Last week we spent a wonderful 3 days with Marcela and Peter, two couch surfers from Bratislava, Slovakia.  Slovakia is a beatiful country, and we were happy to see it mostly devoid of the throng of tourists that plague Vienna and Prague.

Peter and Marcela were kind enough to show us around, and even take us to a handful of places outside the usual tourist path.  It was an exquisite treat to hear first hand accounts of the communist era, as well as second hand stories from the various wars of the 20th century.

Yano and I are big fans of couch surfing, mostly because of the rare opportunities to peek into the lives of locals the world over.  Even though today, there’s almost nothing that can’t be surmised from a cursory view at wikipedia and google images, couchsurfing offers something that hotel traveling cannot.

It is something to read about life behind the Iron Curtain, it is quite another to see the twinkle in Peter’s eyes as he recounts the first time he went to Vienna, just a few kilometers away, but on the

other side of the curtain.  He told us about the bright colorful displays in shops with a variety of items, to contrast with grey colored shops with nothing but two types of soaps in Bratislava.

It was quite fascinating to hear about vacations to Yugoslavia, which was even poorer, and having lines of people stand behind their car every time they opened their car trunk, because folks thought it was an ad-hoc black market.

All in all we had a wonderful time with our hosts, and were sad to continue our journey back into Austria to visit one of Yano’s schoolmates in St. Polten.  But alas, that is also another adventure in our rear view mirror, and we’re on a train to Budapest, Hungary, where rumor has it, there is a plethora of Indian restaurants.  My diet officially starts tomorrow…