Listen to the last and festive Spectacular Slovakia episode of 2019. Peter will take you on a tour of Slovak Christmas traditions with help of Viktória, Janka, Katka, Alžbetka and Marek – five students from the Lutheran Grammar School in Bratislava. Sing along to some Slovak carols featured in the podcast. Veselé Vianoce and Happy 2020!

Photo: TASR

Anna and Peter discover more spellbinding and unknown facts about Bratislava in this episode. Join them and you will learn why beer has long been considered liquid bread.

Photo: TASR

Book: Po stopách dávnej Bratislavy by V. Tomčík

James Thomson takes Peter on a tour around the biggest and best-known open-air market in the country, Trhovisko Miletičová, or simply Miletička. What will they find there?

Photo: TASR

Anna and Peter will reveal where you can find the oldest Bratislava cinema and introduce you to a few forgotten Bratislava greats, including the iconic Schöne Náci. The latter even has something in common with one of the most successful US rappers.

Photo: TASR

Source: Po stopách dávnej Bratislavy by V. Tomčík

Ľubo Mäkký of Hiking.sk returns to Spectacular Slovakia to give listeners easy hiking tips in western Slovakia. He will take you to spectacular hills: Vápeč of the Strážovské vrchy range and Kršlenica of the Small Carpathians. Lace up your hiking boots!

Photo: FB Vápeč - 956 m

Presenter: Peter Dlhopolec

Ľubica Lacinová, a researcher at the Centre of Biological Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, recalls communist times and the Velvet Revolution (Nežná revolúcia).

Photo: TASR (The Velvet Revolution Square street sign)

With complicated grammatical rules and verb forms, Slovak is a tough language for foreigners to learn. But there's hope! Listen to student Ali to find out which Slovak-language courses you can take in Bratislava to improve your language skills.

Photo: TASR

Presenter: Anna Fay

How does a fun-loving American and her family celebrate Halloween in Slovakia? With a strobe light dance party, indoor trick-or-treating and some pumpkin carving of course! Experience a multicultural Halloween by proxy on this week’s episode of Spectacular Slovakia.

Photo: TASR

Presenter: Anna Fay

Anna and Peter will travel back in time, to the year of 1907, this week. Back then, people in the settlement of Černová, nowadays a borough of Ružomberok, demanded their native, Andrej Hlinka, consecrate their new church. Little did they know bloodshed would occur instead. Listen to the latest episode about the Černová Tragedy to find out more.

Photo: TASR

Sources: Historická Revue (history magazine), Tragédia v Černovej a slovenská spoločnosť - The Černová Tragedy and Slovak Society (book by R. Holec, 1997), Černová 1907 (book by R. Letz, 2017)

Mountaineer Ľubomír Mäkký of the hiking.sk website joins Peter in this week’s Spectacular Slovakia episode to explain why it is worth walking up to mountain huts in the High Tatras. Learn more about some cosy mountain huts and must-do (and manageable)hikes in the mountains on this week's episode.

Photo: Chata pri Zelenom plese/Hut by the Green Lake (TASR)