The LITTLE town of Kremnica

For Karin's birthday, and our February 3 day weekend, we went to the little town of Kremnica. It was about 3 hours by bus and we left after school on Thursday. We got into town around 9 at the bus station. Except that it wasn't really so much of a station as 4 bus stops in a row. And it was dark, and snowy, with no one in sight. And we only had a really bad map. So, we approached one of the buses waiting nearby and asked the bus driver for help. He didn't speak any English, and he didn't know where our privat (private house that we had rented) was located. We had the phone number of the man we rented it from, so we called him and the bus driver spoke to him for us. Karin and I were sure we heard him say soup, although Becky didn't think so. He told us to wait for 5, 10 or 15 minutes and someone would come. Then he left. Karin and I were joking that he told the man on the phone that he had better have soup for us because he didn't give us directions or have a plan for our arrival. In less than 10 minutes, a little red car pulled up and a young man got out and started talking to us. He asked if we spoke German, we said no and asked him if he spoke English to which he said no. He again asked if we spoke English. We said no, then piled into his car. It may sound strange to get into a car with a perfect stranger, especially when you can not understand what he is saying, but we did. His girlfriend was with him and we drove for about 3 minutes before arriving at our privat. We got out, he spoke to us in Slovak, we said yes, yes and he got back in the car. We understood enough to know that he was going to get a key for us. What we didn't understand was that he told us to go around to the front of the house where there was a porch light. So, he got out of the car and took us around to the front of the house. About 10 minutes later, he came back with his mom who would be staying with us. She was the very motherly type and just talked to us while showing us around the house. The next day, she walked with us into town, invited us to have soup with her in the evening, and introduced us to her niece. We wandered around the town, went up to the castle and just wandered around. We stopped in a little cafe and had warm drinks. That evening our hostess gave us a big pot of soup, which was enough for two nights. Yummy potato soup with sausage. The next day we again wandered around the town and went to the money museum. Kremnica has one of the oldest (if not the oldest) working mints around. They have printed money for many major European countries. It was amazing to look at all the different money that Czech, Slovakia and Czechoslovakia have had over the years. The next day we left and caught a bus back to Bratislava. We had a wonderful restful time. Happy Birthday Karin!

Kremnica