Hello, From Slovakia!

My name's Samantha Seidl, some of you may know me from me working at or my parents. But as of now, I'm about 6,100 or so miles away from home. 

I'm currently staying with one of my best friends, Radka, who is practically a sister, here in Slovakia! She was our exchange student back in '07 and every since then we've been family.

So after years of being hounded to come out, after staying up all night packing, being overweight in my luggage, repacking in the airport, and giving the bag check lady two of sleeves of oreos for being so nice; I finally made it!

I loved it the moment I got into Radka's hometown, Zvolen. The people are amazing, the food is new and delicious, and their culture is amazing! I'm trying everything that they give me because why not!

Radka and her friends have been amazing to me and even with the language barrier, we've become friends. Now with English here, they speak it but are very shy about speaking it. Most of her friends say that they have to be drinking to even speak it (which isn't a problem here!). I'm learning some of the language here and am sort of able to understand things being said around me now. It's a lot rougher speaking than French or Spanish, so some consonants are hard for me to say. 

We've just been seeing a lot of Slovakia right now, but we did just see Vienna a few days ago. It's all so beautiful here, lots of corn and sunflowers, old buildings and massive castles. 

In Banská Štiavnica we got to do a brewery tour, see universities for mining and forestry, the town square and a statue called the Holy Trinity, and a castle which combined the old one from the 13th century with one from the 17th century. 

In Zvolen we walked around their castle there; hiked to castle ruins (which was ridiculous because it was straight up the mountain with lots of stairs, but worth it); saw and old World War II train; and climbed an old watchtower.

In Bratislava we've seen the president's house; their castle; a church simply known as the Blue Church; saw the old Royal Opera House; saw 17th century palaces used as high schools; and ate lots of traditional Slovak food. I've been able to enjoy and come to love Slovakian food a lot. It's very different, but amazing. 

I'm going to Prague in a couple days, so I'll post our day in Vienna with that. But till then, thanks for reading, enjoy my photos, and if you have any tips; I'm more than open to hear them!