Long final day in Hummené, Slovakia

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The quest for good blood sugars while traveling – especially for good post-dinner readings – got a test today. For it was a big day of movement for Masayo and I, our last day in Slovakia. We were heading across the border by train from Humenné and I had to balance the excitement (which diabetes sees as “stress”), insulin and food.

Sounds like a fun challenge to me.

Our plan was to spend a few hours in Humenné in eastern Slovakia until the train for Hungary and the town of Miskolc left. I prefer arriving in a new town, and certainly a new country, in earlier daylight but the train schedules don’t work that way. What can you do? Adapt.

My diabetes day began poorly: I woke up at 4:30 a.m. feeling high, and was indeed 264. It’s unusual for a high to wake me up from my sleep; it only happens when they feel particularly bad. I took some Humalog and went back to sleep. I didn’t even get a photo of it, most unusual for me on this trip.

At 9:00 a.m. I was still 196. That Slovakian farmer’s plate and post-meal cereal really mutinied against my body last night. I still felt queasy in the morning during breakfast.

So when we went downstairs for our last buffet breakfast at Hotel Alibaba I didn’t really take full advantage of the extensive spread. Only a little food, and only a little insulin.

I wonder if this will have some domino effect that would help my post-dinner blood sugar reading… somehow? Time will tell.

Killing time in Humenné

We checked out but since our train wasn’t leaving until after 3:00 p.m. the staff at Hotel Alibaba let us keep our big bags behind their counter and Masayo headed out to explore Humenné with our day bags. I took two insulin pens, my meter and strips, and juice and chocolate as usual.

We hadn’t seen much of the town at all – our only full day here was yesterday and we’d spent that venturing to an obscure village near the Ukrainian border to see an old wooden church in the serene and smoky hills.

Humenné is small, and unusually quiet. We walked around the main pedestrian street which is wide and lined with shops. Few people were out and most of the shops were closed. It wasn’t that cold but it seemed to be far out of season, even for locals to be outside.

At the far end we ended up at a building called Humenné Castle, although it doesn’t seem to actually be a castle. It’s a big square building with fearsome lion statues out front. It seems more like a municipal building, but there are some quiet and pleasant residential streets behind it that we strolled around.

One of my favorite and, incidentally, most anti-tourist things to do: check out a regular old street with houses on it. Good way to see a piece of real local life.

On a post I saw a town map showing three different tourist info offices. Masayo and I walked to each of them but never saw any info offices. They were regular shops, or nothing at all – it didn’t look like any had ever been a tourist info office at any of the locations. It was weird.

The upshot was that we still had virtually no information about Humenné and were just wandering at random (not a terrible thing).

But it did mean that we had to kill lots of time in a very small area with little happening. Near a statue of a family (with topless parents for some reason) I checked my BG and was 176. Good enough for a day of walking around a lot. Plus I was feeling better after the grubby morning.

We found lunch at a fast food place called City Burger. We were the only customers and they didn’t even have all the lights on inside, only an amount of natural light from the overcast day outside coming in through the windows. I had a burger and Coke Zero, but no fries. Those things are poison generally, and hard for me to balance insulin with. So I often opt to not eat them on the rare occasions I have fast food like this.

That’s definitely a benefit of diabetes – it provides enough incentive to forgo French fries. My arteries thank me daily.

Back outside we explored some side streets, finding a couple of tiny and very quirkily-designed churches that were very photogenic. The streets of Humenné are really attractive if slightly ramshackle. Nice trees overhead, cracked but clean sidewalks under your feet.

Finally we were so bored that we started walking up and down the aisles of a Billa supermarket near Hotel Alibaba, slowly looking at all the Slovakian products that we actually had no intention of buying. (Eventually we bought some water.)

We were finally able to get out big bags from the desk at Hotel Alibaba and walk the one kilometer down to the train station. We hadn’t actually bought our train tickets to Hungary yet. We travel almost too casually sometimes.

But it was fine; we got the tickets and the train left on time. There were very few other passengers on the train which was only bound for Košice (“ko sheets a”) in southern Slovakia; we’d change to a new train there.

At a cafe in Košice station we ate doughnuts, and I learned that that hamburger back in Humenné had made me high by 5:00 pm: 207. Rats. Oh well; I shot up Humalog at our doughnut table and ate the snack.

Take my €1.99 – please!

After our doughnuts Masayo and I noticed that we had exactly €1.99 in cash on us, and as we were about to enter Hungary, which doesn’t use euros, we wouldn’t need it.

We walked around a little shop in Košice station trying to figure out how we could spend exactly one euro and 99 cents. We had a couple ideas – this jar of spaghetti sauce, or this bottle of beer plus this certain yogurt – but they didn’t make any sense and just made us laugh.

A woman then approached me and wordlessly shoved a clipboard in my face. It was some kind of signup sheet, like a petition. Unsmilingly, she demanded that I sign it.

I asked what it was and she pointed irritably to a logo, “Handicap International”. All right, but what exactly was this? I’m not signing something I don’t understand. And her attitude wasn’t warming my heart either.

Still not having spoken a single word she pointed at one of the columns on the paper where people had written various amounts of money, €40, €60, etc, beside their names.

The absurdity of the situation almost made me bust out laughing – Masayo and I were trying our best to get rid of €1.99 when a stranger comes up and demands I give her a few dozen euros thanks to her faded photocopied signup sheet.

But I had to say no, I had no idea who she was or what the money was for, and she walked off in a huff. Sorry, lady.

Crossing into the land of the Magyars

As for us, we took our €1.99 and got on the train bound for Miskolc, Hungary. (It’s pronounced “MISH koltz”.) I tried to figure out when the train actually crossed the border so I could get a photo of… something, maybe the darkness outside the window. But I couldn’t tell; all I knew is that soon we were arriving at Miskolc station.

Welcome to Hungary!

As usual I had reserved a room for us to stay on booking.com, and had figured out how to get there using the sigh-inducing Google Maps. The tram stop I wanted to use was vague on Google Maps so we’d decided to go to another, not-quite-as-close one. Better the devil you know.

I stopped and got some Hungarian money (forints) from an ATM and we walked outside into the Hungarian night air for the first time; a city tram was right there in front of us, all decked out in ultra-merry Christmas decorations.

As far as welcomes to a new nation, this one was pretty nice.

There were quite a few people on the tram and we hadn’t paid. I tried to buy tickets from the driver, who spoke English, but he couldn’t change the large notes I’d just gotten from the ATM. After some hemming and hawing, he just waved off the fee and motioned for us to have a free ride. Thanks, Hungary! Too bad you don’t accept euros; we actually had a couple of those.

Masayo went and sat down while I stood by a door keeping an eagle eye on each stop. A couple of minutes later she returned to me with another tram guy who was looking for our tickets.

Gesturing, I tried to explain that we had no tickets and only had 20,000-forint notes. He asked where we were going and I said the next stop. He said ok and left it at that.

Promenade Pension was hard to find, and not where the maps had said it was. As we stood on the Saturday evening sidewalk with shoppers going past, increasingly confused and worried, a woman came out to greet us. She runs the pension and let us in.

This traveling without a cell phone is getting harder and harder. Too old school.

Our room was nice, a little private apartment way back in a dark courtyard. Tomorrow’s breakfast was laid out for us – bread in plastic bags plus plates of meat, Hungarian beets, and bottles of juice in the refrigerator.

We were all checked in and the lady took off. I checked my BG and was 97. I was thrilled!

It was late and we needed dinner but didn’t feel like going out for anything too involved. So of course we found a nearby mini-Tesco and got instant soup, crackers and cheese, chocolate milk, and a banana. And sparkling water, of course.

It’s been several days of busy activity for us and we were happy to eat this meal back in our room and take it easy. Unfortunately we’re not planning on spending much time in Miskolc itself; we’re just using it as a stopover on the way to more obscure places that were too hard to reach directly from Slovakia.

And it’s a shame; what tiny little bit we’ve seen of Miskolc so far seems really nice. Busy but inviting.

The wifi in the room at Promenade Pension was very weak, unfortunately. Unusable. But I needed to do some research about bus schedules tomorrow and ended up with my laptop on the walkway outside, sitting in the cold dark by myself at a card table set up for smokers. The wifi worked here and I did my research until my fingers got too cold.

But I had my info: we could catch a bus tomorrow morning from Miskolc up to the tiny village of Aggtelek back on the Slovakian border, a town home to some UNESCO World Heritage Site karst caves.

At midnight my BG was 143 which I considered excellent before bed. Too bad we can’t see more of Miskolc but we’re looking forward to making it up to Aggtelek tomorrow.

And I ended up with good blood sugar after dinner after all, despite all the rushing around and international border-hopping.

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