Young people in Slovakia are same as most of European youngsters in a lot of ways. They like to have fun, meet friends, doing various sorts of sports, listen to good music or watching interesting movies. In this article I will show you how we usually spend our free time and how we have fun. Let’s take a look at Slovaks!

Can you guess our national sport? Come on it’s easy. As a country with cold cold winter and other good conditions for it, hockey is somewhere deep in the heart of Slovak Nation. Many boys and nowadays also girls play hockey from early childhood. When you want to be a good hockey player you have to train almost every day like with any other sport, so it becomes indispensable part of your life. Even watching hockey matches is very popular.

When it’s a hockey season, you can find plenty of pubs with televisions which are set only to one channel – Sport. In that time bars are full of people drinking beer and loudly encouraging their favourite teams. Big hockey fans are visiting real matches at the stadiums as well. Usually they wear jerseys and neckwears of their favourite teams or if the match is international, all of them have Slovak flag.

The hockey is a real phenomenon but don’t worry, there are so many sports we love too. Skiing in winter is very common. Cooler guys prefer snowboarding. What can be better than rent a cabin somewhere in the mountains with family or friends during the Christmas holiday and spend all days outside breathing the fresh air?

Young people all around the world love extreme sports. A lot of people go hiking and cycling to rare places. Favourite sport here is also rock climbing. For really brave ones there are a lot of parachuting courses which are becoming more and more popular in the last few years.

Some of youngsters are having fun and sharing our traditions at the same time. They are dancing and singing in folklore ensembles. In ensembles like these, they learn dances and songs from their regions and they’re spreading them to the whole world in beautiful handmade traditional fancy clothes. Everyone loves it. We have so many festivals of folklore that I can’t count it on my hands!

“Heyy, what are u doin’ tonight?” – “Party party party!” This must be popular everywhere. Young people simply love parties. Well, part of them. Someone rather go to the concert of local band or just choose favourite bar in the town to spend lovely Friday with friends and few cups of beer or our favorite kind of coke – Kofola. Yeah, cinemas are pretty common too. What a great feeling is when you are one of the first who saw a new movie in your city! It’s getting better here also with theaters. You can see more and more youngsters there which is good for them and for culture development as well.

Now it’s time to be more concrete. It’s important to know where Slovaks have fun as well. Summer festivals are one of the best thing you can do during this season. The greatest festival in Slovakia is Pohoda. Every year you can see world-famous artists and spend 4 days of absolute “leisure” which is also translation of festival’s name. The most famous folklore festival is “Východná” not just for people interested in our traditions.

For nature lovers we have wide range of options. High Tatras, Low Tatras, Big Fatra, Small Fatra and much more mountains to see here. “Kriváň” is one the highest peaks with perfect landscape. Trip here is quite difficult, but it’s worth it!

This was really the shortest review of Slovaks and their ways to entertain themselves. Even if the place looks boring at the first sight I am pretty sure they can have fun everywhere and everytime.