Kosice Adventure

This past weekend, I traveled with some of my friends to Kosice, the second largest city in Slovakia. When I asked my students what they thought of Kosice, they said it was much better than Bratislava - they thought it was more "cultural." I told them that I had heard there was a four story Tesco (Tesco is similar to Wal-Mart) and that I was pretty excited about that!

Rachel, Eric and I left T-town at 7:20am, and arrived in Bratislava some time before ten. We were met at the bus station by an American ELCA teacher-missionary who was stationed in Kosice and shortly after we met up with my friends and fellow teacher-missionaries from Poland.

Our first stop was the Kosice Zoo. This zoo is certainly not world famous - it didn't even have giraffes! Rachel joked that if the lions that we saw really wanted to get out - they could easily bust through the fence. As you can imagine, the zoo was a little sketch. Neverthless, we had a fabulous time at the zoo because of the people we were with.

(I took a picture of this porcupine because earlier last week when a student was describing his neighorbor's appearance to the class said, "He has porcupine hair." The class laughed - we knew exactly what he meant, but he did not use good English.)

Across the parking lot from the zoo is a single Slovak roller coaster that my friend Colleen just had to ride. I was a little nervous about the ride because if it was anything like the zoo, we might not make it off the coaster alive. Still, I told Colleen I was in. When I saw the roller coaster, I'm not sure if I felt better or not. It certainly was nothing that would make safety regulations in America. The ride was a bobsled shoot - and it reminded me of the luge in the Olympics. You sit on a plastic seat with no back and no seat belt, and the only thing you hold onto is the brake. Then you travel up the side of mountain and at the top, you bobsled downwards. I'm not going to lie and say I didn't scream the whole time. I'm also not going to lie and say I didn't do it again!!! We rode the coaster a second time and had more fun than the first. Don't tell mom but I never used my brake. It was fabulous! Here's a picture of me bobsledding.

After the coaster ride, we had a picnic lunch which our friend Dee (a teacher in Kosice) had put together. It was an All-American meal: we had sandwiches, mustard, mayaonaisee, nectarines, and homemade cookies with American chocolate chips. Life was good.

Then Eric, Colleen and I played on the playground while the rest of our group traveled in a car to downtown Kosice. Then, our driver came back to pick us up. He took us to a world-famous Roma ghetto called Lunix IX --- this experience deserves it's own blog entry, so stay-tuned and I will share with you my thoughts and pictures from Lunix.

On Saturday we had the opprotunity to walk around downtown Kosice.

This is my friend, Colleen, in front of the Old Communist Bar. On the door it still says, "Tomorrow, we will give all patrons half off." The operative word here is "tomorrow." As the Slovak with us said, "It was always tomorrow."

We walked through St. Elizabeth's Cathedral.

We also saw the musical fountain and bell tree. In one of the parks, there is a fountain whose water pressure changes as the tempo of the music that is being played changes. There is also a bell tree that rings at the top of every hour.

There is an underground wall museum that we were able to visit. This museum dispalyed pieces of the walls of Old Kosice from hundreds of years earlier.

After a full day of sightseeing, playing with friends, and enjoying good food, Eric, Rachel and I headed back home to T-town.