Forever Young

Curious about today's blog title? The crazy day came to an end with Marty and me, sitting alone in the Castle Bocian dining room, finishing a wonderful dinner, when we both looked at each other and exclaimed “Napolean Dynamite!” There's just something wrong with being in the middle of Slovakia among Penzion proprietors who don't speak one word of English, and hearing the rap version of Forever Young playing in the background. We both cracked up laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

It certainly was another exciting day, this time with the added adventure of managing to rent a car in Bratislava and drive it out of the city to our next destination. The smartest thing we did was to ask about renting a GPS unit, and we both decided that it was well worth the 5 euro extra per day just for the sense of security. With our American speaking Garmin and my Slovakia road atlas (another smart buy on my part), we managed to make our way through unexpected detours and were lucky enough to find roadside toilets when necessary, thanks to the atlas. (I don't think Garmin is much help in that category).

Our first stop was Bojnice castle. We took way too many photos, as you will soon notice, but it was breathtakingly beautiful and certainly hard to resist photographing. One must tour the castle with a guide directing the group. We were handed an English brochure describing the rooms of the castle, and asked to wait in the courtyard for the next guide. Before we knew it, thirty youngsters, about 4^th grade age, were heading through the gates and we were expected to tag along with them under the direction of the Slovak-only speaking guide. Let me just say that it was certainly an interesting experience, and I am certain that the employees of the castle weren't too happy that Marty and I were lagging at the end, attempting to see as much as possible on our own. The tour was pretty extensive and I'm certain that had it been in English, we would have enjoyed it even more.

We decided to forego any sustenance and to head out to our next destination as we weren't certain what surprises might await us. We rolled into the town where our Penzion is located just about 5:30 p.m. We are staying at a restored castle, albeit very small for a castle, but historic nonetheless, in a very small town just south of Banska Bystrica. We showed up and a man in an apron came running out in the back yard where I said hello in Slovak, introduced myself, stated “reservacia” and handed him my copy of the e-mail confirmation for my room. He finally nodded his head and smiled, and shuffled us over to a very lovely woman who spoke no more English than this man. She gave us our room key, and showed us our room, which is really quite nice. Marty smelled the food cooking and wanted to eat dinner pronto, but I convinced him to venture out to see the town of Banska Bystrica since it was on my list of important towns not to miss. It only took about 10 minutes to get there, and soon we were strolling through this lovely, old town which had been famous for mining gold, silver and copper. Since we arrived after most of the building were closed, we headed back to our Penzion to get some dinner, as we had nothing but a banana since our morning croissant and coffee.

Once back, I asked the proprietor, in Slovak, what a particular word on the menu was. He watched me intently as I struggled to get the correct pronunciation so that he would understand me, and he thought long and hard, when suddenly he blurted out, “Cheek en!”. (Chicken). We both laughed at that. The word he had in the menu is not the word that I had in my dictionary. So, Marty and I both had some form of Chicken. Mine was stuffed with olives and some sort of cheese and lightly fried, while Marty's was “au natural” stuffed with broccoli and cheese. We switched veges as mine came with green peppers on lettuce and some zucchini and corn, and his came with broccoli and carrots. (doesn't that figure?) We had some sort of potato buttercake which was out of this world, to go along with it. And we both decided to go ahead and have some strudel for dessert. It was filled with some sort of nut mixture, warm, and the perfect finish to the day. And, of course, as we delighted in the taste, listening to the background music, we both had this overwhelming sensation of feeling, “Forever Young”!