The Lonely planet guide says just get a bus to Lysa Polana, walk over the border and then get a bus to Tatranska Lominica - it's as easy as that to get from Poland to the High Tatras in Slovakia...of course reality was slightly different.
The bus driver dropped me at Polana Polenica, so i had to hike with Bob to Lysa Polana, and then...nothing. A cafe selling cheap (cheaper than chips) Slavakian booze and a car park. Luckily there's a parking attendant, he speaks no English and wants to sell me a time share in the mountains, but he does have a copy of the bus timetable.
Tatranski Lominica, a small, and i mean small village with a big cable car up into the Tatras which closes the day i arrive for safety concerns. Should i be happy? It did have a supermarket, and it was cheaper to buy beer than water. of course i only drank water - I have to think about my health. i decide in my sober state that i want to climb Rysy, Poland's highest mountain at 2499m. Why i decided now and not while I'm actually in Poland i don't know. I realise I'm too far to hike from where i am so i travel to Stary Smokovec and have another day relaxing and drinking water. Stary Smokovec a place that sounds nothing like i pronounce it. It's a little bigger than my previous town, and it has Internet, and here I'm sat, resting with a glass of water after spending 3 days in the mountains.
Rysy was easy. It was snowing, freezing cold, wet and dismal and i didn't enjoy most of it. But it was an easy climb and in those brief spells of sunshine the views were fantastic. I spent two nights in mountain refuges, called Chatas. Mine was where they film cell block H - it was depressing, and i was bored as the weather was dire and I'd packed super light (i have a small day sack called Dawn - i didn't name her that (sorry to my friend Dawn) but it's written on the side of it). I had 2 main meals, a desert and several larger waters that first night and was contemplating my second desert. I don't even have Craig or a companies budget to blame, i just needed something to do.
It did give me a chance to get some good photos though, particularly of the lakes and the mist. At times it was unbelievably quiet. I'd stop and the only thing i could hear was my breathing - it was a complete feeling of isolation and yet feeling at one. Overall it has been enjoyable and so far little different to Poland. After all this keyboard also has 3 Z's and 2 Y's just like the ones in Poland. The ones in Germany had the Z and Y the wrong way around - imagine how irritating that was!
