elephant castle

After Brno, I went to Trenčín by bus as planned. The bus arrived at the afternoon. It stopped at the boarder gas station for almost 45 mins but the destination was just like few km away (15 mins ride about). I left the bus at the train station which there's no any map telling me where to go. With the little tiny help from my ipod, i found the way but suspiciously entered a building where the ground floor has one bank and a loan company. It is a financial building! "Is it really the hostel that i am looking for?" I was quite hesitated to drag my luggage to take the elevator.

Then I saw a only possible door which had a A4 size print paper writing the name of the hostel. I was like, that looks really like something illegal place. Am I getting into some sort of troubles? No matter what, I entered and firstly couldn't find anywhere to register or a counter to find any staff in the house. It was like a lobby with 2 frigo, one small kitchenware and nothing more. More strangely, the kitchen sink is installed in the shower room. VERY crazy. Then I found a bunch of people relaxing on the couch where it seemed to be a living with a TV. They looks like guests. The first chubby guy found my appearance and sat up to look at me. The rest stays the same way laying or sleeping in the middle of afternoon. VERY relaxing. Then the chub asked my, “do you like Sci-fi movie?” “excuse me?” “I say, do you like sci-fi movie? We are watching it. If you like, come to sit down and join us.” What the heck, who are these people and where is the hostel? Then I told him I rather settle down first because I was sweating a lot. He pointed at the balcony and said come over there. There is a another guy with knit hair and smoking pot or cigarette (who knows he was smoking but he looked very drifted away). The knit guy smiled and asked some questions and those seemed to identify if I am cool enough to stay here. It was totally weird and I was like, where am I? And I signed something like application form and he check my passport (said it is official procedure. They had to do it because they were told to). We relaxed (i wasn't actually) under the sun for like 10 mins and he got up to show me the room. 

He put me in a 4 persons room and there should be another American called Stacy. When I put the plug to charge my ipod, her shoes were near the power cord, man, it stinks so much with the mixture deadly scent and wild life (no kidding). Later I met Stacy, she…did has the feeling of being wild, beaming personality. She is funny and friendly. The next day when I woke up, I saw that her feet was so dirty and I couldn't wonder why she was doing this: sleep on a white sheet bed with this dirty feet and where the hell she had been to last night.

The hostel owns by “the chubby” Jakub and “the knit” Viktor are two college students and the night they held a another BBQ party for everyone just because they wanted to do so. I participated the time from 19:30 to am 2:30 or about cannot remember. It was mixed with trash talks and making stupid acts to entertain ourselves in case that the party got bored. Maybe around 2 am, Jakub suggested to go out or someone did. They were going out but I refused and stayed. Another dutch (hell tall, i guess he is over 190cm. I didn't recognized at first because he was seated) told me that they actually didn't do anything constructive but walking crazily without any light in the dark, and climbed up the 40m tower. Before the dawn, they were finally back. He kind of regret but with fulfillment . He said, “when we were walking in the dark to the place I don’t even know where we are going, I kept asking myself, what am I doing here? What am I doing in 4:30 am with some strangers that I just met few hours ago and I am still very awake not drunk????? ” On the other hand, he said, “I just don’t want to miss anything, like waiting there to see anything funny happening but not actually. I don’t think it was really fun but crazy definitely.” 

The dutch is a good one, smart, intelligent, and has a great of humor (discovered it later. Though i talked quite a few with him in the BBQ party. We were kind of being cool in this scenario  you know, wanna be cool and chill). I think we started our real talk while I found him on the same platform as I did. We were going to the same city, but he was going to transfer 5 different trains till the final destination. Studied sociology and wrote his dissertation about a poor neighborhood near Amsterdam. Lived there for 6 months to do the field study. After handing in the final edition, jumped on a plane with a small pack of weekend hand bag, to the eastern europe for a week. With his fancy leather loafer, he walked more than 32 hours in 4 days in the mountains "Poprad National Park". He showed me his compact trekking guide book that he ordered from England before the trip. With the warm note from the staff of Ginger Monkeys (Dan, must be), he showed me those amazing photos with the tiny 2 inch screen of his Canon camera. Then I told him the story of lost key in Lendice. He told me another drunk story that he has had when he was in the university and his trip with friends in Croatia. We laughed so hard in the 6 persons cabinet and we were the only English speaker. Other passengers must hate us so much that they kept rolling their eyes. Then the train brought us passed along an astonished lake view. The day’s sunset was beaming with orange light, reflected from the surface of the lake. We were covered by luminous beams and we stopped talking. Everyone was in silence and looked at the view. We knew the train was also reaching to the destination that we were going to be off, Žilina. As we arrived at Žilina, He jumped onto another train and headed to Poland. 


From then on, I never see him again.