It’s time to get on with summing up everything I missed to write here during March.
About traveling. During a week at the beginning of the month I had a ski vocation with my co-workers and my beloved wife. The brief photo report is here. Besides having fun skiing and teaching my wife to ski, I celebrated there my 24th birthday. My cell phone didn’t work because there weren’t any convenient automatic roaming. Since I was cut off, I’d like to apologize for not receiving your, my dear friends, greeting SMSs.
About culture. When I came back to Kiev, I received an invitation to attend an opening night of the film in which was shoot by my school mate, and good friend. This film has its own page on the lj - S Taburetom do Okeanu (To the ocean with a stool). The film has been shot during the non-profit journey through Eastern countries like Mongolia, China, India (7 countries) of an amateur theater which was performing in different places and for different people. The genre described by authors is a musical-documentary with some humor. I consider this outstanding movie as the most astonishing masterpiece of the year.
About job. I’ve been substituting my team lead, who went to the Java conference provided by TheServerSide for two weeks. Its a great experience, because I’m participating in the project development in a much more extent. I become involved in project planning, team handling and recruiting process. There are more responsibility, but more excitement as well. I experienced being from the other side of the wall - being interviewing somebody else. In other words, I was inspired by this temporary role a lot.
About cuisine. This month I tasted a delicious Ukrainian soup poured into the hollow bread. Eating this soup you don’t need an additional bread, because you are scraping the “bread plate” with your spoon from inside. For a dessert I had a fancy cake served on a plate which was painted with jam and liquid chocolate.
About family. March 23th was our first significant major date in our family life. This day we were celebrating a half a year of our marriage. We went to a Susi bar and ate various sea food. It was quite delicious, but expensive of course. Parents made a present for us - silk decorated bedclothes, and now I feel myself as a Duke:)
About education.
Finally, I managed to visit LSE to get my FCE certificate. Also, I arranged getting an JSDP certificate as my self-development goal at work for the next quarter.
About sport.
Thanks to my friend me and my class-mates from the University went together to the park to roller-skate. I hadn’t skating on my old true Rollerblades for a year, and it was a fantastic happening. In spite of having only three roller-skates, everybody from us tried it on the ground.
About pets.
I bought a cat hair glove, which make cat hair dressing quicker and safer for me. It looks like a worker glove with rubber pins which gather old hair.
Three months ago I started this post, but now there are no any good reason to finish it. I decided to publish a short part of the whole story as it is now, without any completion, because a month ago I received oral (not official yet) results. This draft was annoying me during all this time since I took the exams, and today I release it. Fly away!
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This weekend I was taking an FCE exam. You can read a lot about it on the its official site.
Before I took it I had been studying for 2.5 years in the LSE in Kiev. I started from the Pre-Intermediate level and were gradually taking over English till the Upper-Intermediate level. One year more I spent preparing to the FCE.
- What is better School or Tutor(controversial feelings)
- Last year studying was pointless
- Courses at work will help to maintain the current level
- Tasks were tougher than we expected and trained to do in class
- Winter exams are more difficult (general rule or brake in the Summer)
- Most frightened assessment - Speaking (I’ve read a lot before)
- Wasted weekend (slept briefly)
A the first day we had a Reading, Writing and Use of English parts. The most annoying thing was that we had to arrive there at 9 o’clock in the morning to register. During the whole day we were told not to bring our mobile phones in the class. … During the lunch I met this famous person:
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I like skiing and almost every year spend a week skiing. Unfortunately this year there are lack of snow and warm weather. And I have never been to any ski resort except of Slavsko in Carpathian mountains. So I decided to visit Slovakian Tatry.
A month ago I was encouraged by my friends who had already spent there their winter holidays and had appropriate experience to go there. I started preparing a two weeks ago, it means a month before approximate departure date (March 3rd). This period of time is quite enough if everything are done quickly.
Firstly, I asked all my friends who went there about what activity have to be done before trip and how and where to get an necessary information. When I knew all the basic information I made a brief plan I would stick to. I tried to repeat all successful steps described by my friends and on the skier’s forums and blogs. Originally I wanted to go with my wife and some of my class mates. But at the middle of his campaign I was joined by my co-workers, so we became a group of 9 young persons.
Therefore, my survival guide to somebody who plans to go to Slovakia:
Choosing a resort
You have to decide here are you going to ski. There are two major options: Nizky Tatry(Low Tatras) and Visoky Tatry (High Tatras). As I understood the first one is more developed and beloved by tourists. Since all my friends were only in Jasna resort which is situated in the Low Tatras I decided to go there too. One of the best resource dedicated to this place is basically its official site jasna.sk.
Accommodation place
As a result of high prices (~40eu / per night) in hotels which are mostly situated near the lifts, I started to look for a private cottage somewhere near Jasna. The main goal was to find an appropriate house with capacity for 9 people. The most large town nearby is Liptovsky Mikulas. All private houses are located in the villages near the road to the Jasna from Mikulas. It is very reasonable, because tourists have to catch the bus to get to the nearest lift. As a rule every cottage has a multilingual personal home page, where you can find an information about house capacity, provided facilities, location and prices. It seems that these sites are developed by the same company from the standard templates. Nevertheless, they have the main information you need - host or manager full contacts, including e-mail and phone. Also, there are dozens of listings of such home pages with search by region. To start from, I can recommend this resources:
- http://www.liptov.sk/ubytko.html
- http://www.slovakia-accommodation.net/jasna-demanovska-dolina-region/cottage-hotel-pension-spa/
It is useful to look at the map of this region. Fortunately, almost every cottage has a map on its site with a spot on it. My friends were staying here. It was the first site I visited, and despite of the fact that the cottage was fully reserved, I often visited it to look at the map of the Demanovska Valley region and to estimate how long it would take to get to the Jasna or bus station if I stayed in Bodice, Pavcina Lehota or another village.
Booking an accommodation
I wrote about 20 e-mails to the hosts of the cottages I liked to stay. Almost everyone ere the same- 2/3 floor cottages, with two-bed and three bed rooms. Usually there are kitchen with some utensils (kettle, microwave oven, fridge) which you can use to prepare light breakfast (muesli, cereal and another snacks). One or two showers and toilets in addition. Some of the landlords answered that the requested apartments had been already booked. Whereas, many didn’t answered at all or answered with huge delay. But considering the amount of letters being sent, eventually I got a message that Chata Jasna is available for this period of time. I started active conversation via e-mail about booking this apartment. To be sure that I would book it, I had to pay a deposit of about 30%. After payment I needed to get an invitation letter from the landlady to bring it to the Slovakia Embassy. The invitation letter is a simple fax where the host states that we are really going to stay at his/her house for given period of time. The Embassy checks this information to be sure that we are not illegal immigrants, but rather tourists who just wants to spent their time on a ski resort. The major problem in e-mailing with the landlords is the very rare (from office man point of view) e-mail box fetching. They usually have an ordinary work which is not related to being at home (nurse, driver, teacher, etc), so they usually check their mail only once a day - at night. Suppose you want to ask something and you send an e-mail. The answer could be delivered only tomorrow’s night. As a result of our hurry (we needed a fax with invitation letter), I phoned there using Skype. Actually, it was my first experience of making an international call. Furthermore, I phoned directly on the mobile phone. It costs to phone there about 0.20 euro, what is quite affordable. I reassured her (landlady) that we are going to book that cottage once more, and agreed about deposit payment way. I strongly suggested that Western Union would be the most appropriate way because of time restrictions and simple way of getting money from the bank. After I successfully transferred the deposit money and it was withdrawn by the landlady, the fax with invitation for our gang was received at my work office.
Traveling
The nearest city to Slovakia border is Uzgorod. Being aware of huge rush on tickets to Carpathian region of Ukraine, I wisely bought all 9 return tickets in advance.
When I were sure that I would have where to stay, I started fining a transfer. Translating from the tourist language it means that somebody have to deliver you from your last place where you get off from the public transport (in our case - train Kiev - Uzgorod) to the resort. Usually it is a bus with lace for ski equipment and with capacity for 12-18 skiers/snowboarders. And I needed to find such a bus private entrepreneur who would agree to get us from Uzgorod (Ukraine) to Jasna(Slovakia) and back. I
Visa
Visa we got without any problems because all our documents were all right. In or invitation as clearly stated contacts on the cottage owner and everybody had already been abroad and had marks in foreign passport. For Slovakia Embassy these two facts matter quite a lot.
Ski Equipment
I have got a ski equipment, so I just packed it. Also, this week I bought a mask - CARRERA CONAN/N. It seems to be quite simple and reliable. My sweet wife is going to rent a full ski equipment set directly at the resort for 10 euros per day. Also we hope on the big discounts for our ISIC’s 
