We have been to Slovakia twice and in each case we were simply passing through. On our first trip we were heading from Krakow, Poland to Budapest, Hungary by bus and on our second trip, we traveled through Bratislava on the Danube from Vienna to Budapest. The first time we visited, the country was so new, they had to hand draw our transit visa's. By our second trip through, the country was a lot more established and was thriving. This is a place I would love to see in more depth in the future.
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Slavic peoples from the east settled in Slovakia in the 6th Century AD. Throughout most of their history, the Slovakian people have been ruled by their neighbors. However, after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Slovakian people joined their closely related neighbors, the Czechs to form Czechoslovakia. Following the chaos of World War II, Czechoslovakia became a Communist nation within Soviet-ruled Eastern Europe. When Soviet influence collapsed in 1989, Czechoslovakia once more became free. In 1993, the Slovaks and the Czechs agreed to separate peacefully. Slovakia joined NATO and the EU in 2002. |   |
Bratislava 2019
A Castle outside of Zvolen, 1998
