Geobeats

Slovakia indeed has a lot to offer. I have lived in Slovakia for 16 months, have travelled all over the country and whenever I can, I keep returning to the country. Not only because of its beautiful nature (fantastic mountains), charming cities, but also the hospitable, spontaneous and warm people. I have never felt as much at home (except for in my own country) as I did in Slovakia - and I have lived in various countries.

I love Slovakia.It is an amazing country and i hope i will visit Bardejov this year.

Sounds like someone had a bad time in Slovakia, must be because you acted arrogant or similar. When I was in Slovakia everybody was nice regardless of the opinions I (or anybody else) had. I've been to Stupava, Bratislava, Modra, Pezinok, and all between there finding nice people to share opinions with. Don't know if you acted stupid or not but when you do people do the same back to you. I never had problems with the police, the people, the transportation or anything like that. I like Slovakia for the fact that Slovakia is a nice country, nothing more then that or else it be bias opinion. There are tons to see in a nation (regardless of size) if you open your eyes wide enough to view everything. The incidents you listed seem to be your fault anyways since we are supposed to wear seat belts. Isn't it proper respect to give people some time to react when driving? You have to keep in mind there are good and bad people everywhere so you can't generalize, bad habit. In short Slovakia will be nice to those who deserve it and will be rude to those who are rude.

Dear paranoid bussiness man judgement of the whole country based on bad experience with police is very poor. Writing about ANY country in the world in sense "there`s nothing to see, don`t waste your time" is even poorer. Of course, there are some corrupted policemen, ugly towns with communistic architecture, but meeting only cold, unfriendly people and seeing just miserable parts, you must attract it. Daniel Vyskoc, film maker

Nice video from Bardejov, Slovakia Looks that Slovakia has a lot to offer.

I have visited Slovakia many times during 2006, because of business, so I know the country fairly well.

First of all there is not much to see, apart from the old centre of Bratislava (you can see that in 1 hour); in any case is nothing compared to Prague or Budapest. The other cities (Kosice, Nitra, Zilina etc). are rather gloomy and miserable.

People in general tend to be very cold, and in some cases even rude. They are not bad, they just don’t know how to be friendly.

Of course a lot of people have nice experiences in Slovakia and they will say how excellent the country is; normally they like Slovakia because food and beer in general are very cheap, and girls usually are very good looking. In any case I have been basically anywhere, the country is not nice. Anyone saying Slovakia is a beautiful country with pleasant people is just joking or is probably a Slovakian.

However the main problem has always been, at least for me, driving around with a foreign plate number: no matter what, the police was always stopping me and here I give some examples:

- near the border with Hungary (just around Bratislava, the capital) I had to pay about 50 euros to a policeman.

- inside the parking lot of a big supermarket (in Bratislava) I was chased and stopped to have an alcohol test (at 2 PM) and because my test was negative the 2 cops wanted to fine me because I had no seat belt. When I pointed out that we were in a supermarket and nobody had it, the answer was: we can’t stop everybody, so they had to stop me???. In any case I told them I had no money, so finally they let me go.

- near a roundabout (in Nitra) I was stopped because, according to the police, I did not have the indicator on time????. They asked me: "get inside our car because it is raining"????. When I refused and told them we could go together to the police station, they decided to let me go.

And I have more and more of stories like these, so my suggestion is: go to Slovakia unless you have some very important business there (only with a rented car with Slovakian numbers), if not don't waste your time there.

By the way, if you have any problem don’t even try to contact the police or any tourist organization, they simply won’t answer you.