But what really won our hearts over are the Spas, a great way to stay and/or get well.

Spas are a naturally ingrained health tradition in Slovakia.

Doctors here are highly trained, actually so are most people we met, being engineers, chemists, doctors, since education was free for everybody in the communist days.

Their approach to solving health problems is a natural and more sustainable one. Instead of chemical medication, one goes to a Spa and spends a few days or weeks depending on your health problem. Every Spa has a specialty: like skin, heart or respiratory problems. Prices which include room, board and treatments are very affordable indeed.

What a great way to stay or get well again, this together with the clean air and beautiful surroundings of the locations of the Spa, the body and mind gets an enormous health boost. After spending a day in a Spa we felt this would be a great country to settle.

Slovakia will convert to the euro currency in 3 years, so prices are sure to go up.  Slovakia has the fastest economic growth in Europe, exceeding expectations, despite the general European slowdown. 

Slovakia suffers from a shortage of properties - there are 359 properties for every 1,000 inhabitants; which, after exclusion of cottages, vacation houses (i.e. properties not suitable for year round residency) and uninhabitable properties, means just 317 housing units for 1,000 inhabitants. 

The average number of properties in Europe is 400 per 1,000 inhabitants. Slovakia's long term plan is to achieve the European average.

However, with current new housing construction of 12-13,000 new properties a year, it would take more than 20 years to achieve this goal. At present there is a shortage of over 220,000 housing units and also number of existing properties (from the communist days) will become uninhabitable in the medium to long term.

The Slovak property market continues to offer some of Europe's best opportunities with low prices and healthy and solid growth (for the right type of property in the right area). And, of one thing you can be sure: as virtually all property sales are sold to locals, and 95% are owner occupiers in their (family) apartment or house, so you will always be able to sell your property on to a Slovak buyer, ensuring a safe exit.

In Slovakia real estate agents are a relative new phenomena, since people are used to selling and buying their property by themselves, which is also a factor that is making prices more than reasonable. But of course the language is a barrier.

So far finding an English speaking agent has been an exception, especially in area's that are not too touristy yet, like the mid south western part, near the Hungarian border.

However in Levice we ran into a perfectly English speaking real estate agent, not too eager, but very pleasant who had some houses that might be of interest to us.

We found a small white L-shaped farm with 5000 m2 land with a well, un interrupted view on forested mountains, including a piece of forest that caught our interest. However it had no modern heating or plumbing. But nothing beats the charm of an old farm house with stone walls 60 cm thick and old beams, situated in a small village of 100 people and on the Route Magistrala (an international hiking route that goes through Slovakia and with the prospect of a ski lift in the near future, we got even more interested.

It was situated 16 km from historic tourist places like Banska Stiavinica and in a UNESCO world heritage protected area, making it an very interesting property with investment potential well worthy of further investigate.

Of course we were unsure about the general condition of the house, but a contractor was happy to come with us the next day and made a very detailed quote and description of the labour and time involved. We were constantly pleasantly surprised by the "yes" attitude we encountered with everything and every question we had, even by civil servants our questions were immediately taken and dealt with seriously, an attitude so unlike we encountered in countries like France.

Most houses in Slovakia are in good shape and the cost of renovation is very do-able. The average labour cost is (still) very low compared to other EU-countries. Bureaucracy has been almost not existent so far. After the quote we got, we decided to buy and our offer was accepted.  We paid a small deposit, the same day we went to the notary, paid a small fee and signed all the papers with the real-estate agent. He took care of the paperwork with the Kadaster for a small fee (the seller pays all costs) and 2 weeks later we got the officially signed and stamped papers in our mail. The smoothest sale we could imagine.