I am obliged to start this post with good news: I have returned to civilization! There is also bad news, though, which is that my stomach upset has gotten no better, though it also has not gotten worse. I am now taking pills, which I got from a local pharmacy, that are supposed to alleviate stomach cramps. To tell you how I got those pills, I have first to describe my passage to Kosice.
I was very unhappy to get up at 6:15 this morning. I would have liked to lie in bed for hours and try to sleep off my illness, but I had been given to understand that my two options for travel were to take the train to Kosice at 7:30 (or 7:04; I declined this option) or to skip it altogether. I had most of the rest of the milk and yogurt that I had bought the other day, as I had a normal appetite and did not want to throw them out, then walked to the train station. There, I discovered that the ticket office did not even open until five minutes before my train was set to leave and that I did not have a hope in hell of buying a ticket on my own with one of the machines. I got cut off by a couple of nimble locals before I got my chance to buy a ticket. The woman behind the ticket counter grabbed a roll of tickets from out of a cupboard, tore two off for me, wrote some stuff by hand on them, stapled them together, took my money, and handed my tickets to me without a schedule; she hurried, as she knew that the train was about to depart. With my handmade ticket in hand, I stepped between trains across the railroad, as there is no other way to cross it, and asked someone next to one of the trains if it was going to the weird-sounding stop-off point between Eger and Kosice, as there are no overhead signs in Eger telling one which trains are going where. I was wrong when I stated that travelling to another country cannot show you what life in that country was like: travelling to eastern Hungary has shown me what life in the 19th century was like. It turns out that it was very inconvenient.
I spent some of the train ride to Kosice sleeping, though I woke up earlier than necessary by setting my alarm incorrectly. There was little to report from the train ride: the cabin was stuffy; the windows were covered in condensation, preventing one's seeing through them; and the little that one could see was uninspiring. I was relieved as soon as I stepped off of the train: it was clear that I had arrived in an area that was vastly more developed than any part of Hungary outside of Budapest, and I was once again in a country, the language of which I could roughly understand. A local asked me if I needed directions when I stood around looking lost; I found a pharmacy and bought medicine for food poisoning (by mistake; my understanding of Slovakian is somewhat limited); I found my hostel with ease; and I had a good time exploring the city for an hour (as it is very small) before settling down and watching a movie. When I arrived at the hostel, the woman working there suggested that I take one of the pills that I had bought, as she said that they might help me with my cramps and could not hurt. Luckily, I understand the concept of returns, so I asked her how to say stomach cramps, went back to the pharmacy armed with my new knowledge, and traded my old pills in for some new ones. The pharmacist, as it turned out, new more about pharmacology than the barmaid working at the hostel.
At this point, I still feel lousy, as my stomach will not calm down, and yet my damned appetite is the same as ever. I have taken three pills so far and plan to take one more before bed, and I have decided to avoid dairy products and anything else that seems risky for the next few days. I had beef stew last night made with noodles, carrots, and very strong broth, which turned out to be just what I needed, but, having decided to increase my vegetable intake (to make up for the past few days) and try a special local dessert, I tried some further foods, especially the sauerkraut-based salad, that made me sicker again. I was all set to avoid disaster today, but when I passed a market and saw very fresh cherries (of the non-sour variety; there are two kinds in Europe) for only 2 Euros per kilogram, I bought a half-kilogram, which I have not yet sampled. I am about to get dinner, after which I plan mostly to go to bed early. I am going to get up at 9:00 AM (or thereabouts) tomorrow and take a spectacular train ride across most of Slovakia, which will take me to the capital, Bratislava, at 4:10 PM, giving me time to see the city's rather small historic city center. After that, I should have a relaxing week-and-a-half in Brno and Prague, as I expect that I planned too many days for those two destinations. I have been reworking my plans for the next few years and appear to have an excellent schedule worked out, allaying all possible regret over the planning of this year's trip.
My only real adventure of the day was a trip to the local supermarket to get soda water, which, I realized, I could combine with apple juice to make a fizzy drink that might partly allay my stomach troubles. Food here is incredibly cheap, and the types of food that one sees on shelves are different from what one gets back home. While Vancouver has a wide variety of high-fat yogurts, it does not have dozens of types of sour cream and milk, like Kosice, or packets of dried fruit that include kiwi and cashews. I knew that the alcohol in the supermarket that I visited was cheap, but I could not tell how cheap, as I had nothing to compare it with. Meat was not cheap, to my surprise, but one could buy perfectly reasonable sandwiches, which would cost 3 to 5 Euros in Austria, for just 1 Euro here (or thereabouts); I bought one in part just because it was so cheap. Ice cream costs 40 cents per scoop here; bathrooms cost 10 cents; one can buy a kilogram of certain types of cheese for just a few Euros; and supermarkets even have a decent selection of fruits and vegetables, though nothing like what we have back home.
It is nice to have returned to a civilized country. The supermarket that I visited today - in Kosice, a small town in the middle of nowhere - had the first-ever barely-sloping escalator that I had ever rode. It was almost a cross between the flat escalators at the airport and an ordinary escalator with steps: it had enough of a slope to get people downstairs, but little enough of one that one could take shopping carts on it and that disabled people could get up and down it with ease. The buildings here are run-down, just like in Eger, and a lot of the people look roughshod and weary, but there are vastly more pedestrian-only areas here than in Eger; Slovakians have discovered the sidewalk, putting them technologically ahead of both Hungarians and Americans; there is a wide variety of cultural monuments, including impressive statuary and memorial placards, in the city center; and the population as a whole seems livelier than that of Eger. The comparison is a bit unfair, as Kosice is, I gather, a much larger city than Eger, closer in size and importance to Miskolc, a city some fifty to eighty miles (I think) away from Eger (in Hungary), but the differences in cultural climate between these two small, eastern cities is too large to ascribe to their difference in size. Slovakia is a much more advanced and economically-healthy country than Hungary, by all appearances, though I cannot fathom why, as I gather that it was also thrall to Soviet rule for just as many years as Hungary, as far as I know. Perhaps it has rebounded more quickly from the economic catastrophe of being part of the Soviet Union because of having wealthier neighbors or having some key resource that helped it get back on its feet more quickly than Hungary could.
As usual, I am probably leaving out lots of interesting details that came to me, such as that the bus driver yesterday waved at the drivers of passing buses and even returned the waves of many of the pedestrians whom we passed. Drivers here are overly-aggressive, but they at least obey basic traffic laws (I wanted to say "unlike Hungarians," but I did not actually get a good look at Hungarian drivers outside of Budapest, where they seemed normal enough.). I have fantastic Wi-Fi at this hostel, and the woman who checked me in spoke good English and knew a wide variety of swear words, which she used liberally to describe her job. My stomach still feels terrible; this hostel is generally comfortable; and I met a Ukrainian woman here from Lvov who does not understand Russian - the first such Ukrainian whom I have met! I have enjoyed the similarities between Slovakian and Russian, as they are many; I think that the main difference between Russian and other Slavic languages, besides Russian's having more regular patterns of spelling, is that verbs are conjugated in a much more manifest way in Russian, and the declinations of case endings in Russian (e.g., "You are here," "I see you," "I gave you a gift," &c., all involve different cases, akin to "give" and "gives") are also more apparent (at least, to me) than they are in other Slavic languages. Perhaps this merely reflects that I have no idea how to detect conjugations, besides the nominative plural, in other Slavic languages, but I think that it also points to the relative ease with which one can learn Russian in comparison, to say, Czech. Despite my complaining every time I come across some idiotic exception to a rule in Russian, and my friends' joking that it is a language of exceptions, its orthography is so regular that it is hard to call any other Slavic language its equal.
I am off to continue having a stomach ache and to have dinner. My stomach pain may go away after a few days; if it does not, I will see a doctor in Brno and explain the situation. This is nothing serious and is probably just a result of my eating unfamiliar food or having eaten food with unfamiliar bacteria in it (or a combination of the two), but its persisting might indicate a larger problem. I have completely run out of things to say. Slovakia is a hundred times better than Hungary.
I forgot to mention that a loaf of fantastically-good bread costs only one Euro here. People here give their food away practically for free! (The barmaid here had to work a double shift, or 24 hours, for only 50 Euros. Life here is not all that great.)
I made the rookie mistake of emailing you before the day was over! I suppose that I have a superstition, based on past problems with the Internet, that, once I am connected to the Internet, I will lose my connection as soon as I turn off my computer. Hence, if I have already connected to the Internet, I try to do everything that needs doing in one go.
I failed, alas, to adequately convey the excitement of being in Slovakia and its monumental superiority to Hungary. Unlike Hungarians, Slovaks have discovered culture and do not seem to resent being alive; they have much more friendly and ornamental dogs than Hungarians; and they generally seem much more engaged with live than their neighbors to the south. Kosice has a set of fountains that noticeably cool the air in part of the city center; people do things that they enjoy in the evenings, such as walking their dogs or going out to restaurants; and Slovaks laugh and enjoy one another's company, rather than looking like they are going to kill one another. I went to a traditional Slovak restaurant for dinner and, for nine Euros, had a fantastic meal of borsch, a fried pancake full of beef, and bread dumplings, complete with sour cream, bacon, fried onion, and fillings of cheese curds, beef, or cabbage and mushroom. Slovak cooking seems to be defined by its immense variety (unlike Hungarian cooking, which consists exclusively of goulash and of fried chicken filled with things like mushrooms, potatoes, &c.): one could go to a Slovak restaurant for two weeks straight and have dishes each night that were so different as to appear to be from different countries. I forget what all else I wanted to say about Slovakia except that I would like to return here one day to explore more of the country; there is a great deal to see here, including incredible mountains and natural reserves. I do not know how to explain Hungary's and Slovakia's technically being in the same part of Europe except to claim that Slovakia is in Central Europe and Hungary is in Eastern Europe, which is one big disaster. I am looking forward to seeing Bratislava tomorrow and am glad that I discovered this part of Europe.
I was very unhappy to get up at 6:15 this morning. I would have liked to lie in bed for hours and try to sleep off my illness, but I had been given to understand that my two options for travel were to take the train to Kosice at 7:30 (or 7:04; I declined this option) or to skip it altogether. I had most of the rest of the milk and yogurt that I had bought the other day, as I had a normal appetite and did not want to throw them out, then walked to the train station. There, I discovered that the ticket office did not even open until five minutes before my train was set to leave and that I did not have a hope in hell of buying a ticket on my own with one of the machines. I got cut off by a couple of nimble locals before I got my chance to buy a ticket. The woman behind the ticket counter grabbed a roll of tickets from out of a cupboard, tore two off for me, wrote some stuff by hand on them, stapled them together, took my money, and handed my tickets to me without a schedule; she hurried, as she knew that the train was about to depart. With my handmade ticket in hand, I stepped between trains across the railroad, as there is no other way to cross it, and asked someone next to one of the trains if it was going to the weird-sounding stop-off point between Eger and Kosice, as there are no overhead signs in Eger telling one which trains are going where. I was wrong when I stated that travelling to another country cannot show you what life in that country was like: travelling to eastern Hungary has shown me what life in the 19th century was like. It turns out that it was very inconvenient.
I spent some of the train ride to Kosice sleeping, though I woke up earlier than necessary by setting my alarm incorrectly. There was little to report from the train ride: the cabin was stuffy; the windows were covered in condensation, preventing one's seeing through them; and the little that one could see was uninspiring. I was relieved as soon as I stepped off of the train: it was clear that I had arrived in an area that was vastly more developed than any part of Hungary outside of Budapest, and I was once again in a country, the language of which I could roughly understand. A local asked me if I needed directions when I stood around looking lost; I found a pharmacy and bought medicine for food poisoning (by mistake; my understanding of Slovakian is somewhat limited); I found my hostel with ease; and I had a good time exploring the city for an hour (as it is very small) before settling down and watching a movie. When I arrived at the hostel, the woman working there suggested that I take one of the pills that I had bought, as she said that they might help me with my cramps and could not hurt. Luckily, I understand the concept of returns, so I asked her how to say stomach cramps, went back to the pharmacy armed with my new knowledge, and traded my old pills in for some new ones. The pharmacist, as it turned out, new more about pharmacology than the barmaid working at the hostel.
At this point, I still feel lousy, as my stomach will not calm down, and yet my damned appetite is the same as ever. I have taken three pills so far and plan to take one more before bed, and I have decided to avoid dairy products and anything else that seems risky for the next few days. I had beef stew last night made with noodles, carrots, and very strong broth, which turned out to be just what I needed, but, having decided to increase my vegetable intake (to make up for the past few days) and try a special local dessert, I tried some further foods, especially the sauerkraut-based salad, that made me sicker again. I was all set to avoid disaster today, but when I passed a market and saw very fresh cherries (of the non-sour variety; there are two kinds in Europe) for only 2 Euros per kilogram, I bought a half-kilogram, which I have not yet sampled. I am about to get dinner, after which I plan mostly to go to bed early. I am going to get up at 9:00 AM (or thereabouts) tomorrow and take a spectacular train ride across most of Slovakia, which will take me to the capital, Bratislava, at 4:10 PM, giving me time to see the city's rather small historic city center. After that, I should have a relaxing week-and-a-half in Brno and Prague, as I expect that I planned too many days for those two destinations. I have been reworking my plans for the next few years and appear to have an excellent schedule worked out, allaying all possible regret over the planning of this year's trip.
My only real adventure of the day was a trip to the local supermarket to get soda water, which, I realized, I could combine with apple juice to make a fizzy drink that might partly allay my stomach troubles. Food here is incredibly cheap, and the types of food that one sees on shelves are different from what one gets back home. While Vancouver has a wide variety of high-fat yogurts, it does not have dozens of types of sour cream and milk, like Kosice, or packets of dried fruit that include kiwi and cashews. I knew that the alcohol in the supermarket that I visited was cheap, but I could not tell how cheap, as I had nothing to compare it with. Meat was not cheap, to my surprise, but one could buy perfectly reasonable sandwiches, which would cost 3 to 5 Euros in Austria, for just 1 Euro here (or thereabouts); I bought one in part just because it was so cheap. Ice cream costs 40 cents per scoop here; bathrooms cost 10 cents; one can buy a kilogram of certain types of cheese for just a few Euros; and supermarkets even have a decent selection of fruits and vegetables, though nothing like what we have back home.
It is nice to have returned to a civilized country. The supermarket that I visited today - in Kosice, a small town in the middle of nowhere - had the first-ever barely-sloping escalator that I had ever rode. It was almost a cross between the flat escalators at the airport and an ordinary escalator with steps: it had enough of a slope to get people downstairs, but little enough of one that one could take shopping carts on it and that disabled people could get up and down it with ease. The buildings here are run-down, just like in Eger, and a lot of the people look roughshod and weary, but there are vastly more pedestrian-only areas here than in Eger; Slovakians have discovered the sidewalk, putting them technologically ahead of both Hungarians and Americans; there is a wide variety of cultural monuments, including impressive statuary and memorial placards, in the city center; and the population as a whole seems livelier than that of Eger. The comparison is a bit unfair, as Kosice is, I gather, a much larger city than Eger, closer in size and importance to Miskolc, a city some fifty to eighty miles (I think) away from Eger (in Hungary), but the differences in cultural climate between these two small, eastern cities is too large to ascribe to their difference in size. Slovakia is a much more advanced and economically-healthy country than Hungary, by all appearances, though I cannot fathom why, as I gather that it was also thrall to Soviet rule for just as many years as Hungary, as far as I know. Perhaps it has rebounded more quickly from the economic catastrophe of being part of the Soviet Union because of having wealthier neighbors or having some key resource that helped it get back on its feet more quickly than Hungary could.
As usual, I am probably leaving out lots of interesting details that came to me, such as that the bus driver yesterday waved at the drivers of passing buses and even returned the waves of many of the pedestrians whom we passed. Drivers here are overly-aggressive, but they at least obey basic traffic laws (I wanted to say "unlike Hungarians," but I did not actually get a good look at Hungarian drivers outside of Budapest, where they seemed normal enough.). I have fantastic Wi-Fi at this hostel, and the woman who checked me in spoke good English and knew a wide variety of swear words, which she used liberally to describe her job. My stomach still feels terrible; this hostel is generally comfortable; and I met a Ukrainian woman here from Lvov who does not understand Russian - the first such Ukrainian whom I have met! I have enjoyed the similarities between Slovakian and Russian, as they are many; I think that the main difference between Russian and other Slavic languages, besides Russian's having more regular patterns of spelling, is that verbs are conjugated in a much more manifest way in Russian, and the declinations of case endings in Russian (e.g., "You are here," "I see you," "I gave you a gift," &c., all involve different cases, akin to "give" and "gives") are also more apparent (at least, to me) than they are in other Slavic languages. Perhaps this merely reflects that I have no idea how to detect conjugations, besides the nominative plural, in other Slavic languages, but I think that it also points to the relative ease with which one can learn Russian in comparison, to say, Czech. Despite my complaining every time I come across some idiotic exception to a rule in Russian, and my friends' joking that it is a language of exceptions, its orthography is so regular that it is hard to call any other Slavic language its equal.
I am off to continue having a stomach ache and to have dinner. My stomach pain may go away after a few days; if it does not, I will see a doctor in Brno and explain the situation. This is nothing serious and is probably just a result of my eating unfamiliar food or having eaten food with unfamiliar bacteria in it (or a combination of the two), but its persisting might indicate a larger problem. I have completely run out of things to say. Slovakia is a hundred times better than Hungary.
I forgot to mention that a loaf of fantastically-good bread costs only one Euro here. People here give their food away practically for free! (The barmaid here had to work a double shift, or 24 hours, for only 50 Euros. Life here is not all that great.)
I made the rookie mistake of emailing you before the day was over! I suppose that I have a superstition, based on past problems with the Internet, that, once I am connected to the Internet, I will lose my connection as soon as I turn off my computer. Hence, if I have already connected to the Internet, I try to do everything that needs doing in one go.
I failed, alas, to adequately convey the excitement of being in Slovakia and its monumental superiority to Hungary. Unlike Hungarians, Slovaks have discovered culture and do not seem to resent being alive; they have much more friendly and ornamental dogs than Hungarians; and they generally seem much more engaged with live than their neighbors to the south. Kosice has a set of fountains that noticeably cool the air in part of the city center; people do things that they enjoy in the evenings, such as walking their dogs or going out to restaurants; and Slovaks laugh and enjoy one another's company, rather than looking like they are going to kill one another. I went to a traditional Slovak restaurant for dinner and, for nine Euros, had a fantastic meal of borsch, a fried pancake full of beef, and bread dumplings, complete with sour cream, bacon, fried onion, and fillings of cheese curds, beef, or cabbage and mushroom. Slovak cooking seems to be defined by its immense variety (unlike Hungarian cooking, which consists exclusively of goulash and of fried chicken filled with things like mushrooms, potatoes, &c.): one could go to a Slovak restaurant for two weeks straight and have dishes each night that were so different as to appear to be from different countries. I forget what all else I wanted to say about Slovakia except that I would like to return here one day to explore more of the country; there is a great deal to see here, including incredible mountains and natural reserves. I do not know how to explain Hungary's and Slovakia's technically being in the same part of Europe except to claim that Slovakia is in Central Europe and Hungary is in Eastern Europe, which is one big disaster. I am looking forward to seeing Bratislava tomorrow and am glad that I discovered this part of Europe.
Goodbye, Hungary. Hello, Slovakia!
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