A typical travel experience on the road

We left Poland …

… and, as it was getting late, we started looking for a possibility to stay overnight on the route to Bratislava. Often wildcamping isn`t a problem for us, because we travel with a “normal” car and not with a mobile home (with which it`s obvious, that someone`s staying in it overnight).

What is wildcamping?

Here`s a quick explanation, if someone doesn`t know the term wildcamping at all. Wildcamping means to stay somewhere overnight (as inconspicuous as possible), where you actually aren`t allowed to stay overnight, because this spot isn`t meant to stay overnight. That can be anything fom a spot in nowhere to a public parking lot (as long as there`s no overnight parking ban). So nobody can say anything against our “parking”, if it`s allowed to park the car at the respective location and we don’t behave conspicuously. 😉

The tedious search for a beautiful campsite

But for this night we had to search for a camping site, as we wanted to take a shower after our trip to Morskie Oko and since it was too cold for us to take a shower somewhere with our shower (as it`s an outdoor shower).

All of you, who sometimes just drive spontaneously and then have to search for a place to stay overnight, know how exhausting this can be…

At best you see a sign for a camping site on the way, follow it and it’s one that still has space left and which seems alright optically. But if this isn`t the case, the search may drag on. Until one arrives at the dark or (depending on the season or the past daily program) in complete darkness. By then usually nobody from the reception`s there anymore. From time to time, one can call a number and if one`s lucky, this person lives in the campground or in the proximity and comes back to the reception. In America this was always well solved. At nearly all campsites, when nobody was there anymore, one could take an envelope at the entrance, park where there was still space and then throw the envelope together with the money into a box.

In case there are no signs for campgrounds, or if they don’t seem nice or are already full, the only thing left to do is to use the internet to solve the problem.

A nice campsite, but a closed one

No sooner said than done, a nice looking campsite in an idyllic wooded area and near a small river was approached. Actually it was a very idyllic place where everybody can park his vehicle where one likes (our favorite kind of camping site). But since there was nobody at the reception, we couldn`t check in. Normally we would have just parked and paid the next morning, but since we were the only people there, we assumed that the campground was closed. If we had been in another country we would have parked our car there anyway. But because we were in Slovakia and didn’t know exactly about their law and how safe it is to park in a deserted area, we continued our trip.

Again the internet was consulted and I got an other promising hit.

Camping Bystrina – Just great!

A little later we arrived at Camping Bystrina in Dolina. Of course at this time (it was already around 8 pm) there was nobody to check in with anymore. Luckily the camping site does not only consist of parking facilities, but also of a hotel and a restaurant. First we asked at the reception of the hotel, they referred us to the restaurant. The owner of the camping site is currently eating there. We were very happy when we found the alleged gentleman. He already finished his dinner and showed us immediately where we were allowed to park (actually everywhere, because apart from two tents the whole meadow was empty). Unfortunately the restaurant`s about to close in the next minutes, he let us know.

Finally a camp fire atmosphere

After the shower we made a fire. A man, who was staying in one of the tents next to us, started one too. And so after the annoying search we could end the evening very cozy after all.

Small tip in front. Yes one can cook an espresso on the open fire and no the plastic handle of the stove is NOT! heat resistant. What was I amused when this happened to my husband. But when the molten plastic mixed with the material of his functional zipper jacket, when he touched the handle of the pot with it to save it from the heat, my brief moment of gloating turned into compassion. It was a new situation for me, as I`m actually predestined for moments like this. And that doesn`t happen rarely. 😉 Fortunately he was able to remove the plastic from his jacket. With the redesigned pot we now have a different kind of a souvenir.

If we had known in advance how beautiful it was on this campsite and if we had had more than 13 days for our whole trip, we would have liked to spend more time here.

Drive on to Bratislava

But so we continued our ride towards Bratislava.

The image of the alpine region of the Tatra Mountains gave way some time ago to a densely forested, hilly landscape with many, mostly lush green meadows. The typical look of Slovakia.

If you`re interested in more info about the campsite, you can read my separate entry about the campsite Bystrina.

Info and tips:

• Camping Bystrina is highly recommended (especially in low season), 031 01 Demänovská Dolina, Slovakia
• You can park wherever you want on the large meadow that extends on two levels.
• Surprisingly, the owner and also the service personnel of the restaurant spoke German surprisingly well. But their english wasn`t very good tough.
• For a fee of 16 Euro per person (for a 3 hours stay) from Thursday-Sunday, from 5 pm to 9 pm you could use the really nice wellness area with various baths, a Finnish sauna, a steam sauna and an infrared cabin. They also offer various massages at a price of 15-45 Euro.
• The restaurant belonging to it had a good kitchen. They served wholesome Slovakian food.

• The camping site`s a good starting point for various excursions, as we learned. It`s also ideal for hiking in the Low Tatras.