Driving through eastern Slovakia was like tumbling through a series of Alice-style looking glasses. At first, I bisected unremarkable countryside: either undulating wheat fields or occasional knots of trees. The road sliced through towns and villages with bus stops that resembled ocean-going containers chopped in half. The people waiting there looked dour and drab, as if no matter how often they washed their clothes, they just couldn’t get the dust out. I started to wonder why I’d come.
In my defence, I hadn’t. What I mean is that the drive was only a means to an end. I was heading for the High Tatras, bent on a long weekend of bracing walks in mountain air, and the nearest airport was Kosice. I could have reached the Tatras comfortably in a day, but I’d elected to take in a few towns in the Spis region en route. Possibly my first mistake.
In the post-Soviet suburbs, the apartment blocks defied gravity: towering to the skies while simultaneously crumbling to earth. Derelict factories still outnumbered those that had been spruced up. Their brick chimneys, sporting red and white bands reminiscent of giant cigars, stood guard over a toppled industrial empire.
Everything seemed normal enough, in an East European kind of way, until my first looking-glass moment occurred. Abruptly, I left one time warp and entered another. In a split second, the concrete atrocities vanished and I was humming beside a parade of medieval facades, all ancient timbers and lead-lined windows. This was the town of Presov, and the shift was so radical that I had to squeeze my eyes to make sure I hadn’t drifted off to sleep.
These nuggets of antiquity appeared every time I entered a town centre. The dismal periphery of Bardejov concealed a huge cobbled square hemmed in by burghers’ houses in sugared-almond shades, all sloping down to a grand gothic church. The square at Levoca was thinner, its centrepiece an extraordinary 16th-century town hall riddled with arcades and columns, arches and gables. A crowd had gathered between the horse chestnuts to hear a band play oompah music beneath the archways.
On the map, Levoca’s tiny type suggested there wasn’t much to see. It has been in decline since the 1870s, when superstitious town councillors refused passage to a new railway line being laid from Kosice. Trains were an unnatural evil, they thought, so the track was routed elsewhere and Levoca faded into near oblivion. A more charming form of oblivion is hard to imagine.
Beyond the medieval pockets, many High Tatra towns date back only to the 19th century. Until then, this stretch of the Carpathians was the preserve of simple shepherds, who shared its dark forests and wide meadows with the wolves and the bears. When the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy recognised the allure of the mountains, entire settlements were built to exploit the healthy highland ambience. Physicians and sanatorium owners supervised the construction of cure houses and spa hotels. And in the early 1920s, an insurance man named Franz Kafka arrived from Prague in the hope of curing his tuberculosis.
People from all over Europe still flock here to feed their sense of wellbeing. For Slovaks, this is a special place, where nature rules unsullied. Their national anthem, composed in that outmoded town of Levoca, is called Lightning over the Tatras.
MY FIRST night in the mountains was on the shores of Strbske Pleso, a small lake that broods in its fir forest beneath the shadow of a great peak. I rose early for a stroll. The lake sits 4,000ft above sea level, so I pulled on my fleece against the nip in the air. Some of the locals clearly had stouter constitutions. Two joggers, their run complete, stripped down to underpants and climbed into their car. If I’d arrived a minute later, all I’d have seen was the car leaving, piloted by a man who appeared to be driving naked.
Not all visitors were such hearty types. Later, on my second tour around the lake, I mixed it with elderly ladies with hennaed hair and trainers, and old men with sturdy sticks. Young couples ambled through the sunshine while their children crouched in delight at the water’s edge, beckoning fish over. The lupins were past their best, but the saxifrage and marguerites were in full bloom.
My day at Strbske Pleso offered a full suite of lakeside panoramas. When I set forth in the early morning, a cloud had just weighed anchor over the tarn and it set about gradually unveiling the water, trees and distant peaks. Within an hour, the final scraps of mist had scudded away, leaving a glassy stillness in the air. The sun seemed to gleam brighter than elsewhere, the skin of the lake was crisp as a sheet of diamonds.
By evening, a luminous mist quivered over the water. It thickened, darkened and slowly released its load of moisture. The drizzle continued into the next day, obscuring the view from my balcony in nearby Tatranska Lomnica. I was at the Grand Hotel Praha — a timeline back to the belle époque, with its fairy-tale turrets and glittering chandeliers. There was a sweeping staircase and vast leather armchairs, marble columns and white stucco ceilings.
Tatranska Lomnica is at the foot of the Tatras’ second-highest peak, Lomnicky, and my plan had been to scale its 8,600ft, for the most part an uncomplicated scramble. The continuing rain insisted otherwise. I toyed with the idea of abandoning my walk altogether, opting for a treatment instead, but the waitresses in the hotel dining room put me off. They were surly and powerfully built. If they manned the massage tables by daylight, a treatment might turn out to be a pasting.
I took the cable car up Lomnicky instead. Its little cabin swung between the crowns of giant Christmas trees and deposited me above the tree line, at a stopping-off point halfway to the summit. A tiny vole nibbled at the sedges; otherwise, the landscape was barren and rock-strewn. Beyond, Lomnicky was lost in a thick gloom of cloud, so I struck off down a path into the forest. Despite the mean weather, the trail was busy, more people coming up than descending. Hill-walkers in the latest hiking gear skipped across the slippery granite, while older ramblers picked their way carefully among the boulders. The most energetic types wore shorts and T-shirts despite the chill.
Rowans and dwarf pines made their first appearance after an hour or so, and dark green moss replaced the lime-coloured lichen. Wild raspberries trailed by the wayside, but the bilberry bushes had been picked clean. Gradually, the trees grew taller and I detected the faint sound of running water. Its whisper became more a murmur then a gush as the track took to a short wooden bridge over the cascade.
The drizzle had stopped by the time I stopped at a chocolate-box-pretty mountain hut, part of a network of hostelries that offer walkers a wholesome meal and a bed for the night. Famished, I fell for a bowl of their garlic soup, with thick goulash and dumplings to follow.
Back in the plush hotel dining room, I realised my simple lunch was the best meal I’d eaten in Slovakia. Elsewhere, the menus were amusing — “evil delicacy in potato pancake”, “chicken-biting mixture” — but too often catered for a western palate they misunderstood. I lost count of the places making a feature of meat served in ketchup sauce.
But I hadn’t come for the food. I’d wanted some exercise and I’d got that. The fresh air had been intoxicating and my calf muscles now had a rather pleasing tightness. What I hadn’t bargained for was the serenity that pervades this unspoilt sliver of central Europe. I didn’t have the mountains to myself, but in the moments of calm between the hikers, even the birds sang quietly.
Each time I set foot on a trail, stress began to seep out of my limbs like a mountain stream trickling through the trees. Every night in the High Tatras, I slept better than I’ve slept in a long time. An intense, profound sleep, as deep as sleep can be.
- Nick Middleton was a guest of Regent Holidays and CSA Czech Airlines
Travel brief
Regent Holidays (0117 921 1711, www.regent-holidays.co.uk) offers a five-night fly-drive tour from £465pp, including flights to Kosice from Heathrow with CSA Czech Airlines (via Prague), six days’ car hire, and B&B accommodation in three- and four-star hotels in Bardejov, Strbske Pleso, Levoca, Tatranska Lomnica and Kosice. For a wildlife-focused itinerary, try Naturetrek (01962 733051, www.naturetrek.co.uk), or for a trekking tour, try Sherpa Expeditions (020 8577 2717, www.sherpa-walking-holidays.co.uk).
