When one finds oneself in the Auschwitz parking lot sitting at the operations office table in Escape Velocity after a rough day, physically and mentally, you can expect some simple solutions. Our short term goal is Budapest. Laying a ruler on a map from Auschwitz to Budapest will describe the in-depth planning going on. It’s the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid plan.
The eagle-eyed Escapees among you will notice that Slovakia is directly in our path, but we weren’t in the mood for details. We do know that Slovakia uses the Euro. And we know we’ll have to buy insurance when we arrive at the Turkish border and we’ll have to pay in Euros. We have only zloty and koruna, and too little to exchange for Euros. It’s been a real surprise to find so many EU countries that are not using the Euro, and as far as we can tell Slovakia is the last country we’ll transit before Turkey where we can get Euros. So our only goal for Slovakia is to find an ATM and get a pile of Euros before driving to Hungary.
It’s raining and Marce found a small parkup on our route, but it’s quite tilted and a tight squeeze. We got out the ramps and made it work.
We awoke to a light rain tapping out a tune on the roof and cornflakes with coffee. On our navigation screen I noticed a purple dot almost overlaid on our own position cursor, which means there’s some kind of heritage item of interest near by. The rain lightened up so I hopped out of Escape Velocity but all I could see was a small forested village nestled in a mountainous terrain. I walked around for a few minutes. Turning around I happened to look up and my jaw bounced off the pavement. Three hundred fifty feet up was a castle in the scudding clouds, perched on a rocky outcrop.
I fetched Marce and we tried to find out how to get up there. Sure enough, down the street I could see a small hut which is probably going to house a ticket office. When we asked, the woman in the ticket kiosk just pointed up an impossibly steep, slippery, cobbled, ankle wobbler of a path.
Marce more than hung in there.
Finally we made it to the permanent slippery draw bridge at the entrance.
If this place looks at all familiar it turns out it’s probably because this castle stood in for Count Orlok’s Transylvanian Castle in the 1922 film Nosferatu. I’d say it was well chosen. It has a creepy Eagle’s Nest kind of vibe.
The original wooden fortification was built up here on this rocky outcrop in 1241 in the kingdom of Hungary, after the Mongol sacking of Oravsky Podzamok. Borders, names and people moved and changed around a lot back then. (Come to think of it, they still do. My family couldn’t even answer the question, “Where are you from?” without a ten minute history lesson which was impossible to comprehend. I don’t think even they fully understood it.)
Where was I? Oh yes, the tunnel.
We are constantly climbing.
Marce gets the Eagle’s Nest Medal.
What goes up must come down. This is where the slippery part really came into play.
We moved Escape Velocity from the tilted parking lot down to a more level place by the river just as the rain resumed.
Daunting but rewarding.
As Marce always said “The wealthy always live high in the hills”. Marce proven correct once again. With each read I am swept away to a distant land and imagine myself woven into the landscape whilst reading. I love that once you made it to eagles nest you scouted a better place to park EV. Can’t wait for the stories on Turkey. Bucket list item!