Slovakia Day 14 – Baptism, Radvanský Jarmok, and a Graveyard

I am very tired at the moment, and I have had a crazy day. I am not even sure where to begin, whether it be the baptism that I attended, or the crazy festival that I went to. Either way today I am going to have to write a lot, and I only have about 45 minutes to do it, as I am coming close to midnight. (Wow, I just realised this, but it has been two weeks already! Very hard to believe!)

I woke up today at about 10:05, with a knock at my door. My host dad tells me that we will be leaving soon, and I need to get up. I vaguely remember being told that we were going to a baptism, but I did not really know when or where it was. I quickly put some pants on and grabbed my sweatshirt and thought I was ready to go. When we got to the church I realised that I was somewhat in the wrong attire. I was wearing some dinky old jacket, while everyone else was wearing very nice suits and ties. I did not really know how to feel about that, but I pretended that I did not notice the people staring at me and tried to enjoy the service that was provided. I am frustrated that I was not able to take pictures, because I had forgotten my memory card AGAIN.  I keep meaning to buy another one, but I just haven’t quite found the right time.

After the service, we ran a quick shopping spree, dropped our groceries off at home, and walked off to lunch. Either no one really knew where we were going, or they didn’t want to tell me. Either way I was surprised when I got to the restaurant, and I was even more surprised when I saw the same people from the baptism. Although I was surprised, it did make sense in the end, that the whole family was going to eat lunch together on an important day. While I was at the restaurant, I got educated on an important part of Slovak culture, although I don’t know if I can share it. I met some fantastic people that all told me I had to visit them. I definitely will take up on guys offer, he and his family currently live in Bratislava, and they offered to take me all around the city. I hope that I will be able to travel around the country and see all the amazing sites that SLovakia has to offer.

After I got back from lunch today, I almost immediately was dropped off at the mall for what I will consider the most exciting (and expensive) part of my day. I had made plans with some of my classmates to go to a huge festival in the city, called Radvanský jarmok. A brief history on the festival, how true this is, I don’t know. The one man that lives in Bratislava that I was talking about explained it to me, but he was slightly “out of it” so to say, so I don’t know how correct this information is. Anyway, the festival has been a yearly tradition in Banska Bystrica culture for over 350 years. Radvanský, which was once its own town, now part of Banska Bystrica, had a large church. This church’s “patron spirit” was Mary, which somehow ties into a yearly festival. How it does, I don’t know, that was not explained to me. Originally, this festival was used just as a practical gathering to trade goods, but over the years it was turned into a fantastic event with many different types of food, drinks, and entertainment.

I plan on going back tomorrow, which is why I really didn’t take any pictures today. I wanted to be able to enjoy myself today, and not worry about having to take tons of pictures for the blog. I got to try many different foods, candies and drinks, which I loved. I have not had food that I have disliked yet, and I hope that doesn’t change. My favorite food that I had the privilege to try today was this fantastic cylinder of dough and cinnamon. I didn’t try to remember the name, because I was trying to enjoy myself and try all the foods. Sorry, I will get the name of it tomorrow!

I wasted plenty of money on rides today, but I have to ask myself, were they worth the price? The cost to me: 5 Euros ish per ride. What I get out of it? I get to spend 5-10 minutes getting a crazy adrenaline rush and being able to enjoy it with my friends. I don’t know about you, but I think that is definitely worth it. I am probably going to forgot some people, and if I did, sorry, but I want to thank Ke, Laura, Sophia and her cousin, Veronica, Richard, Thomas, Igor, and so many others. I was able to have one of the best times of my life because you guys were awesome tonight. Thank you!

I walked alone on the way home, and not going to lie, I was pretty spooked. It’s like the graveyard I  had to walk through was trying to spook you. There were no lights in the graveyard, except for the candles that were lit by the graves. And those were pretty spooky, because they looked like eyes, and I was being watched the entire way through. It takes a lot to spook a big guy like me, but this graveyard was pretty close.

That’s all I am wanting to write tonight, I am closing in on midnight and I am tired and sore. Crossfit really did a number on this out of shape guy. But, I can’t end today without the very special word of the day! Todays word of the day is:

Slavnost – festival

I believe it is pronounced like you would in english, but I might be wrong. I think it should be pretty obvious why I choose this word for the fantastic festival I attended today.

Tomorrow I WILL have a much more in-depth post! Look forward to it!

All of these pictures were taken on a Sony A6000. If you are looking for a great light weight camera that takes fantastic pictures, I would definitively recommend this setup here.

Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless Digital Camera with 16-50mm Power Zoom Lens

Slovakia Day 12 – Slovak Classes, Police Again, Pizza, and JDM Dream

I was very excited this afternoon. Do you ever read or watch something, and it just inspires you to do something even greater? I was able to experience that this evening, and to be honest, I am still super hyped for this. Unfortunately, it will have to wait a year or so before I can make this dream a reality. Read on to find out!

Today I had my first meeting for my Slovak lessons. We just set up times, but something I noticed while all three of us were gathered was that we all seemed very tired. Ashley, Nikole, and myself are the three rotary exchange students staying in Banska Bystrica, with Nikole and Ashley going to a different school than my own. We had decided to meet at my school, and we would have an hour lesson every Monday and Wednesday. I hope that these lessons help, because I sure could use it.

When I got home from school, my host dad told me that we needed to go to the police station. I was somewhat terrified at the fact that it might be another one of these. However, my host dad told me that it shouldn’t take any longer than 10 minutes. I had my doubts, but I went without a word, literally too because my host dad doesn’t speak much English. Once we got there, I signed a few documents and we were done. I want to share the reason that I had to go back entirely, but I think that for the safety of my stay I better not. I will leave it up to your imagination.

My host dad made some fantastic pizza today, and I got to know a little more about him because of it. In his struggle to communicate with me in English, I noticed that he sometimes uses German words on accident. I found out today that he used to work as a Pizza Chef in Munich, which would explain the fantastic pizza and the occasional German.

Finally, what I lead on in the first paragraph. I was watching a video where these two guys bought a VW Golf for $1000, and turned it into an alright machine for just $500 more. One of the things that they did to it, which really caught my eye was they plastered some comics to the front right side of the car, to give it a wrapped look. I really loved this, and thought to myself “I should do that!”.

So I set out to craigslist, looking for cars that would be suitable for this possible project. Obviously, I won’t be home for another year, but I was more looking for certain makes and models of cars, than specific ones. I already made a post on reddit asking some questions about it, but here is the list of cars that I found.

My criteria for these cars are: RWD, JDM, manual trans, and no newer than 1995. Pop-up-headlights are recommended but not required ;). I spent a good couple hours scavenging my local craigslist, letgo, and other sites, and here are the cars that I found.

• 300zx (there were a lot of these, for +/- 1k, very likely this will be it. Only reason I don’t like it is that the owners abuse these poor things.
• RX7 (A few of these too, and they are reliable so it would be a little less stressful for me)
• Miata (I love Miatas, but I am worried because they are on the pricier side. If the low end miatas were $500 cheaper I wouldn’t be on here asking this haha).
• 280zx (I don’t know much about 280ZXs, so IDK about this. They are fairly cheap though.)
• MR2 (Again, I would buy a first gen MR2 so fast, but they are a little more pricey than the others in this list. I guess that is the mini-ferrari tax.
• Mitsubishi 3000GT (this car is very sexy, but there are not many on the market near me. Mid range in price too)

I will look into finding some pictures of what I would like to do, or I might download a cheap 3D design software and try throwing something together. Who knows. It’s late, so I will finish this off with the word/s of the day!

Velmi je to chutne – It’s very tasty

You would say it like Velmi ya to hutne, and I chose this phrase because the pizza I had today was very tasty!

All of these pictures were taken on a Sony A6000. If you are looking for a great light weight camera that takes fantastic pictures, I would definitively recommend this setup here.

Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless Digital Camera with 16-50mm Power Zoom Lens

Car Shopping

My new favorite pastime is going around neighborhoods and asking people if they would sell their car. I know that I don’t have the money to buy the car, but it is a lot of fun to be able to converse with people about their cars, and lets me pretend that I have the money for it. I went out “shopping” with my friend Chris all day yesterday, and we saw several M3s, a 240 SX, a 66′ Mustang, a few miatas, and probably more that I forgot about. The more I shop, the more I want a car!