Lost in Slovakia

So A group of about 40 International students went to Slovakia for a few days. It was amazing, by far one of my favorite things that i have done here. We stayed in small cottages at the base of a mountian in an area known as the low tatras.
On Friday we started walking up the mountain to a chair lift, thinking it was a great way to see the size of the mountians in a short amount of time. Turns out the 15 minute chairlift ride took us only half way up the mountian. When we got off the chair lift i looked up into the clouds and saw what i thought was the top of the mountian about 300 meters above me. So we started hiking on up the side of the mountian and i notice on a rock at by feet that it said 1500 m with an arrow pointing to the top. As we climb higher and higher into the clouds I start to see snow on the ground and could only see about 15 feet in front of me. We reach the top about 30 minutes later. That part of the hike was very difficult as it is hard to motivate yourself when you can't see anything and are freezing cold (the temperature went from about 45 to 20). We stopped on the top for lunch, my Gulas was great as always and we had a snowball fight.
Next our guide tells us that we have about 4 more hours to hike until we reach our campsite. Some of us were thinking about heading back down the way we came up if the following 4 hours were going to be as cold and windy as the first 30 minutes. Thankfully I convinced myself that I am only here once and it was great chance for some amazing hiking. The weather got better as did the views. Our guide was kind of making up the way back as we went and got us back to camp 5 hours later, which means we hiked about 11 or 12 miles. Some of the trail looked to be straight out of LoTR, it was crazy.
After we arrived at the camp we all got our bathing suits and went to the Thermal spas. These were huge pools of steaming hot brown water, we called a tea bath just so we wold not be to grossed out by the look of what were were swimming in. There was also a cold brown water pool that we had a ton of fun jumping back and forth in. It was exactly what our bodies needed after the long hike. The next day we visited a Castle that was very neat, looked like something out of a movie. We also got a tour of some limestone caves (that still look just like the ones in NC) and then to an old village. The mountians around the village reminded me a lot of the NC mountians and school. It was goregous, very quiet and slow paced. The sun was shinning and leaves were changing, plus i was wearing my Boone shirt. It was a great moment.