Getting High in the Tatras

Hello from High Tatra National Park!  Actually, we're in the flat in Bratislava, but you'll remember (don't you?) that the last blog post about Lisbon came from the Panorama Hotel in Strbske Pleso, the resort area where we stayed, and that post promised photos of our trip. Here are the photos, and a little description of our adventures.

Paula, studying the rules

When we visited in Colorado last summer, we found out that Rocky Mountain National Park and the High Tatras National Park (part in Slovakia and part in Poland) were sisters, like sister cities.  We already wanted to go to the Tatras, but that made us even more anxious.  A Slovak teacher at the lyceum told us that the two parks became "sisters" so the Slovak park could learn the ropes--and now the small country of Slovakia has nine national parks!

By the time the school year was under way and we had the time, traveling in the Tatras posed some risk, so we decided to come in the Spring.  The mountains in all of Slovakia got a lot of snow this last year, but our end-of-April break (tied up with the May Day holiday)

Cogs in the track

promised good weather, so we went. We took the train to Strba, a small junction along the way east, and caught the cog railway there.  The Strba spur is the only cog railway in Slovakia, so we wanted to try it.  Cogs help the train up the

...and here comes the train!

steep grade to Strbske Pleso.  "Pleso" is Slovak for "Mountain Lake," so this is Strba Mountain Lake.  

Strbske Pleso on Saturday morning

When we got there on Friday, the lake was nearly completely frozen over, despite the air temperature being near 70. When we left the next Tuesday, the lake was

Strbske Pleso on Tuesday

nearly completely open, although we were not tempted to go swimming.  The ducks, with no nerve endings in their webbed feet, and the frogs, who were mating and noisy and didn't care, were all fine with the cold water.


We took our first hike on Saturday up to Popradske Pleso, another (you guessed it) mountain lake.  The trails are all very well marked, but that didn't prevent us from getting off onto a logging road and having to scramble up a ridge to the right trail.  As we got higher the snow got deeper; witness the hiker looking at a bridge rail, which should have been like another one on the same path a little later.  Hikers got off the beaten path at their own peril, and sometimes sank into soft snow and running water even from the walked-on path.  This was particularly true when we hiked up to a waterfall on Monday, after a couple more days of warm weather.  We could hear runoff under the snow upon which we were walking, and the water sometimes melted the snow too much.  We also waded through rivulets made by the melted snow.  By that time, though, we had given ourselves (or each other) advance Mother's and Father's Day presents of hiking sticks, and a welcome addition they were!

The waterfall, and the sticks

 

A trail marker for cross-country

Sunday we went to church, of course.  Well. we went to Kezmarok, about an hour and a half train ride through Poprad. Kezmarok has one of the biggest "articled" (that is, wooden) churches in Slovakia.  These churches got their names when the Austro-Hungarian empire made it legal (published articles) in the eighteenth century for Protestants to build churches again.  The churches had to be of wood with no nails, be built within a year, and be outside the city

City gate, with the church outside

walls.  German Protestants had settled in Kezmarok in the sixteenth century, so the town was quite well disposed towards them.  The first church went up shortly after the decree, but the Lutherans replaced it about thirty years later with the present structure.  Not content, they built a new church in the nineteenth century.  A lyceum building

Pointing to "Lyceum Library"

stands on the same plaza, and although the school closed in the 1850s the library remains, and is available as a great resource for those who study the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.


We were immensely lucky.  Lutherans worshiped at nine; we arrived after ten.  Both the old an new churches had hours posted, but not until Tuesday.  We wandered around the outside until a woman approached us and asked us (in German) if we were not the German tourists.  We said no, we came from the USA and worked at the lyceum in Bratislava, and asked if she spoke English.  She said no, but rapped on the door of the old church.  Another woman came to the door, they spoke in Slovak, and the second woman let us in! We paid our 2 euro admission and wandered around in the wooden church for half an hour.  We could not take pictures, but ask to see our postcards!  When we emerged, the first woman said she needed to set up the "new" church for the German tourists, so would we like to see it?  We followed her in and bought a CD of the organs, new church and old, being played by a woman who now is on the seminary faculty here in Bratislava.


Kezmarok is more than the churches; it is a pleasant city.  We stopped for a little something on the way to the castle, which (alas) was not open, and we had a lovely lunch at The Three Apostles (we ate at the Twelve Apostles in Kosice, but Kosice is bigger). Then we returned to Strbske Pleso for our wonderful, if wet, hike to the waterfall the next day.  We returned to Bratislava on Tuesday, only to go east again the next weekend.  Stay tuned!