Castle or Beer? Tough Choices in Trenčín, Slovakia

Zagan the motorhome is feeling edgy, parked by the side of a residential road, flats to one side, a school on the other and within sniffing distance of the Váh river, in the town of Trenčín in Slovakia (N48.90001, E18.04636). His predecessor Dave got used to these types of sleeping spots as we travelled, but Zagan still has roadside nerves – or is that me?

Zagan’s roadside kipping spot in Trenčín, Slovakia

This morning I thought I had gone deaf, until I realised I could still hear Charlie snoring from his bed in the gap between the seats below our bed. The lack of rain noise on the roof was a welcome change, so I seized the opportunity to nip out for a jog along the river levee, I’m taking our half marathon training very seriously. We’d already decided to skip visiting Devin castle as it was mainly ruins and we could see a lot of high vis jackets and scaffolding from where we had parked – naughty I know, but we’d read that the castle at Trenčín would be more worthy of a visit.

Under heavy skies, satnav directed us back to Bratislava so we could pick up the motorway that cuts its way across the country. The roadsides were lined with huge advertising boards that you only really notice when you haven’t seen them for a while – they prompted a conversation about who changes the adverts and how dangerous it must be as some of them were a good way off the ground.

Motorway out of Bratislava

Our newly acquired map displays a million symbols, some of which try to rate how good a town or village is. Close to the motorway on our route north was, underlined in red and two red stars, the town of Trnava. We had GPS co-ordinates of a car park there, it would be rude not to pop by. Unable to fully decipher the car park charges, Jay adopted the ‘let’s bung in a euro and see how long we get’ approach, it gave us five hours; we’ll find a 50c coin next time. With plenty of time on our hands we set off for a look around what claims to be the oldest town in Slovakia. The old town centre was surrounded by the remains of its medieval walls, but the centre itself was pastel colours and baroque façades, indicating it has been rebuilt, probably several times.

Struggling a bit with direction signs!

Trnava

Reaching the main square it was full of stalls selling flowers, and so many people that we had to double check with each other that it wasn’t a Saturday. Whoops, air horns and hollers came from the other side of the stalls so we investigated to find a group of well-dressed teenage girls walking around with a large board displaying photos of themselves, a couple of the girls were sheepishly asking people for money by holding out upturned hats. Then another group appeared, this time boys doing the same thing, but making more noise. Baffled I headed into the tourist office where they explained it was graduation day at the university and it was a tradition. Nothing was said about the money collected and as so few people were giving I can only assume it was to fund a beer drinking session.

#TRNAVA

Tourist office man asked if I had been up the tower yet and indicated around the back of the building. Jay pointed out it was my turn to climb a tower (he did the last one in Bologna) so I headed over and started climbing. Just over halfway up the stairs I reached a room with a lady behind the counter, it was €3 to go any further and as there was a limited view from where I was I coughed up and climbed on. The view from the top was OK, I could see the old town and many blocks of high rise flats just outside the walls. It did give me a chance to spy on Jay and grab some photos of the money collecting students though without being spotted.

The town was pretty as we wandered around but wasn’t going to keep us for a day and night, so we headed back to Zagan and had a spot of lunch in the car park as the ticket still had four hours on it.

The motorway once again whisked us north following the valley of the Váh River, passing more crumbling castles crawling up their hillsides. Their job, long ago, was to fend off the Turks, but since the Ottoman empire started to decline, so have they. Our next stop was – red box around the name and two stars (the crème de la crème of map rankings) – the town of Trenčín. With no GPS co-ordinates we headed for the castle, but of course that was on a hill so we drove around looking for a car park. All the car parks we could find belonged to shops and the traffic was busy so we put in for the campsite on a small island in the middle of the river. As we turned off the main road towards the camping we spotted a quiet residential street with no restrictions or parking meters and as we don’t need a camping we parked up.

Castle on the Váh valley

It was a short stroll to the main square where a stage was set up for a Slovenian concert, yes Slovenia was here to promote itself with free music, free food and free wine – guess which of the three got the most interest! Trenčín is overlooked by its own castle and divided in two by a tower next to the town hall, which you walk under to reach the other half. Once on the other side things weren’t quite as pretty as this was obviously the ‘new’ town and concrete 1970’s style squares replaced the pretty pastel hued buildings.

New Town Trenčín

Slovenia concert in Trenčín Slovakia – the wine stall is on the right!

With €10 ready to pay the admission fee we looked up at the castle. We then looked at a local brewery with a pub. We looked up at the castle again as we headed into the pub, deciding once again to spend our money on booze rather than walking around a castle. The Lanius brewery, for us, was the better choice as we ordered one of their eight glass tasting trays for €5.50 and thoroughly enjoyed sampling the different flavours while we watched a chap emptying hops from what we thought was a copper brewing prop – it wasn’t, they were brewing the beer we were drinking right next to us.

Which one to try first?

We tried one of each of the beers on the blackboards, to the left is the copper brewing kit

Slightly wubbery faced, as all the beers were above 5% one claimed to be 15%, we headed back to Zagan for a bite to eat, the fear of sleeping on the roadside has been eased by the local brew and the football stadium next door has a match on tonight so the road is busy and the tunes are banging from the speaker system.

Happy Friday everyone.

Ju x