It doesn’t take much to imagine the neighbourhood deep in snow. But it does take a lot for me to imagine snow polo – horses on ice. Now that I know it exists, it’s bumped its way up on my list of things to see before I die.
For our second night in the Tatras, we’d booked into an apartment hotel between the villages of Sibír and Nový Smokovec. Just a kilometre apart, both have train stations. Our hotel was a family-run hotel, one of many in the region. It came with a kitchen, living area, bedroom, and a massive balcony. I was amused at the price list and the charges for changing bed linen, cleaning the room, swapping out the towels, all hints of long-term stays. The background noise of deers rutting during the night came free of charge.
If you’re not into hiking or walking or cycling (or skiing when there’s snow), it would seem that there’s not a lot else on offer by way of entertainment. But there’s ample quiet to read, to write, to be. It’s the healthiest place I’ve been to in years. Everyone looks so fit. It nearly put the longing on me and had I come prepared, I might just have taken to the slopes.
In Nový Smokovec, two churches sit side by side – one the evangelical that I mentioned before and the other a Roman Catholic. Its theatre-style seating arrangement was a little strange and somewhat reminiscent of the Frank Lloyd Wright creation I visited in Madison earlier this year. It’s a little shabbier on the outside, so shabby that the inside is quite a treat. Lots of mosaic tiles, lots of colour, lots of glitter. And lots of people.
The Royal Palace was quite deserted. The date above the door says 1917 but what little I could find on the Net says it was built in 1925 as a sanatorium and in its day, it was the place to be. It looked deserted, but a search of hotel booking sites shows it still listed so perhaps it’s yet to open for the season.
We amused ourselves by riding the Tatranská elektrická železnica (TEŽ), the electric railway, and the Ozubnicová železnica (OŽ), the cogwheel railway, getting on and off whenever took our fancy. Štrbské Pleso (note the capital P) has a mountain lake, Štrbské pleso (note the lowercase p) that’s frozen for 155 days of the year. Nearly 1400 metres above sea level, the walk around it is about 2.5 km. It’s on my list of ‘go back to’ places as I really want to see a game of snow polo.
2 responses
Thank you for sharing, interesting and beautiful.