The Horse and Buggy Show

It's easy to forget you're living in a foreign country, until you try to talk that is. Besides that, though, Trencin is a very up and coming hip town. There are two movie theaters that show films from all over the world,(including US), which are subtitles in Slovak or Czech. There are trendy little coffee shops everywhere, with retro furniture and cool jazz. There are even two universities, live theater, weekly concerts and art galleries.

Today, though, I rode my bicycle to the next village, which only took about 20 minutes on side streets. Once there, a horse and buggy, (okay, it was a cart), clomped down main street and all the buses had to swerve around them, as they didn't even slow down. Old men rode their bicycles, as did the women, with their children on the handle bars. The only cars I saw were those passing through. What was left of the pavement had been patched over a hundred times, never successfully, and a dirt road would have been smoother. But this was a big village. After all, there was a train station and two bus stops.

So it's easy to forget, but not hard to get a reminder, either.