Whenever PARKING NON-STOP find themselves making field recordings in the Slovak High Tatras, they never fail to call in to the TATRASPORT restaurant in Stary Smokovec to enjoy their favourite dish of Chopped Up Pork Tatrasport (except for Dewi, who's a vegetarian), washed down, of course, with lashings of the finest Gambrinus Slovak black beer. This splendid dish (perhaps the finest in the world) consists of pieces of pork cooked with bacon, crowberries and red wine, and is well worth traveling to Stary Smokovec to sample, wherever you may live! (unless you're a vegetarian, like Dewi)
Tatrasport's all-purpose building, near the mineral spring in the original settlement of Stary Smokovec, lies in the very heart of the High Tatras recreation area. It is thus easily reached by electric train or by bus. The ground floor offers both rental of sporting goods and a ski service. In the summer, bicycles are for hire. A relaxing sweet shop in summer months provides seating outdoors as well, under parasols on the terrace in front of the building. The first floor features a sporting goods store, and rooms to let. The top floor's restaurant has a capacity of 20.
Contact details:
Tatrasport Adam & Andreas
062 01 Stary Smokovec
tel.: +421-(0)52-442 52 41
fax: +421-(0)52-442 50 56
e-mail: tatrasport@tatry.net
"Street," to be understood, must be profiled against the older term "way." With respect to their mythological natures, the two words are entirely distinct. The way brings with it the terrors of wandering, some reverberation of which must have struck the leaders of nomadic tribes. In the incalculable turnings and resolutions of the way, there is even today, for the solitary wanderer, a detectable trace of the power of ancient directives over wandering hordes. But the person who travels a street, it would seem, has no need of any waywise guiding hand. It is not in wandering that man takes to the street, but rather in submitting to the monotonous, fascinating, constantly unrolling band of asphalt. The synthesis of these twin terrors, however - monotonous wandering - is represented in the labyrinth.
Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Harvard U.P. 1999).