THE JOY OF TRAVEL

 MY SPRING 2001 TRIP TO SLOVAKIA

My spring 2001 Slovakia trip started on March 10. This time I was able to list for a flight through a family member that works for Air Canada as a stand by for CAD$150.00 a deal too good to pass. Well here it is how it went:

When you fly as a partner, you can’t plan too far ahead. As it was getting closer to my tentative departure I found out that all flights are extremely overbooked due to the seat sale. I wanted to fly through Calgary to Frankfurt and I was told that I might have better chance by flying through Toronto. I booked a car in Frankfurt, which is non-refundable. My flight was to leave at 8:30 AM. There was an all Canada, Air Canada computer melt down and this resulted in colossal mix-ups and delays. First flight was delayed and filled to the last chair and I stayed behind. Second flight was leaving two hours later and I was taken to the plane’s doors to see if there would be a seat left for me. Well there wasn’t. So I waited for the third plane due to depart 11:30. Of course by these delays even if I got on the next plane I would have missed the flight to Frankfurt and God only knows if and when I get there. As I had plenty of time now, I started to think about the air travel.

Recently Air Canada had a seat sale to Europe and you were able to book a regular schedule flight to Frankfurt or Munich (my preferable destination) for CAN$ 699.00 plus taxes. Now while I sit here and think about my possible worst outcome of this trip, I should have taken that offer. As a frequent flyer member I would be credited with 10000 points towards my next ticket. You need 65000 points to fly to Europe. That is in reality about CAN$ 150.00 value. You do have a full luggage allowance and that is two suitcases of 70 lbs. each. When you take the CAN$ 150.00 off for the points the real net price is CAN$ 549.00. More and more I think about it I am starting to realize that charter flights aren’t really a good deal after all. When you fly on charter, cost is anywhere from CAN$ 699.00 to CAN$ 1199.00 you are restricted to 40 Lbs. in one suitcase and you don’t get any points. If you carry the same weight as on regular scheduled flight you will be charged CAN$ 5.00 per kilo over the 40 Lbs. One-kilo equals to 2.2 Lbs. the extra you would have to pay is CAN$ 225.00. You also have to pay for your alcoholic beverages and if you have a total of five drinks during the flight, that will set you back another CAN$ 25.00. Add the CAN$ 150.00 for the missed points and you have a new price for charter CAN$ 1099.00 opposed to CAN$ 699.00 seat sale on regular flight. When you now take the seat sale price of CAN$ 699.00 and take off CAN$ 150.00 for the points and CAN$ 225.00 extra weight and CAN$ 25.00 for the drinks, the real cost is only CAN$ 299.00. In my arrangement as a partner then I am still saving CAN$ 149.00. The only difference is that I can’t say for sure if and when I get to my final destination.

Well I got in on the next flight leaving at 11:30 to Toronto. The flight by AIR CANADA was fantastic, arriving in Toronto about 7:30 PM. Upon my arrival I had got my suitcase and transferred by bus from domestic to international terminal. I am really happy that I chose to have only one suitcase and one carry on bag and camera case, as it would be really difficult to have the additional suitcase. My flight to Frankfurt was gone. So I started to read the departure screens and there was nothing in sight for Germany. At the service counter I was told that the next flight to Frankfurt is in about 22 hours however there are two additional flights to Germany tonight. One was Lufthansa to Frankfurt, but since I am not the employee of Air Canada, they couldn’t put me on that flight. The other being delayed AIR CANADA flight to Munich. The staff at Lufthansa counter was really helpful in pointing me in the right direction. I learned that I could fly, as there were plenty of seats on this flight. I received boarding pass right at the check in counter. So I was on to Munich. This flight was fantastic as well. The only problem I could possibly face was that my rent a car reservation through the Holiday House in Toronto was in Frankfurt and not in Munich. Well I thought I will deal with that in Munich and I know that everything will be fine.

Right now it is morning above the Atlantic Ocean, there are scattered clouds below the plane, and I can see the water. They are just about to serve us breakfast and in two hours we will arrive in Munich. When I left Vancouver yesterday morning, we had spring like weather, warm and sunny, in Toronto there was snow everywhere and minus 3 Celsius.

We arrived in Munich on time. There is no problem with my car reservation being at Frankfurt airport. However I do have problem in fitting my luggage and camera equipment into the tiny trunk of Ford-K car. So I am stuck at the airport, as they don’t have a slightly larger car at the moment. I was offered upgrade to a larger car for extra DM 10.00. I refused to take it. You see if the rental company can’t provide you with the car you booked, they will automatically upgrade you to a larger car for free. My problem was that they couldn’t get rid of the K car. After a while the dropped the extra charge to DM 5.00 per day and that equated to DM 120.00 for the 28 days. This time I am somehow paying way too much for the car rental as my last three car rentals through Holiday House and Budget rent a car in Munich were below CAN$ 22.50 and this time I am paying CAN$ 28.41 per day, roughly CAN$ 6.00 more per day. Mind you I met two young guys that flew stand by from Vancouver and their rental costs were CAN$ 790.00 for 14 days. So my deal isn’t bad after all and I gave them my travel agent’s phone number for future reference. It is Sandy at Pacific Sun Holidays and her Toll Free number is: 1-800-570-4590.

Now it is a waiting game. I have no problem with that. Cars are being returned all the time and recycled to service every few minutes. The main thing is that I am in Munich and I will be saving time and gas as Frankfurt is further away from Slovakia then Munich. It is 10 after 2 PM and I am getting tired of waiting. At the counter I was given bad news. There aren’t any new cars. So I took their offer and got Opel Astra 1.6 hatch back. My entire luggage fitted in the trunk. Wow this is a bee. It flies at 200 Km per hour, no problem, but you notice it in your gas consumption. So I decided to try not to over 140 Km per hour. I arrived in Bratislava in about 4 hours, as the road works didn’t start yet in Germany or in Austria. They start to repair sections of the Autobahn in both countries in early spring and the traffic is slowed down until the late fall at many locations.

I had a real good night sleep and first thing in the morning was a phone call Izabela Pažitková to my friend and the director of the press office at the Slovak National Theatre, only to find that she is really sick with ammonia. After that I went to the telecommunications office to buy international phone card, but of course they open at 8 AM, so I went to the post office to mail the newsletter to our Slovak and international recipients. The way it seems this may be the last issue I will mail to Slovakia. I have reduced the free copies to about 60 and further reductions will be made prior to the next issue. Then I went to the Ministry of Culture that is located next to the main post office, to visit my friend Jana Kozáková. We had really good discussion on the state of the culture in Slovakia. We also talked about my article regarding Megalomaniac Villam Gruska in the spring issue. It is really sad that he is back at Detva Folklore Festival and will be pushing his ideas through the programs at the festival. Then I returned back to the telecommunications office and bought International phone card. With this card you get a credit in the computer of Slovak telecommunications. You dial the number, enter your code, enter the calling number and you will be notified of your credit and a length of this phone call your credit will cover. You can use this card anywhere in the world. Many times while visiting your friends and you have to make a call, well with using this card there won’t be any charges on their account. I called my wife and kids from the phone boot. I did notice that the cost overseas phone calls have been reduced substantially. Later on I went to the Slovak Syndicate of Journalist to get my Slovak Press Card. In the afternoon I visited another good friend of mine and the director of the Karol Matulay Institute, Edita Kruszlíková. She recently implemented some ideas that I had given her about parent participation in the Catholic Schools in British Columbia and she made a really great progress on that. Later on I met Jana Kozáková again and we went to Hungarian cultural center for the opening of very interesting exhibit about Hungarian Royal Crown dating back 1100 years. Later I went for dinner to fairly new restaurant that got really high ratings in the press recently “The Three Musketeers.” Well, all I can say that perhaps the writer that gave them the high rating didn’t know what he was talking abut as this dinner was a total disaster and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. There were four of us there. We ordered and the waiter, after an hour waiting, brought only three orders, apologizing that he forgot to order the fourth order. They have run out of smoked pork hooks and bread at 8 PM. My spare ribs were so badly burned and dry that I returned my order back to the kitchen. The headwaiter came back to argue that those ribs were fresh. Well they tasted as reheated for the third time, dry and were burned as charcoal. So we decided never to give in again to any reports on any restaurants and to stick to the VODNÍK, as we always get a first class service and the food is excellent as well.

Next day I went to Prešov to visit my friend Bohumile Onasisse, Jaroslav Biroš. I stayed in Prešov three days. I made a trip to Hervatov to take pictures of the only Roman Catholic wooden gothic church in Slovakia as I was asked by their priest Mgr. Jozef Heske to exhibit my pictures during their 500 anniversary celebrations. I also went Údol near Plávnica and Stará Lubovňa, visiting family of a friend of mine from USA. In the evening I went with Jaroslav to a really good restaurant in Prešov called Pharaoh, wow what a portions, service and really reasonable. Next day I did some research in Veľká Ida, near Košice. The edge of this village is the fence of now US STEEL s. r. o. Košice. Here, while visiting the church, I found from their priest that the church is in need of some major repairs and I promised to him to publish his address, as there may be some recipients of our newsletter with roots in Velká Ida. You can send personal check or international money order, many thanks in advance.

Otec Michal Rebreš
Rimskokatolicka cirkev
044 55 Velká Ida
Slovakia
Phone: 011-421-95-6992-155
Account number: 20197066/6500

In Košice I went to TESCO hypermarket, as that is how they call the superstore. It is open 24 hours, something similar to Wall Mart or K-Mart in North America. Several European Chains opened their stores recently in Slovakia such as: Carefour, Kaufland, and Metro which is very similar to Costco.

I returned to Prešov later on in the afternoon to make dinner for my friend. I cooked oriental spare ribs. Next day I was on the way to Bratislava through Detva and Zvolen. In Detva I visited my friend PhDr. Jana Kuzbelová and owner of PARTA folk store located right behind Hotel Detva. We went for lunch at the hotel and it was a total disaster. I wouldn’t recommend it at all.

Later on I continued to Bratislava. I really don’t like the road from Zvolen to Nitra as I find it dangerous, always full of slow moving trucks, narrow and winding. The freeway is finished from Nitra to Trnava and then you continue on the old one from Trnava to Bratislava.

I used to always make a point to go to Sereď between Nitra and Trnava to the factory outlet for HUBERT sparkling wine. Recently their prices right at the factory skyrocketed and in fact it is more expensive than at BILLA, KAUFLAND, TESCO or CAREFOR stores. The best price was at Kaufland, Poprad 76.99Sk and that is about US$1.50. So I don’t shop at the HUBERT in Sereď anymore.

Monday morning I had a research job in Czech republic, in Moravia, tiny village near Šumperk called Hrabištín. Later on in the afternoon after returning to Bratislava I took my friend Miroslava Dulová to Vienna and the local METRO mega store there. Well I can tell you that I find COSTCO here more spacious and having far better selection of merchandise. I spent the next week in Bratislava and on Monday I went to Detva, picked my friend and we went to Liptovská Teplička and the Pension DOLINKA. Here I managed to get some more pictures for my next exhibit during the 6th year of Folklore Festival under Kráľova Hoľa in Liptovská Teplička August 4-5, 2001, visited few friends and next day we went to Spišská Kapitula to see my friend Father Ján Zentko and to take pictures of Death of St. Mary’s altar. Then we went to see the cathedral of St. James in Levoča had a really nice talk with my friends the lecturers at the cathedral and had a great lunch at the THREE APOSTOLES REASTAURANT. From Levoča we went to Spišská Sobota, which is now part of Porad, where I think the most beautiful altar by Master Pavol from Levoča is located. It is the altar of St. George killing the dragon and it also has the last supper. This one is smaller then the one in Levoča bus somehow I like this one better as I can really get close to it. We met the Roman Catholic Priest Father Michal Lipták. He gave us a tour of the Church of St. George and we were amongst the first to see their newly restored baroque organ. Also all the altars are covered during the period of Lent in Spišská Sobota and we were able to see the paintings that are hidden throughout the year. The town square has been paved, new park built and also all houses have new stucco. They are just finishing the old city hall and the bell fry. It should be all finished by summer and if it is I will photograph the town and publish the pictures in the fall issue.

From here we went to Svit near by and visited training session of folklore group Janošík and had a coffee with their manager Slavo Bednarčík. We were also able to visit their equipment and costume rooms. Everything is put away, stored, and organized with army like precision. We returned to Liptovská Teplička in evening and went to visit my friends Mrs. and Doc. MUDr. Vladimír Pohánka PhD.

Friday morning I join the folklore group Tepličan and we went by bus to Donovaly where they had Morena performance for Ministry of Foreign affairs tour of diplomatic core personnel. From there we went to Starý Smokovec in High Tatras where they continued their performance and this time the audience included the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Eduard Kukan. It was a fun day and I am glad that I went with Tepličan as I made lots of new friends.

Saturday I went to Poprad and picked my friend Ing. Nórika Gašková that used to work few years as a nanny in Vancouver and we attended the opening of the new Šrobár’s Sanatorium for Tuberculosis and Respiratory Problems in Dolný Smokovec. My friend Doc. MUDr. Vladimír Pohánka PhD. opened it after about 10 years of construction. What I seen was simply unbelievable and definitely had a touch of western standards. You see this sanatorium is designed for children and accompanying mothers and it has everything, just unbelievable. All rooms and hallways are color coordinated, computers are everywhere, and they even have an indoor pool and sauna. The food at the reception was out of this world; this is the first time I had beef Wellington in Slovakia and many other goodies that you won’t see even at the four star Slovakia’s hotels. Dr. Pohánka is also a violin player and he played with the local band for long periods to the amazement of many employees, associates, sponsors and friends. I returned to Liptovská Teplička in evening. Next few days I was just resting and enjoying suddenly improved weather. I returned to Spišská Sobota with our Liptovská Teplička reporter Marcela Smolárová, rung the bell at the parish house, there was no answer. I tried several times and looked around. There were three stone masons chiseling mortar from the rock wall of the church and to my amazement one of them was the priest, Father Michal Lipták all dressed up as stone mason with chisel and hammer in his hands. I asked him and got permission to photograph all covered altars in the church. I returned to Bratislava the next day, packed and soon I was on the way to Frankfurt Germany where I got on the plane to Montreal. Here I catch a plane to Toronto and missed all flights to Vancouver, so I stayed over night at the airport catching the first morning flight to Vancouver that had plenty of seats empty.

I staid home for Easter and skied almost every day above Vancouver at Grouse Mountain and decided to go back to Slovakia for a week as a friend of mine Terezka Janíková from Liptovská Teplička was getting married on April 21st. This time I wanted to fly through Toronto to Munich. There were hundreds of people stranded at the airport from previous day; this was topped off by flight cancellation. So it didn’t look too promising. With the help of very nice Air Canada personnel I was able to switch to Calgary and then fly to Frankfurt. I arrived in Bratislava about six hours after leaving Frankfurt. The trip was really tiring as now I was into over 24 hours of traveling. Next morning I went to Liptovská Teplička. Friday I took my friend Jozef Smolár to Stará Lubovňa and Údol visiting family of a friend of mine. I was running out of diesel fuel, so I stopped at local gas station and the nozzle wouldn’t fit into the car. Luckily I had enough diesel to make it to Bardejov and gas up there and we went through Prešov, stopping in Spišská Kapitula to pick up newly published book by Anton Lauček: “I will command about you to my angels,” from my friend and the director of the Bishop’s office Father Jan Zentko. The book is about the Slovak Martyr Bishop Ján Vojtašák who was jailed by the communists for 14 years for no reason.

Next day was the wedding day and it was special for me, as I never attended a true village wedding. The wedding celebration started at 3:00 PM continued until 5 AM.

Monday I took the newlyweds shopping in Poprad and even I shopped at some Chinese stores. I managed to get four-dress shirts for about US$ 8.00 and six pair of socks for about 75 cents. Funny pricing. We also went to Spišská Sobota and to Father Lipták amazement I not only delivered my new pictures of the altars taken just fourteen days ago but also all the pictures I took over the years in the Church of St. George. He was very happy to get all the pictures. I will be photographing the town square hopefully this summer once the old City Hall will have new stucco together with the Church’s bell fry. I returned to Bratislava following day, packed and went to Munich at night arriving there early in the morning., The flight to Toronto wasn’t full, I got on no problem. In Toronto I missed only one flight and got on the next one. So you see flying stand by isn’t so bad after all.

Vladimir

GO BACK TO TRAVEL

Published in the Slovak Heritage Live newsletter Volume 9, No. 2, Summer 2001
Copyright © Vladimir Linder 2001 
3804 Yale Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5C 1P6
The above article may not be copied, reproduced, republished, or redistributed by any means including electronic, without the express written permission of Vladimir Linder. All rights reserved.