Kosice, Slovakia

Kosice, which is pronounced... and we have two sources confirming this... Co-shitz, was first founded in 1230 by German settlers from Saxony together with Slav settlers. It's a beautiful, but small old town with Baroque stoke architecture ala Vienna.

There was actually a lot of interesting infrastructure in and around the old town. The old town is very wide yet pedestrian only. The sides have brick topped gutters that don't interrupt the aesthetic. The center of their street has a water feature, sort of like a secondary gutter. However, the center feature was at a high point in the road so it couldn't have been a functional gutter. More like a white noise fountain that stretches the long main Street. Twice we saw children playing in it. I just hope their parents knew something we didn't.

The city was lined with trolleys as the primary means of transportation and then supplemented with a bussing system. The old town had not one but 2 large malls at either end. Honestly, we don't see malls all that often, so that did seem noteworthy.

One other notable thing we saw was their local produce market. The booths had a flip up table for holding fruits and vegetables. During the second half of the day, they flipped down to make park benches. They were impressively multi-functional.

It was a beautiful city that we were happy to relax in for a few days.Read more