Spiš Castle and Slovak National Holiday

We reached the impressive castle complex of Spiš - probably the second largest preserved castle in Europe - only in the early evening, shortly before it closed for visitors. So, we decided to postpone our planned visit to the next day and instead spent the evening in the nearby town of Spišskie Podhradie. We found a field road near the castle to spend the night, but we drove on and initially parked Winniefred at the nearest parking lot near the small center to look for a place to eat. It may be briefly explained that Slovakia has been the most pleasant country for our travel budget so far, and we did not necessarily have to rely on unbelievably cheap supermarket food. However, on this day it was not so easy as we did not find a supermarket where we could replenish our plundered supplies. They were all closed, even though it was Friday. The reason for this was revealed to us in Spišskie Podhradie. During a short walk, we found the excited locals in front of a stage with beverage, snack, and candy stands around the cute little park of the municipality. A brief glance at Wikipedia revealed: On 01.09., Slovaks celebrate a national holiday in honor of their constitution. Well then, let's go. After filling our stomachs with traditional Slovak pizza, we joined the small and friendly crowd. With Slovak rock and pop music from different regional bands, 0.5l draft beer for €1.20 and 0.3l of wine for €0.70, we quickly felt like part of the festival. The highlight of the evening event was a Bon Jovi cover band, which was well-known in Slovakia and rightly received a lot of applause for their musical performance despite the incoming rain, and I felt like a big kid again! :-D "Slightly hoarse", after the concert, and also at the end of the festival, we wondered whether our level of almost soberness would be sufficient to legally drive Winniefred to a chosen night spot. However, the Slovaks, like many European countries, are already more advanced than Germany and prohibit any level of alcohol while driving. Well then, we'll just have to spend the night on the side of the road near the center, where our car was still parked. Only inconveniently, we had parked Winniefred with the headlights almost peering into the entrance door right in front of a pub... Our discovered low price limit for beverages in Slovakia reached a new low when we looked at the menu, and our evening was extended by a few quiet hours of writing blog posts before we went straight to bed when the pub closed.

The next morning, we were woken up at exactly 8 am by the vibrating machine at the construction site across the street. Inevitably forced to get up, we bought a piece of delicious and unknown baked goods from the bakery around the corner, and at these prices, we slowly started to fear even getting money back. Well-fed, we headed to our actual destination on-site: Spiš Castle. Expanded and renovated in several stages over the centuries, it has been a central and influential strategic location since the earliest settlements on the hill where it stands. It only lost its former importance with the decline of the nobility and a devastating fire until it became interesting again as a cultural heritage after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Occupied with this visit until early afternoon, we then left the cloudy Spiš towards the Hungarian border to the southeast.