As mentioned before, Andy, Pat, Beeler and I decided to begin our break on Thursday morning at 12am. We packed all of our stuff and headed over Florenc, the main bus station in Prague, at about 11.15pm. We were all really excited about our arrangements, having booked a quaint little cabin just minutes away from one of the Slovakian National Parks. We boarded the bus and then all went to sleep, excited to wake up in Poprad. Well, things didn't pan out quite like that. I awoke to Pat waking Andy saying "Andy, dude, you have to wake up. We are at the Vienna Airport." Yeah, Vienna, as in Austria. As in not Slovakia. "Uhhhhhh, we've made a huge mistake" was the unanimous reaction. And then I started cracking up. Another guy on the bus asked us where we were headed and when we told him Poprad he started laughing and informed us that we were supposed to have gotten off about two and a half hours prior in Brno. Oops. The others didn't see the hilarity in our situation just yet, so I tried, unsuccessfully to stifle my laughter. Eventually they saw the funny side so it was alright. We went into the airport to try and figure everything out, and found out the next bus to Bratislava was coming in about 2 hours. So we got some breakfast and then lounged around and read until the bus came. We boarded the bus, which actually turned out to be really nice and made our way over to Bratislava.
When we arrived it was dreary and raining so we went into the bus station and bought tickets to Poprad before heading upstairs to the Cafe. We ordered our sandwiches but not until Andy had a very awkward situation ordering his. He is not a fan of cheese, to say the least and was trying to order a sandwich without cheese. The phrase is "ne syr, prosim" but for some reason the waitress didn't understand what he was asking for. We were laughing which definitely didn't help the situation but the waitress took a dislike to us and we paid for it. The sandwiches were awful, probably the worst I have had. We ate what we could and then left as fast as possible deciding to get a doner outside instead. Andy and Beeler went to get them and I told Andy to get me one with no onions. What I got was perhaps the most onion-y doner I have ever had, EVER. Shortly after, our bus pulled up. To say this bus was sketchy would be an enormous understatement. The windows said they were made in Czechoslovakia, the stick shift was duct taped together, the windows didn't move and the seats were like school bus seats. It was pretty hilarious. Oh, and we spent a good 8 hours on that bus. At the end of the trip the bus got to be so crowded that at more than one point the aisle was packed full of standing people and a woman was basically sitting on my lap [true to Eastern European belief in non-existant personal space I presume].
When we arrived in Poprad we did some hasty shopping at the market for our dinner and breakfast the next morning before catching a bus to Stola, our final destination.
[This is a map, stolen from Andy. The Blue line is the planned route and the red is the route we actually took.]
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