Poprad Tatry

Up to this point in the trip, It hadn’t really felt like I was on vacation. It had felt a bit like work. I was constantly looking for photo opportunities that accurately presented the general ambiance of where ever I happened to be at the time. Such opportunities weren’t always easy to find. I was also constantly scrambling to find my hotel or to book the transport to my next location. This all changed when I reached Poprad Tatry in the Slovak Republic. Everything just fell into place after I stepped onto the train from Bratislava. When I arrived in the Poprad train station I was immediately greeted  by a modern and well staffed tourist office  in its main hall. I stopped in to see if they could help me locate my hotel. No problem. My hotel was about 100 feet from the station. I only had to descend an escalator, take the first door on my right, and there it was. I checked in and walked back to the train station where I had an excellent panoramic view of the High Tatra mountains that I had come a long way to explore.

An electric railway ran from the station up into and along the mountain chain. It was clean, fast, and convenient. Since the High Tatras are a popular skiing destination in the winter and hiking destination in the summer, the locals were well versed in knowing how to make us tourists comfortable. Yes, there were a lot of tourists, (mostly European), but this tourist destination covered so much ground that it never felt crowded, and tourist industry personnel never seemed overwhelmed. They had plenty of time to direct me away from unexpected problems and made my visit very pleasant.

Growing up in the United States in the 1960’s I was led to believe that the countries behind the Iron Curtain were uniformly grim and forlorn, and people there eked out a precarious living making shoddy goods that no one including themselves wanted to buy. I believed the inhabitants of these countries had been doomed to a lifetime of nothing but tears and hopelessness. It occurred to me, however, as I was riding the electric train into the mountains, that people did occasionally have some fun under Communism. This train had existed long before the Iron Curtain was taken down, though it had clearly been upgraded since then. (I passed one of the old engines on a train platform). There were also many old hotels up in the mountains that had been in use since before the second World War. People had been coming here for hiking vacations for generations, and a lucky few may have even come to ski.

I took the train to its western terminus at Strbske Pleso. This town is the Slovak Republic’s version of Lake Placid. It hosts hiking and other outdoor activities during the summer, and skiing during the winter. It also sports a ski jump and serves as a winter sports training center. Like Lake Placid, tourists can easily find many places to sleep and eat in and around the town.

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After disembarking the train I found a map of the area and its hiking trails. I found a trail into the mountains that looked long enough for a full days hike, but short enough so that I wouldn’t miss the last train back to Poprad Tatry.

I started out in the fog. I thought the day would result in some healthy exercise but no clear or dynamic pictures. However, after about a half hour I had climbed above the fog, and the sun lit up the mountains magnificently. I pulled out my best camera and began clicking away. Everything was falling into place as if by magic. I was finally in my ” zone”, and all was right with the world.

I was able to climb the trail relatively easily. It was well maintained and wide enough in most places to drive a four wheeled drive vehicle up it. While a few spots were too narrow to drive all the way to the end of the trail today, vehicles must have been able to do so during the construction of a hotel, a restaurant and a snack bar located at the trail’s end.

The trail wasn’t too crowded though I did run into a group of about 50 Chinese tourists on my way in. They were very old and moved slowly, so I was able to quickly pass them and had plenty of opportunities to photograph the mountains around me without including any of my fellow travelers.

Eventually I clambered down into the valley and crossed a small bridge over a stream that formed the inlet of a mountain lake.

There, deep in the mountains someone had built a hotel, restaurant and snack bar. I ate at the snack bar which was just as well provisioned as any snack bar that you could have found in any Slovak city. Of course, since every pop-sickle had to be carried in from the outside, the food was a bit more expensive than normal, but after a long hike, cost didn’t seem important to me at the time. I walked near the shore of the lake for a while, and then, since it was getting late, headed back down the mountain.