Hairgrove's in Hungary: Trip To Northern Hungary & Slovakia : Day 2

The second day of our trip started off in a relaxed fashion as everyone got ready to go. There are a few things you must keep in mind when traveling with a bunch of teachers from Hungary on holiday. One: everyone is going to drink, two: this results in a slow start the next morning. Me and Ben jokingly made bets on the first day of the trip to see when the first alcoholic beverage would be served. I guessed 30 minutes, Ben guessed 20 minutes, but we were both wrong...it was 10 minutes. That's the beauty of living in Hungary, you'll always have a piece of food in one hand and a drink in the other as long as you want to.

The first and only major stop of the day was in Košice, Slovakia. Košice is the second biggest city in Slovakia after Bratislava. Košice was once part of the Hungarian empire and today still has many cultural ties to its Hungarian past. The whole history is a little to extensive to go into detail on here, but you should research it if you can. There are still people who speak Hungarian and consider themselves Hungarian in Košice and in other southern border towns in Slovakia. However, trying to figure out who is Slovakian and who is Hungarian is nearly impossible to guess unless you hear them speaking one language or the other. The relationship currently between these two countries has been at times tense. There was the now infamous "Komárno incident" in 2009, where the Solvakian government did not allow the Hungarian President to cross a bridge over to the Solvakian side. And then just a few days later after the "Komárno incident," two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Slovak embassy in Budapest, luckily causing no casualties as the flammable fluids did not ignite or detonate. Authorities condemned the attack. The foreign ministry of Slovakia stated they view the incident with great concern, but at the same time "it is seen as an isolated criminal offense."

Our Hungarian teacher friends were slightly paranoid about visiting Slovakia. When we all sat down at a café for a coffee, they were worried that we might not get served because we were Hungarians. Of course Ben playing the part of diplomat as usual said, "Well, if we all just speak English I doubt they'll know the difference." And it was true, no one even seemed to care if we were or were not a group of mostly Hungarian travelers. My thought was, "Well, since me and Ben are from the U.S. we're used to everyone hating us at some point...ha, ha."

The visit to St. Elisabeth Cathedral was beautiful, but cold because the temperature dropped about 10 degrees once you were inside. We spent about an hour there touring the cathedral and looking at the crypt. Then we all ventured to a house/mansion owned by a famous Hungarian merchant. Then we just toured around the city until it was time to go back to the bus.

We really enjoyed our short visit to Slovakia for the day and hope that they don't hold it against us for living in Hungary for a year...or for being Americans. :)