I have been to Slovakia plenty of times and always love it. In my opinion Bratislava may not be the best city to visit if you really want to discover the country. You should have a stop there but I think it’s also very interesting to have a look at other, smaller places in the country.
I like this country and I’ve always found new things to enjoy even if I have some predictable places I always want to go to and things I love to do again and again.
To start with, I can write some words about the country’s biggest music festival because I’ve been to it three times already. It is called the Pohoda festival and takes place in July, on the runways of Trencin airport, and lasts three days. There you can listen to many kinds of music, learn to dance, sit on the grass and drink whatever you want, watch a movie outdoors, and so on. The tickets are not expensive compared to the amount of fun you can have during those three hot Slovakian summer days.
The second thing I’d love to write about is central Slovakia. Here you can spend a delightful time in lots of little cities like Bojnice or Banska Štiavnica. Those cities are beautiful and very rich from a cultural point of view.
I must add that one of my favourite places in Slovakia is in Bojnice and is called Varadero. This is the best Cuban cocktail bar I’ve ever been to. It’s really worth stopping in this area to visit the castle and to try the Varadero’s Special Mojito, this way you can appreciate both sides of Slovakian culture – its historical background and its dynamic modernity. If you go to Banska Štiavnica you will enjoy the city, the lakes around it and certainly a tea house called Cajovna Klopaka where you can taste amazing tea and coffee.
If you go to the country I advise you to try the typical Slovakian breakfast with seeded bread, cheese, ham, fresh green peppers and tomatoes; also try the Haluski cooked with bacon grease; have a bite into a Kolacky made with poppy seeds, and don’t forget to drink Kofola.
To conclude I can advise you to plan some day trips around Slovakia as you’ll be very close to Vienna, Budapest and Prague, and also to go hiking in the beautiful High Tatras for a while.
If you decide to go there by car, use a sufficiently detailed map of Europe’s motorways and you won’t lose your way like I did, reaching the Poland borders thinking I was driving towards the Czech Republic.
I would recommend you to have with you the Czech and Slovak Republic map by Freytag & Berndt because it’s sufficiently detailed and it covers both countries but also some of the surrounding areas in Austria, Germany, Poland and Hungary. I would also recommend a small map of Bratislava to help you visualise easily where you are in the capital. As far as guide books are concerned, I recommend the Bradt guide to Slovakia, as it will be really helpful to plan your trip across Slovakia as it is full of information about accommodation, public transport and more.
Author: Pauline Martinez