In spite of the fact that I am from a Hungarian village next to the Hungarian-Slovak border, I started to discover the beauties of Slovakia (or as we refer to it, 'Upperland') relatively late. The strangest about the whole thing is that most probably I still would not have this country in the focus if I had not had a whole year of stay in Czech Republic that fundamentally changed my life.

Today, as a fan of history, nature and medieval castles, it is hard to think about it that I just did not notice how many opportunities were lying just right before my eyes. Unfortunately, I sadly see it on the internet though, that there are constant clashes in the social media whether those castles were built by Hungarians or Slovaks.

I also have my opinion on this topic, but I think it is just irrelevant taking into account that this is a common heritage we both have the right to claim and enjoy, and it is just not worth it to have fights over these demands. 

One fact is for sure, that back then ethnic nationalities were not distinguished that much. For example, Slovak and Czech language make a difference between Maďarsko (today’s ethnic Hungary) and Uhorsko (the historical Kingdom of Hungary), which leads to totally different historical narratives from ours. 

Therefore, the second one means for Slovaks and Czechs a political nationality which includes not only Hungarians, but may include ethnic Slovaks, Ukranians, Romanians, Serbians leaving in the territory of the historical Hungary (Greater-Hungary). If you want to understand Slovak mentality better, it is good to know that for them this is the frame concept.

During the Habsburg-Ottoman wars a lot of castles and downtowns were destroyed in the current territory of Hungary, while the castles located in nowadays’ Slovakia remained in safe.

Due to this special situation, apart from a few examples (like Visegrád or Boldogkő), if you want to see how castles looked like in medieval Hungary, you can observe it better in Slovakia.

It is also true that Slovakia learned how to use this advantage as it’s greatest touristic power, and people do invest in maintaining and renovating these buildings.

Even if they were in the middle of crowded cities, these castles would have their intact magic, but in most of the cases the fairy tale vibes are even enhanced due to the beautiful forests and slopes where you can find such wonders.

No matter if they are ruins or partly reconstructed, the visitor will feel that they are participating in a genuine time travel and all the walls, towers, gates, halls and courtyards are coming back to life.

I have to admit that I was very surprised and also a bit jealous when it turned out that the Western part of Slovakia is so full of castles, that almost every village has at least a tower or some ruins.

And the limits go up to the stars, depending on our imagination: sometimes there are entire huge fortresses on hills surrounded by woods you can approach on hiking trails.

One thing is inevitable: since the sights are distributed in many towns and villages of the countryside, the most convenient (and sometimes the only) way to visit everything you plan is taking a car.

I would like to start with one of the most important medieval castles of Slovakia, which was also the unquestionable number one of our 'castle contest' with my friends. It was the Trenčín castle (in Hungarian: Trencsén) which is located in Northwestern-Slovakia near river Váh, on a gigantic piece of rock providing perfect circumstances in order to watch the whole area. 

Before going up to the hill, let me tell you a little bit about the history of the city, because the bottom of the castle’s cliff is just the right place to begin with.

Namely, there is an ancient Roman inscription on the side of the hill stating that in the 2nd century AD there was a winter campaign against the Marcomanni and Quadi (both were Teutonic tribes). 

An auxiliary Roman legion spent the whole winter in the area after their victory and the inscription is a memory of this event.

The place is referred to as Laugaricio, and although there was never a real Roman settlement in the location of Trencsén, this name occurs very often in the city due to the successful image the locals built upon the heritage of the Roman soldiers and emperor Marcus Aurelius.

There is also a fun fact about visiting the inscription: it is obvious that such a historical memory should be strictly protected in order to avoid vandalism, but the solution the city found out was so unusual that we could not believe in what we’d read until we experienced it in person.

In order to the inscription, one needs to enter the main hall and reception of Hotel Elisabeth (former Hotel Tatra, renamed after Queen Sissi) and use the elevator to go to a special room, where the Roman monument can be seen behind the glass.

Going on in Trencsén’s history, it is crucial that river Váh (in Hungarian: Vág) meant outstanding opportunities for trade and controlling the whole region, which all together with the advantages of the hardly accessible cliff, led to the development of a human settlement soon.

Ancient Slavs were aware of the fact that this place could be an important center for them, and Moravians built the very first tower which can still be found in the heart of the castle's courtyard. 

Everything else developed from this tower, and nowadays there is an enormous stronghold on the hill with various layers of defense walls, bastions, watch towers, moats and obviously with the residence of the landlord.

After the Hungarian conquest, the city, just like other parts of Upperland (Felvidék), temporarily became the part of Bolesław I the Brave’s Polish kingdom and was called Trenczyn in Polish. Since then, it was a part of Hungary for 900 years, until the end of the First World War.

However, it was not always so clear. After the extinction of the royal dynasty of Árpáds, just at the beginning of the 14th century, there was a feudal anarchy in the country, and many provincial lords called ‘petty kings’ (technically oligarchs) gained their independence and control over certain territories.

The area of Trencsén and most of the castles we have witnessed in Western-Slovakia were thus the properties of Máté Csák (in Slovak: Matúš Čák) who was the most powerful among the oligarchs.

The evaluation of Csák is quite contradictory, since he was portrayed in the Czechoslovak nationalism as the first historical character who attended to create an independent Slovakia.

However, the story was not like that: Csák was an ethnic Hungarian nobleman (the history of the Csák clan dates back to the Hungarian conquest), and he never supported Slovak people’s interest, but built up his own empire as a demanding oligarch. 

Being the most powerful provincial lord, he aimed to keep on having his independence even when all the other oligarchs were surrounder to king Charles Robert who reestablished the central power and royal authority.

His headquarters, Trencsén could be captured by the king after a long siege only after Csák’s death, and he has such a strong cult in the region that the main tower of the castle still has the flag of the Csák clan with the blue field and golden lion.

The view from the walls is amazing everywhere: no matter if you are in the top of the residential tower or any of the bastions, you will see all the houses along Váh and the mesmerizing golden, green and brown hills close to the horizon.

As it should be, the bluish mountains cannot miss from the background either, while the entire panorama makes you feel like a falcon of the Carpathians.

Apart from the castle hill, there is also a little, but lovely downtown with cobblestone streets, arcades, columns and statues, which really recalls the atmosphere of Besztercebánya and Selmecbánya I visited last year.

The center of Trencsén does not include plenty of other sights: the synagogue and the Catholic church are worth to be mentioned, but apart from them and the clock tower at the main square, I cannot name any specific attractions. It is rather the whole atmosphere that gives the visitor a pleasent, welcoming feeling.

And the reason is the chilling and cozy vibes of the town with colorful houses and flowers everywhere, and the fact that everything seemed to be clean and organized.

It was obvious and visible that this city was very important for the locals and they tried to take a good care of it, not to mention the hundreds of opportunities to find a coffee shop, pub or restaurant to discover Slovak meals such as bryndzove halušky (in Hungarian: sztrapacska).

We also noticed that even if you do not go to the city center, lots of possibilities are waiting ahead of you if you would like to have some entertainment.

We had barely walked a couple of hundreds of meters in the suburbs, and instead of seeing old buildings and garbage everywhere, we gladly realized that there were tidy and organized places full of life and full of local people of every generation who just gathered and enjoyed the food or the music.

Let’s leave our ‘home castle’, Trencsén behind for a while and see what else we saw during this extraordinary trip. One of the greatest adventure was exploring the so-called White Carpathians and going to the forest near the Szulyó rocks (Súľovské skaly).

Although we wanted to see the breathtaking landscape and the enchanting stone shapes on the first place, it was also a pleasant experience to walk among trees of a vegetation which is so similar, yet so different from ours, mostly with pines, beeches, oaks and ferns.

The trail in general was not considered challenging, and it was a ‘family friendly’ route with indeed a lot of families, couples, sportsmen, dogwalkers, joggers and lonely hikers, but there were group of friends as we were too.

It was funny though that there were some tricky and slippery parts where one had to be careful, so it made us wondering how the rest of the trails should look like if this one was ‘family friendly’ for these local people, who were real highlanders upgrown there.

We had some concerns before the trip due to the bear issue: maybe the situation with bears is not as terrible now in Slovakia as it is in Transylvania, but we could not be sure what could happen.

In general, there were other hiker groups behind and in front of us all the time within 100 meters and it was daylight, so the chances were quite low, but we saw some hikers with bear bells on their backpacks. Nothing happened of course, but it’s never a mistake to think in advance.

It was not a question why the whole place was popular: crystal clean brooks, glades with flowers, majestic cliffs on the top of the mountains, canyons, valleys, ancient trees were dominating the woods everywhere, and I rather felt a romantic, eternal peace than a scary, dark and rough forests where you may find the evil witch suddenly. 

The castle episode was not missing either, because we had a stop at the ruins of Szulyóvár (in Slovak: Hrad Súľov) that used to be a complex fortification system embedded between the rocks until it was finally destroyed by an earthquake.

It was shocking to see that whole fortresses full of life for centuries can just disappear from one decade to another one, while nothing will be left apart from a few stones and window holes. However, Hrad Súľov was not the only castle we saw during this journey, and fortunately not all of them remained in ruins. 

Don't miss the chance either to check out my special gallery here, if you wish to see more pictures how beautiful the forests near Szulyó rocks were!