We are currently in Levoca in East Slovakia. Its snowing and has been for almost 24 hours now, we may even get some skiing in except that we havent got any of the gear, we would even have to hire trousers so we ll see how that goes. Just in case you think my grammar leaves a lot to be desired, especially for a teacher, I have to tell you now that there are many keys different to ours on this Slovakian keyboard and that there seems to be no apostrophe key at all...

Arriving in Bratislava was a bit of a shock to the system. There are huge concrete block apartments and as the Lonely Planet puts it ´a UFO lookalike bridge´, still, we wanted to give it a chance. We walked up to the castle and had a look down over the city which again wasn´t too pretty but once we walked down into the old town centre it really made the visit more worthwhile. Unfortunately the Christmas markets were just being set up, I´m sure...