Thu28Jul16: Bandejov - Vsysny Tvarozec - Kosice, Slovakia (131.6km, 2,330.2km YTD)

Yours Truly was the last tour rider in to the Kosice hotel today, and he couldn't be prouder.  What a great day!  These kind of days don't happen often enough in a person's life, so they have to be remembered and treasured.  Details below.....

Ed Sokol & his ancestral villages

This morning after breakfast, the rest of the TDA group and right at the STOP sign for the scheduled ride south to Kosice, but Ed Sokol and I tuned left at the STOP sign and headed up to visit his paternal ancestral village of Nizny Tvarozec (viz. Lower Tvarozec), about 18km northwest of Bandejov.  Ed had been there about 15 years ago, but that visit was a blur so today he had the birth certificate of his grandfather Mikhail Sokol and wanted to check out all the possible family roots by talking with residents and checking the files of the local municipal offices.

Romany village, below Nizny Tvarocez

We started riding in a light fog, temperature about 18C, and it turned into a nice clear sunny day.  Highway #77 has become a nice paved road and we turned up into the hills to the village of Sverzove, then further on we turned right and encountered a Romany camp in a side valley below Nizny Tvarozec. Romany (or Roma) are the transient (a.k.a. gypsy) field workers that every farmer needs but nobody trusts.

helpful residents, Vysny Tvarozec

English may not be a common language in the small villages of Slovakia, but Peter (who used to work in England) led us to the two church cemeteries in Vysny Tvarozec and introduced us to other people were also enthralled by the Slovak birth certificate and endeavoured to do everything they could to help us out.  The only Sokol still living in that small community just happened to be away from home.

Sokol relatives, Nizny Tvarozec

Cycling back to Nizny Tvarozec, Ed met a family whose surname is Sokol, so they're undoubtedly related to him, but nobody could figure out the exact connection.  When we turned to leave, the older (est. 80+) Sokol woman began to weep, and the younger (est. 60+) Sokol woman gave Ed a big hug (maybe they're cousins?), but the menfolk couldn't have cared less and went back to their carpentry work.

guard post, Slovak frontier

We cycled back to Bartejov, arriving about 11:30am after 38.8km of genealogy exploration, so Ed decided to head for the station and take the train to Koscie.  My choice was to find the TDA flagged ride to Koscie beginning on Highway #656, another 90km or so, and start in the middle of the day, about 4 hours behind everybody else.
Early afternoon on a hot sunny day, what can possibly happen?  Well, for one thing the thunderstorm clouds rolled in, thunder and lightning, and then it began pouring rain about 1pm.  Rain makes the flagged route a bit more difficult to follow because the flagging tape gets stuck to the poles and is more difficult to see and follow.  However, after a series of interesting events that would take far too long to recount, I made it into Kosice about 4pm, pedalled around the Old City for awhile, and finally asked for directions from a bartender at the Luxor (advertised as an 'Irish bar').
Hotel Yasmin is a very fancy hotel by TDA standards.  The concierge spotted me picking up my bike lock in the box outside their front door, helped me find the storage locker in the underground parking garage, escorted me to the Reception desk, where I found out that I was given a SINGLE room for our two day stay in Kosice.  Hooray!

Room #704 has a king-size bed, a bathroom larger than some of the hotel rooms we've had to share over the past 3-1/2 weeks, so after stripping off my rain-soaked and gritty bicycle clothing, that 30 minute soak in a tub of hot water was just 'what the doctor ordered'.  About 6pm I returned to the Luxor and thanked the bartender for his assistance, then had supper while the EuroSports channel replayed highlights of the 2016 Tour de France (most of which I missed).  Turns out that my 20ish waitress had worked in England for several years, was trying to figure out what to do with her life, ended up chatting with me frequently, so it wasn't long before she had heard the 1995-2016 history of my own family.  Don't know whether those memories helped her, but it sure felt good to reminisce.
Back to the hotel room to finish off my laundry in the sink, and then hang it up on a clothes line strung across this huge bedroom, while watching Rogers Cup tennis on television.  Boy, am I ever a happy guy!  And full of it, too.