Tough times in Slovakia

Compared to Hungary and Latvia where everything followed the script pretty much perfectly, this was a more testing trip. The God’s didn’t always smile on us; the unavailability of Mark, a 6hour flight delay, bouts of food poisoning (I’m still not eating solid food yet!), insect (flea/bedbug?) bites from the bed, a mediocre quality hostel in comparison to the previous trips, castles that were closed, dangerous terrain underfoot, missed trains and surly waitresses greeted us on this trip…But thanks to excellent company and a good spirit, it proved to be a great trip and a worthwhile journey.

We set off in good spirits, but the first blow came when we were told the flight would be delayed by at least 6 hours. Not only did this mean that we’d be spending 8hours in Manchester Airport, but more disappointingly we’d arrive in Slovakia at 1am Sunday morning instead of 7pm Saturday evening and our plans for spending the night in the town were derailed. There were a lot of loud and very drunk men (presumably on a stag do) on the flight. At one point some of the guys got so aggressive towards each other that I had visions of a fight breaking out and the plane being diverted to another airport….We eventually arrived at the hostel at 2am and tried to salvage some of the evening by heading out for a few drinks, but thanks to poor information by the girl on reception, we didn’t find anywhere open.

Got some excellent views of the city from the castle and the viewing platform from the bridge at Novy Most. Walking around was slow and difficult being mid-way though a large thaw with large pools of water lying on top of hardened snow. Also, the Town Planners of Bratislava did not look upon walking highly and it must rank as being one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly cities I’ve been too, yet this is not unusual in ex-communist countries. We did however make it to the very communist suburb of Petrzalka where, at Shiz’s insistence, went for a beer in a local bar. I had visions that it would be a den of xenophobic locals hostile to outsiders, particularly rich westerners, but instead we watched Slovakia vs Kazakhstan in the Ice Hockey in a very civilized atmosphere as well as being a mere 38p a pint. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Sampled a few of the excellent Slovak and Czech Beers that evening.

Late Monday afternoon I suddenly started to feel very ill, which culminated in me unexpectedly vomiting at the checkout in Tescos, before spewing up several times in the street outside. I spent the next 12 hours bedridden with a fever, feeling like death unable to even drink water before making a semi-recovery for the trip to Trencin the next day. I blame the Szeged Goulash I ate at lunchtime, though mysteriously Shiz also had the same dish and was fine. I can only assume that the gypsy-looking waitress took a dislike to me and cursed me (it’s happened before!).

Trencin castle had the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately I was more focused on trying not to vomit or to soil myself (since I’d had been having copius bowl movements) rather than giving the surroundings my full attention!

Overall though an excellent couple of days despite a few set backs, though if I’d been alone it’d have been a pretty miserable time.

Bratislava!

So it’s Bratislava next weekend with Shiz and Paul H. Unfortunately we’ll be fielding a slightly under-strength team with the absence of Mr Taylor, but it still promises to be an excellent long weekend and I’m looking forward to sharing the delights of Slovakia with Shiz and Paul, who are both Slovak virgins. I’ll flatter myself with the title of ‘Slovak Veteran’ as it’ll be my 3rd time in this great country. Went with Mark in 2000 where we only visited Kosice (see Wild East 1), again in 2002 (see Wild East 3) when we were diverted from Turkey and revisited Kosice and went to Levoca and Bratislava (where an unsuccessful attempt to find the conservatoire from the 1987 Bond film The Living Daylights took place).

Anyway, checking the weather it’s currently well below freezing with 15cm of lying snow at the moment. Unfortunately though, the long range forecast is indicating milder weather with rain and balmy temperatures of +5 by the end of the week. So here’s hoping the weather will turn a bit colder at the end of the week – Budapest was perfect last year with sun and temps of 0 during the day and –6 at night.

Bratislava is an odd place, the second biggest town in the old Czechoslovakia, located a mere 3km from Austria – hence the large number of hopeful escapees to the west during the communist era. There’s lots I haven’t seen like the infamous Petrazalka communist prefabricated concrete suburbs and Devlin castle. In 2002 Bratislava was one of the cheapest capitals I’d ever been to, so hopefully this won’t have changed much.
As far as running is concerned, I’ll hopefully get a massive 3 runs in this week and hopefully will be able to go above the 2km barrier in future.

The Manchester Run

Just to answer a few questions regarding my non-participation in the above run.

I had made my mind up that I intended to take part in the Manchester run, but decided to leave it for a bit to try a couple of practice runs before entering so I could judge whether I would be capable of sustaining some sort of training regime. I didn’t want to sign up and then find I hated it, do hardly any running and then get a humiliatingly pathetic time in May. I (mistakenly) thought that as long as I was signed up by mid/late Feb, I would be in plenty of time (last year as far as I could recall, people were being signed up in April?). But, not being a runner myself or being the sort of person who ever seems to be ‘in the know’, I totally underestimated how popular the run would be. Anyway, I shall try and keep to a small-scale running regime till the end of February. More as an experiment to see if this does give me any side benefits, and to see if I could ever keep to a running schedule over a longer time period. If I don’t notice any benefits by March, I’ll quit.

A look at political correctness.

Just stumbled across an article about Political Correctness in wikipedia the other day and found it very funny. I'll share it with you.

Hope Shiz won't find this too offensive!

The practice of satirizing politically correct speech took on a life of its own in the 1990s, in a satirical example of political correctness speech, the sentence

"The fireman put a ladder up against the tree, climbed it, and rescued the cat" might look like this:

The firefighter (who happened to be male, but could just as easily have been female) abridged the rights of the cat to determine for itself where it wanted to walk, climb, or rest, and inflicted his own value judgments in determining that it needed to be 'rescued' from its chosen perch. In callous disregard for the well-being of the environment and his and others health and safety, and this one tree in particular, he thrust the mobility-disadvantaged unfriendly means of ascent known as a 'ladder' carelessly up against the tree, marring its bark, and unfeelingly climbed it, unconcerned how his display of physical prowess might injure the self-esteem of those differently-abled. He kidnapped and unjustly restrained the innocent feline with the intention of returning it to the person who claimed to 'own' the naturally free animal. The firefighter later filed a lawsuit claiming compensation for unjustly suffering the undignity which happened to breach his Human Rights and exposure to possible injury that climbing a tree entails. He won 100% compensation, thus making tree climbing impossible forever. The council later cut the tree down to avoid such an incident occurring again.

Closed!

Just checked out the rangers blog and saw that Russ hadn't made it onto the Mcr run, due to it being closed. And here was me thinking that they'd be desperate to sign-up people up on May 20 at half price rates! Oh well time to hang up my trainers for another year! I have to say I'm a bit surprised that it's booked out so early as we seem to be nation of shoppers, allegeric to walking, that drive anywhere and everywhere in the car. I blame last years TV coverage!

Anyway, I must get to Moldova this year. I can't afford to leave it any longer or there's bound to be some property programme highlighting the cheapness of flats in Tiraspol and I'll arrive to find about 500 000 Brits there on holiday.

The vegan couch potato vs the alcoholic athlete

Well I have finally started my ‘training’ for the Manchester run. It kicked off on Tuesday with my little circular jog around Nether Edge in Sheffield which I’ve called The Circuit. It’s about 2.1km and going off the maps at work, involves 30m of climbing. I came in around 11mins and felt OK, which was good – when I attempted it last year for the first time I think it took me about 14mins and I had to walk some of the way. The Circuit Reversed is the more difficult way being mainly uphill for 75% of the way before a moderately steep descent to the ‘finish’.

My ‘training’ will hopefully occupy a position somewhere between Shiz’s ultra-methodical tightly structured approach and Piggy’s rather undisciplined disorganised approach. If I start to make some real progress I can run up towards Eccleshall, at a rather scary altitude of 200-280m (I’m at 95m!!). But that’s a long way off, I might get fedup and bored and give up next week.

Just something to keep you musing – if an ‘alcoholic sportsman’ who is overweight, smokes, drinks heavily, goes to bed late, eats junk food, but goes running for 5km 6-7days a week was in the Manchester Run against the ‘vegan couch potato’ who has an exceptionally good diet, doesn’t drink, goes to bed at 9.30 each night and sleeps for 9hrs, does daily yoga etc but hardly ever does any running. Who would win?

My money is on the Alcoholic Sportsman!