Stunning hilltop Spiš Castle in northern Slovakia

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(the article below accompanies this video)

It’s funny how some tourist sight that you’ve never heard of can be so amazing. Why do some sights take off in the public consciousness but others never do? I don’t know but it makes random, loose-scheduled traveling through unknown countries all the more rewarding and surprising for travelers like Masayo and I. For today we were lucky enough to hike up to the gorgeous Spiš Castle in northern Slovakia. Even better my blood sugars were great all morning – could this be a rare all-under-200 day for me?

As we awoke in our room at Penzión Oáza in the town of Levoča, my BG was already fantastic at 121. Getting consistent readings under 200 has been a struggle lately, never mind actual ones between 70 and 130.

Breakfast consisted of cereal and coffee in the pension kitchen, plus some of the homegrown apples that the owner had given us yesterday. We probably don’t eat enough fruit in general; having some from the garden outside certainly rights that wrong for now.

The snow wasn’t falling anymore but no matter: it was castle time. We walked to the bus station (the one that Google Maps refuses to acknowledge) and found the bus for the town of Spišské Podhradie. It took about half an hour and was super cheap.

Once there we strode around the town at random. Spišské Podhradie is rather small and ultra-scenic: on a wide plain with big hills on the edges, the buildings are small and colorful, the people are few and quiet, and there is a sense of something big looming in the shadows.

That something big is Spiš Castle, today lost in fog on a great sloping green hill on one edge of the town. As Masayo and I walked cheerfully around, a guy pushing a baby in a pram stopped and explained in halting English how to get to the castle (although we hadn’t asked). And he was right; his path led straight to the hill that we’d have to climb.

The trail across the big incline is lengthy and gets rather steep. We were the only two people around and we trudged through the short cold grass as Spišské Podhradie got smaller and smaller behind us. Eventually the castle itself started peeking out from the cloudy mists above us, and it really was a striking image.

Spiš Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is hundreds of years old, and it retains all of the grandeur of its bygone era. Vast stone walls surround its grounds, and we could see them winding and undulating around the very top of the great hill. The outer walls seem to follow the natural whims of the ground rather than any rigid human-imposed design. It’s admirably unique.

Eventually we found the main entrance, on the opposite side from the town. As we had been warned, it was closed for the season. As the guesthouse lady had suggested yesterday, we began knocking on the big wooden doors hoping someone would take pity on us and let us in anyway.

Through a crack in the door I could see a couple of buildings inside, plus a truck. But no people. We knocked and waited and knocked and waited, pacing the entrance area in a shaded section between the towering old stone walls that surrounded the little alcove. We tried for about ten minutes before giving up.

It didn’t look like we’d be getting our unearned private tour after all. So it goes when you travel in the off-season; you enjoy the benefits and shrug off the disappointments.

I took the opportunity to check my BG and get a particularly scenic diabetes selfie with my meter. Luckily my reading was exactly what it had been before breakfast – 121 again!

My quest for a no-200s day was still intact.

Actually I thought that with all this physical effort, 121 was probably a bit low so I split a chocolate snack with Masayo, and we set out to circumnavigate part of the outside of the castle. We’d come all this way, might as well see what we could.

After struggling through less-used paths and higher grass on the other (“town”) side of the castle, and peering through another large ancient-looking door behind which was no sign of human activity, we went back down the hill that we’d climbed.

Back in Spišské Podhradie the sun was shining, for the first time in several days it seemed. We could now see the castle up on the hill clearly: from town it was a truly majestic sight. Having just climbed there under our own power filled us with a sense of familiarity with it, a closeness and pride for having met it on its own terms. The fact that we hadn’t gained access to its inner workings mattered little.

We ducked into a tourist info office where the woman working there said we were the second visitors she’d had all day and that she was bored. We picked up some maps and Masayo bought a postcard and we bid her farewell and good luck. Then, having exhausted Spišské Podhradie, we returned to the bus stop.

As we waited for the bus back to Levoča I suspected I was low and I checked: 56. I drank a bottle of juice I was carrying.

Always carry something for low BG when traveling!

Back in Levoča we got some self-catered lunch fixin’s in a small grocery at the north end of Old Town and Masayo whipped it up back in the pension kitchen: instant goulash with biscuits and some leftover cereal, plus bananas and more homegrown apples. After going back in Slovakian history several centuries in the chilly, foggy air, this was an excellent meal. Would that traveling could always be this fun.

Actually, with the right attitude I guess it always is.

The afternoon was spent hanging around the room and for dinner we went to a place in town called Barbakán which is attached to a hotel. Again, as usual, we were the only people eating there after a lady eating alone was finished and left.

My BG by now was an excellent 130 and I ordered pork knuckles and bread dumplings. Not too heavy in carbs, I suspected, except for the dumplings which might be more than I think. Post-dinner readings are what destroys my good-BG streaks more than anything. I hadn’t been higher than 130 all day and I really wanted to continue that for the rest of the day.

I took my shot and ate. It would be in the hands of the diabetes gods now.

As it turned out, I succeeded – sort of. A little later I felt low and was 44, just as I was two nights ago when we first arrived in Levoča. This is my lowest reading of the trip so far. I had some juice and chocolate.

I also got some insight into a piece of diabetes psychology: whereas the 44 two nights ago had driven me to distraction and melodramatic worry, this new 44 wasn’t a big deal, just something for me to take care of with food. Being low can be unpleasant but a lot of that unpleasantness can be in your brain, not physical.

But at any rate, lows aside, I hadn’t had any high blood sugars all day and in fact hadn’t been over 130 all day. That’s a big step; now if I can learn to continue that pattern but avoid lows better I’ll be really cooking.

Tomorrow we are leaving lovely Levoča to embark on a still-vaguely-understood series of trains and ropeways in the High Tatras mountains near town, after which we’ll take another series of passenger services to the town of Hummené in eastern Slovakia.

Fantastic day today and Slovakia continues to impress. What a great trip!

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