Chapter Three

Today, a place of silence (at least for me):

Bears, Sinti & Roma

We were excited during our first nights in the Tatra – in bear country. It wouldn’t have been so easy for Pünktli here, apart from having to go and look for them before we left. You hear and read a lot about “how to behave properly” in bear regions. Autumn is the peak bear season – according to a group of park rangers who had scared us away from a fascinatingly beautiful off-pitch in the High Tatras. “The bears come in everywhere!” Fear-mongering or fact? The Romanians handle their bear issue quite differently – but we’ll get to Romania later. We travelled through Slovakia for just under 14 days, far too short, in my view, for this magical, wild Tartar landscape. Unfortunately, we have to admit, the cold and wet weather drove us further south.

Nevertheless, I will try to mention some of our experiences here.

Let’s be honest, we all have our prejudices – some more, some less.

We try to approach our journey as unprejudiced as possible. To let ourselves be influenced by the moment we experience. Despite my Czechoslovakian roots (mum from Brno, dad from Bratislava) I have to admit that this was the first time I visited Slovakia.

We have been to the Czech Republic many times and I would claim to have got to know the country relatively well. In Slovakia, I was somehow completely surprised at how well I speak the language. Some examples: I order something in a coffee shop in Prague (in Czech, which my family took with them to Switzerland in 1968 – of course with an unmistakable Swiss accent) and the answer is in English. We are standing at the counter in a bakery somewhere in rural Czechia and order something… So the lady looked at me and said with joy “Where do you come from, sir? …I haven’t heard that form of politeness for 30 years!” That’s how the world changes with all its languages.

As children we always smiled at Slovak because it sounded funny to us. Today I have to express my greatest gratitude to my parents that we were only allowed to speak Czech/Slovak at home (in the presence of our father) or that we were supposed to speak this mishmash. But this mishmash helped us to get through Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria in the best possible way and to be able to communicate somehow.

Back to the topic of “prejudices”: we chug through the countryside with hundreds of magnificent castles like we know them from fairy tales. Regularly we see, wondering, very dark-skinned people on the road. And suddenly we are driving through an area with children playing in mountains of rubbish, where at first we thought: “We don’t want to have a breakdown here”, we didn’t even have the courage to stop and document this photographically.

We were somehow shocked, paralysed by the sight of this scenery, so I take the liberty of showing some pictures from the web here (we drove past the places in the first 3 pictures):

There were only three left

On 22 September we crossed the Hungarian border. When we arrived at the border, we were stopped by 2 dudes in trainer shorts who were somehow playing customs officials. Unfortunately, I had tried unsuccessfully to get a toll sticker for Hungary online the day before.

So there we are, dumbfounded and slightly overwhelmed by the language: “We have to pay the toll here, otherwise we’ll get a hefty fine of 500€! Well, I get out and go into the officials’ hut. Here it already feels more official. A woman behind the glass serves me. After about 20 signed documents, the ice between us breaks. Lo and behold, I get a smile. After a few more signatures and a good 60€ poorer, she explains to me that we are now allowed to drive on Hungary’s roads for 48 hours. Quite perplexed, one of the dudes leads me back to the car and begs me.