Friday 22 May 2009

Slovakia (2): Košice

I spent this morning holed up in my apartment, working on my biological psychology assignment (yes, I know should have finished it before I left).




After spending the morning in a quiet air-conditioned room, the outside temperature, not to mention the streets full of people (including a large number of teenagers, all blowing whistles - not sure what that was all about) came as a bit of a shock.

I spend a few hours wandering around town, and visited the park, where it was a relief to escape into the shade of the trees. It was quite an overcast day, not ideal for taking photos, although of course that didn't really stop me.


I also visited St Elizabeth's Cathedral, and St Michael's Chapel next to it. The latter was lovely - small and quiet, with murals painted on the walls, and I spent a little time there in quiet contemplation of life in general.


Before heading back to my hotel, I found a bookshop, which after some searching proved to have a reasonable collection of English books. I picked myself out a couple readers for the coming week, and then had a look at what else was on offer. As ever when I travel, I was surprised to see just how many English/American books are translated into other languages, and amused to see that not only titles, but in some cases, also author names had been translated to appeal more to the Slovakian eye.


After a bit of a rest, and a half-hearted attempt to continue with the assignment, I went back into town for dinner, deciding this evening to find myself something that was (in my mind at least) typically Eastern European. I found myself at a small restaurant on the main street, sampling borscht with perogies (ok, technically speaking, that's Polish), followed by pork with stewed sauerkraut and dumpling.

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