road to find a space to eat the breakfast Marianna had brought with her for us. She had a mixture of breads and some jam to go with it, which was delicious! My favourite was this sweet bread which I think was kind of like brioche?

We then started to walk into the forest and up a hill to visit some caves. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take any photos of the caves but they were absolutely stunning! Some of them were huge and when we all went into the main cave he turned the lights off to give us a sense of what the people who first discovered the caves and it was ridiculously dark! When we came out, we climbed on the rock side of the hill to to the top where we could see the entrance where the first people climbed into the caves from! As well as that, we could see all over the forest and it was amazing!

We then headed back down and went on further into the forest to this sort of big old office thing? Anyway, it had a tower which we all went up and we could see all over the town as well as back into the forest. It was then a short walk to Mariannas house where she had cooked a BBQ for us and much to my delight, she had bought some tofu for myself and Evie! It was so nice to have actual vegetarian food again!

We then caught the bus back and I think everyone fell asleep because we had been up since 5am! We got off at the port where we were catching the hydrofoil to Vienna. It was so windy on the back of the hydrofoil and there was some reenactment of Titanic!

We got the the hostel and it was really nice! I was in the room of 6 and it was pretty packed because there were 2 bunk beds and each had a little pull out tray with another mattress in which basically took up the whole floor! As we got there pretty late and there were no restaurants near where we were staying we decided to get take away pizza!!!

If you want to see more I filmed a bit of what we were doing so you can check that out below. The video is a montage of several clips and pictures throughout the time we spent in Slovakia as apposed to these blog posts which a split by day.

SLOVAKIA VIDEO: COMING SOON!

I hope you enjoyed reading this and feel free to leave any comments!

EuroQuest: Day 5 - Budapest/Slovakia

Hi everyone! This was our last day in Budapest and so we decided to head to one of the places Budapest is quite famous for - the spa! We went to the Gellert Spa which was in a really fancy hotel which looking as we did in Guiding uniform and shorts we didn't really fit in!

None of us actually had any spa treatments, so we just used the pools which were separate to the spa. There was a main pool in which every hour they turned on the wave machine; a hot pool which has heated to 36°C and it literally felt like a bath, and a freezing cold tub next to the sauna. I decided to wear my new swimsuit I had bought a couple of weeks prior to my trip from Primark and it was a really nice nautical style one which could be worn with or without straps. However, I fell into a little bit of predicament when one strap unattached its self I couldn't get it back on so I decided to just wear it strapless. Big mistake! Firstly, without any straps to hold it up, it looked very unflattering as I think it was designed for someone with a smaller chest than mine. Secondly, when the wave turned on I was left with the struggle of holding it up in order to retain my dignity. It was also the first (and last) day that I got sunburnt, but thankfully it was only a little bit on my shoulders and nose!

We then headed to the train station to catch a train to Slovakia! By now it was about midday and 41° and we were traipsing through Budapest with our giant rucksacks on, literally sweating buckets! Our train was so late arriving that several of us decided that the platform floor seemed a good place to have a little nap! We actually got seats on this train but it was so hot outside the air conditioning wouldn't work! The man in the serving food and drinks was going mad with the heat which brightened up the journey a little bit!

The strange thing about the train was they didn't announce the stops so suddenly we found ourselves rushing to get everything packed away as ours was the next stop! The station we got off at didn't seem like a main station should - it sort of looked like the station in my town! But we were assured that it was Bratislava's main train station. The temperature when we finally got there was still ridiculously hot!

We got to the hostel, which was basically some student halls for a university nearby and I think this was the scariest place we stayed in! As we were waiting in the lobby there was a giant wasp flying around on a mission to kill, but thankfully a man who was also waiting managed to swat it with a tray (not that I condone the killing of insects but I see it was self defense because it looked like it was ready to kill us!)

We then went up to our rooms and found out that it was 1 bathroom per 2 rooms, but we had all been split up so we were essentially sharing a bathroom with people we didn't know... but then it got worse! I was sharing a room with Frances and thankfully no one seemed to be in the room next to us and we had a lock on the bathroom door unlike some of the others, but I then lifted the duvet from my bed to find the mattress and sheet were blood stained - which is just what I wanted! Safe to say, I slept on top of the duvet. Jenny and Emii met there neighbour, only to be told he kept a basket of girls back at home (which later turned out to mean he had a lot of sisters)! Tash and Evies neighbour brought back a girl in the night and well... the walls were pretty thin so I don't think they got much sleep!

Once we had put our stuff in our rooms, we headed over to the 24 hour McDonalds as it was the closest food place near to us, but they didn't have any of the vegetarian options such as a veggie burger/wrap/sandwich which we have over here. I ended up ordering a salad, which wasn't too bad! (Although I didn't use the strange blue cheese dressing that they gave me with it!)

If you want to see more I filmed a bit of what we were doing so you can check that out below. The video is a montage of several clips and pictures throughout the time we spent in Budapest and Slovakia as apposed to these blog posts which a split by day.

BUDAPEST VIDEO: COMING SOON!

SLOVAKIA VIDEO: COMING SOON!

I hope you enjoyed reading this and feel free to leave any comments!