Kosice: deepest, darkest Slovakia

Bordering sloth

I didn't look forward to crossing the Polish-Slovakian border when I woke. Technically, the crossing would be effortless given that both countries are in the Schengen Zone. Practically, there weren't any direct buses across to Slovakia from Sanok where we started. We had to - take a deep breath - bus it to Miejsce Piastowe, change there for another to the Polish border village of Barwinek, walk 3 kilometres across to the Slovakian village of Vysny Komarnik, then take another bus to Svidnik where the last transfer would bring us to Kosice.

Below: Day and night views of St Elizabeth's Cathedral, the easternmost Gothic cathedral in Europe and Kosice's stately centrepiece.

Our journey to Barwinek went without a hitch. The border was fairly nondescript - a vehicle park occupied by the odd laden trucks (most of which zipped by without stopping), several buildings housing duty-free shops, grocers and currency exchange offices, perfunctory two-sided welcome-goodbye signs and people (not many) who knew exactly where they're headed. We steeled ourselves for a 45-minute trek to Vysny Komarnik, ready to turn and raise pleading thumbs at the slightest hint of approaching wheels. Yet a bus was miraculously parked on the Slovakian side not far from where we were alighted on the Polish side.

A change at Presov for Kosice was still necessary, but crucially needless toil had been averted. I've never been so happy to see a bus. Methinks I've grown soft.

Below (top to bottom): the start and end of our day's journey - waiting on a cold morning at Miejsce Piastowe for the bus to Barwinek; and taking a short breather outside the Jakab Palace in Kosice. The neo-Gothic palace was once the home of Peter Jakab whose family built the State Theatre (pictured further below) and in 1945 housed then president of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Benes.

Crossing the Valley of Death

Wooden churches were why we found ourselves so far east in Slovakia. There was a cluster of these in the villages near the Polish border - Vysny Komarnik, Nizny Komarnik, Bodruzal, Mirola, to rattle off but a few unfamiliar syllables. Svidnik was the intended base, but we decided ultimately to skip it because we had already seen four wooden churches in the Sanok skansen.

Below: The wooden church in Vysny Komarnik, snapped unceremoniously as our bus zipped by.

The journey from Vysny Komarnik towards Svidnik was unexpectedly scenic. The sun shone through cloudbursts in between periods of drizzle on green fields and distant rolling hills. It wouldn't have looked out of place on a brand-new Windows desktop. Yet the road also took us through the Valley of Death. I make no inauspicious utterance. In the same vicinity as Sanok, Dukla Pass is amongst the easiest passages across the Western Carpathians. Its bucolic surroundings witnessed a series of intense battles during the latter stages of the Second World War, as the Soviets hurled men and metal against what the Nazis christened their Karpatenfestung - the Carpathian Fortress.

Except for the odd tank and field gun set up as memorials throughout the pass, there is little reminder of the blood spilled so prodigiously in these hills. Yet even as posterity is slowly coming to grips with the immensity of the war between the Nazis and the Soviets, nobody really comes to these hills.

Below: One of many memorials to war all along the Dukla.

Kosice

I remember Manchester United beating Kosice 3-0 in a 1997 Champions League game. Denis Irwin, Henning Berg and Andy Cole scored in a romp of like vintage as the last Roman conquest. 6 years after being the first Slovak team to reach the group stages of the Champions League, Kosice faced relegation from the second tier and liquidation. This spectacular see-saw sequence of quick advancement and a quicker atrophy really sums up Kosice's past.

Below: The State Theatre, the present shape of which was built in 1899 - about when Manchester United was last seen mounting a serious challenge for the title.

The city once commanded a thriving north-south Baltic-Balkan trade, on which riches it became one of medieval Europe's biggest cities. Unfortunately, the relative peace on which the trade relied was shattered in 1526 by the Ottoman (Turkish) invasion. Centuries on, a gradual recovery was stymied by the turbulent first half of the twentieth century, as Kosice went through a musical chair of political masters - until 1918 the Austro-Hungarian empire, then a short-lived Slovak Republic at the end of the First World War, then interwar Czechoslovakia, then a revanchist Hungary during the Second World War and finally a reconstituted Czechoslovakia at its end. In 1945, Kosice was briefly the capital of Czechoslovakia until Prague was retaken by the Red Army. Under Communist rule, Kosice became an important, albeit drab, steel town. How long its 2013 designation as European Capital of Culture keeps it in the public spotlight is anybody's guess. As with everywhere else in Slovakia that isn't Bratislava, few have heard of Kosice and fewer still have visited.

Below (top to bottom): Memento mori, for even cities die - the Immaculata, commemorating the plague in Kosice in 1709; and St Michael's Chapel, once an ossuary for the cemetery that used to surround it.

Being a good five-hour train ride east of Bratislava does Kosice no good at all. One has either to backtrack, or go on to Ukraine, Poland or Hungary (unlikely options, given that distances are similar in the latter two from the well-trodden gems of Kraków and Budapest). While there might just be a modicum of truth in the assertion (made by visitors who have often also been to Vienna and Budapest) that Bratislava offers - comparatively - little of interest, the same cannot be said of Kosice. Promoters fete its city centre as having Slovakia's largest concentration of historical monuments - which means to say the city centre isn't actually very big, and that all the other Old Towns in Slovakia are actually quite small.

Above: inside St Elizabeth's Cathedral...

Below (top to bottom): ...and above it - the lenticular shape of Kosice's main square is clearly visible from the narrow viewing platform atop Sigismund's Tower, to where an equally narrow passage led.

Crossing into Slovakia, we also noticed the increased presence of the Romani people (known colloquially and derogatorily as Gypsies) on the streets. As a rule of thumb, Romani populations in Europe have clustered more thickly around where Turkish sabres were once rattled, though later migrations account for their present-day dispersal throughout much of the western world. In these parts, the Romani often find themselves the object of popular suspicions. Just ignore them, they are very organized, an Austrian man later warned when in Vienna we were given roses by a Romani lady and then asked for a donation. Stories abound of more elaborate wallet-pinching ploys. We met with no trouble, though.

For dinner on our last evening in Kosice, we opted for crepes at a restaurant opposite St Elizabeth's Cathedral. A well-heeled Romani lady sat behind us, shortly after we were brought our English menus. The waitress then turned and asked in English if our neighbour required the same. There was a brief moment of embarrassment when the Romani lady replied in confident Slovakian.

Below: Mary's a tad conspicuous in these parts.

It was a subliminal demonstration of how deeply prejudice runs. It's chilling, too, given how inescapably we travel around these parts with perceived foreignness etched into our Mongoloid complexions.