Train Across the Plain
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Two thirds of the Slovakian rail network is single-track lines, so average speeds are not greased lightning. Still, I enjoyed a couple of hours boogeying across the great hungarian plains.  Looks like pictures of Kansas. (Hungarian? Hungary lost this slice of land as booty to the victors in the first WW.)

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Not all Slovakian Rail rolling stock is as aged or as colorful as this waggon I saw parked in one of the prairie town stops.

The last hour and a half of the journey, we leave the plains and head north up the Hron river valley into the central mountains.

These are not craggy jaggy mountains like the Alps - that comes further north in the High Tatrys.

The Heart of the Town
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My first order of business on checking into my room here was a nap. So I didn't get out to explore until late in the day. Shadows had already eaten up a lot of otherwise nice pictures, but goodness, it is a pretty place.
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The Orthodox monk brothers Cyril and Methodius invented the cyrillic alphabet in order to translate the bible into slavic languages. Orthodox slavic countries still use their alphabet.

It is just a bit curious to find them here so prominently in deeply Catholic Slovakia. If anybody knows the story, please direct me toward it.
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Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Bulf