Christmas in Central Europe

Christmas Greetings from Bratislava Slovakia.  We're spending our first Christmas Season in Central Europe and finding that it has many similarities but also many interesting differences with the holiday in the states.

The season begins in conjunction with the beginning of Advent in the church calendar and starts with a gentle reminder of the reason behind the season, preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus.  In our case, we had a service of lessons and carols at the Bratislava International Church and got to sing a variety of songs from many of the different cultures in our community, including a Chinese piece and one from the Caribbean. 

Shortly after this, we celebrated St. Nikolas Day on December 6.  This is a celebration of Bishop Nikolas of Myra in modern Turkey who showed generosity to poor young girls in his parish by anonymously providing them with bags of gold to serve as their dowries.  He achieved this by throwing the bags down the chimney where they landed in the girls stockings that were drying next to the fireplace.  This is celebrated here by giving gifts on (or about) December 6.  St. Nikolas is accompanied on his rounds by "helpers" in the forms of angels and devils.  Good girls and boys get a treat from an angel while bad ones get a piece of coal or a potato from the devil.  Somehow, Phil was identified as having the right "body type" to play St. Nikolas at the Lyceum on Monday following December 6, so he went around to classes with his helpers dispersing treats or punishment (in the form of black marks for bad students) and leading the singing of Jingle Bells. 

This holiday also explains the lighted red horns and blue horns we saw on

kids during the early days of the Bratislava Christmas Market.  We had thought that these kids were just confused about Halloween, but see now how it relates to the season.  Christmas Markets are a great tradition in Europe.  They consist of covered wooden booths that are set up on the town squares, where a variety of holiday crafts, gifts, and foods are sold.  The universal constant seems to be hot punch and mulled wine, sold by the cup and consumed on the spot.  Each city has its own signature foods and gifts, but the general feeling is one of conviviality and good cheer.  We visited the markets in Bratislava (several times), Prague, and Vienna.

Bratislava's Christmas Market is the smallest.  It winds around two squares and spills out onto a third and the theme here seems to be an opportunity for family and friends to meet and share holiday cheer as a group.  In addition to the ubiquitous punch and hot wine, Bratislava also offers sandwiches of grilled meat (chicken or pork) on a soft roll with grilled peppers, onions and mustard.  Another favorite is lokše, a pancake filled with fruit, nuts, or meats.  The stands here offer hand-made crafts as well as slightly more commercial fare.  There is a stage where local musical groups perform - sometimes even in the same key.  There are also roving street musicians, including an accordionist who leads singing of holiday

songs and the one-man band who you may remember from the coronation film earlier in the Fall.  The general atmosphere is that of a party rather than a major commercial venture.  Every time we’ve been to the Bratislava Market, we’ve seen large groups of folks standing around eating, drinking, and just enjoying the atmosphere.



We took a trip to Prague two weekends ago since Phil was giving a presentation to the math department at the Institute of Chemical

Technology at the Prague Technical University.  In addition to visiting the Christmas Market, we also saw the Museum of Communism and attended a choral concert in a church near the main square.  The Museum of Communism was a stark reminder of the way that those governments destroyed people’s humanity.  The Christmas concert consisted of several choral works with two larger pieces accompanied by organ and orchestra.  The most interesting piece was the “Czech Christmas Mass” of Jakub Ryba that locates the Christmas story in rural Bohemia and sets it to folk music of the late 18th century.  Prague’s Christmas Market was commercial with a nice mix of hand-made and machine produced items.  There was a lot to look at and purchase and the food was interesting – ham roasted on a spit over a wood fire and pastries (called Tredlnik) that are baked over an open fire after wrapping them around a large wooden dowel.  They retain a spiral shape and are quite tasty when coated with sugar and cinnamon.


Last weekend involved several seasonal activities.  Last Friday afternoon, the American teachers at the Lyceum joined the former director of the school in making kapusniža for a Christmas dinner for all the Lyceum staff.  The recipe is similar to our family recipe for this delicacy but, as we found out on a trip to Slovakia several years ago, there are many variants on sauerkraut soup.  The “cooking” involved chopping onions, peeling and shredding potatoes, cubing pork, and peeling and pressing garlic - all in institutional proportions.  This activity was lubricated with copious amounts of homemade distillate.  That evening we attended the Christmas Concert by the Slovak Philharmonic, Chorus, and soloists.   The program began with Saint-Saens “Christmas Oratorio” followed by a broad selection of Christmas carols.  Some of the latter were in English and many were sung by the Bratislava Boys Choir with several amazing young singers.  Some of the orchestral selections reminded us of the “Cincinnati Pops” and the concert definitely put us in the Christmas mood.

On Saturday we traveled to Vienna for some museum visits and to see the Christmas Markets there.  We first visited the Belvedere Palace with its very nice collection of works by Austrian artists then we went into the central city to visit the Hofburg Palace, home of the Hapsburg and Holy Roman Emperors since the 15th century. By late afternoon, a good bit of snow had fallen, so our walks through Vienna had a strong Christmas feel. Vienna’s markets are more commercial than even Prague’s, but by walking through some of the side streets we encountered some interesting stalls and performers.  In one market, there were antique shops with overpriced but interesting objects.  On another square we encountered a group of musicians playing alpenhorns and brass instruments. 

We are winding down now, with the last day of school yesterday followed by the Kapuzniža Party last evening. This morning, we all gathered for a Christmas service and the students were dismissed.  We returned to school for a few hours to catch up on final details before the holiday.  We are leaving early tomorrow (Wednesday) morning for home and are looking forward to spending the next couple of weeks with family and friends.  Our sincere wishes for a Blessed Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year go to you all.

Road Trip around Slovakia and Thanksgiving

We had yet another vacation on Tuesday, November 17 as well as the day off (as dovilenka - a vacation day) on Monday,  November 16 and this gave us the opportunity to take a four day driving tour of Slovakia.  The holiday was the "Day of Freedom and Democracy" in honor of the arrival of a democratic government 20 years ago in Czechoslovakia.  So on Saturday we picked up a rental car and headed north out of Bratislava.

Our first stop was at Bojnice Castle about two and a half hours drive north and east.  We passed through rolling countryside as we left the Danube plain and headed into the lower mountains.  This is a spectacular Cinderella's fairytale castle in a beautiful setting on high ground above a charming village.  As with many of the castles in Slovakia, this has a long history dating from 1133 through Hungarian nobles up to the time of Count John Pallfy, who renovated the castle and furnished it during the 19th century. We enjoyed seeing the beautiful craftsmanship and artistry of the decorations and furnishings.  For more information on this castle, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojnice_Castle.

From Bojnice, we drove north to Liptovski Mikulas where we met with friends who teach at the school there.  We had dinner at a typical Slovak restaurant where the food was hearty and cheap.  We then spent the night in a pension in a nearby town; one that had another small castle that was not open to visitors.  We planned to attend church on Sunday morning at one of the famous wooden churches nearby, in the town of Svaty Kris (Holy Cross).  This is one of five so-called "Articled" churches, created in the 17th century after Emperor Leopold's "Decree of Tolerance" - in reality an anti-reformation effort.  According to this decree, Protestants could build churches of wood without the use of nails or metal.  The churches could not have towers or otherwise look like churches and could not face onto the main street of town.  Moreover, they had to be built within one year and could only hold one service per week - a strange form of "tolerance." 

The church in Svaty Kris had been moved from its original site when the latter was to be covered by the water of the man-made Liptovsky Lake. It was a little difficult to find in spite of the fact that it was large enough to seat 6,000.  It's location was outside of the town and not very well-marked by signs so we arrived 15 minutes after the advertised starting time of 9:00. Unfortunately, there wasn't anyone at the church and no evidence of a service.  We spent some time taking pictures outside and trying to peer inside through the windows, but were puzzled by the complete absence of people or explanation.  For more information on these churches, go to the site http://www.liptovtravel.com/artikularny/

We next traveled to the High Tatra mountains, only about 25 km from the place we spent the night, hoping for a change in the weather.  The rain let up after a while, but all afternoon the clouds hung low and we got only an occasional glimpse of mountains.  This was similar weather to our last trip in 2006 to these mountains, so we have as yet to view them in their glory.  We noted many tree-less hillsides that had been devastated by a windstorm 5 or 6 years ago. We drove through the mountains to the village of Zdiar with its many intricately painted houses, typical of traditional folk architecture in this region.

In the late afternoon we stopped in Kežmarok to see a couple of churches and the castle there.  This was one of the towns of the Spiš region which had been settled in the 12th century by German miners who had been invited in to work for the Hungarian lords who ruled at the time. There was another wooden church (closed) in the center of town right next to the new (1906) Evangelical Church that was one of the strangest churches we've ever seen.  This church was built in the style of Turkish gothic - if there is such a thing.  We would have liked to see the interior, but of course it was closed.  We spent the late afternoon walking through the old part of the city toward an unusual castle that was modified and added to in different architectural eras.  Kežmarok has some very unusual architecture.

We spent the night in Levoca, historically the principal city of the Spiš region.  We intended to see the town hall and St. James Church, particularly the altar in the latter which is claimed to be the tallest gothic alterpiece in the world.  Since we knew that the church was closed on Monday, we waited until after Sunday evening mass to enter to see the interior of this church.  Unfortunately, they turned the lights out very quickly, so we only had a few minutes to see the altarpiece and other aspects of the church, but it is clearly very beautiful.  Unfortunately the town hall was also closed for renovations so we didn't see its interior and much of the exterior was covered by scaffolding and construction screens.  For more information on St. James church go to http://www.chramsvjakuba.sk/en.html

On Monday morning, we headed out of town to visit the ruins of Spiš Castle.  We found a sign directing us to a parking lot from which we could see the lower parts of the castle through the fog.  There was a steep, muddy trail up to the castle which we took only to find a sign at the top saying that this entrance to the castle was closed. This highlighted for us a problem in communication that seems to be part of Slovak culture.

We drove on to Košice to visit with Delores Wright, a teacher in the Evangelical School there who we met during orientation. She showed us around town and particularly the beautiful St. Elizabeth Cathedral that is located in the center of Hlavá Ulice, the Main Street of this city. We found this street to be somewhat reminiscent of Budapest with nice shops in the 19th century buildings on either side of this broad pedestrian street.  The gothic cathedral is the largest church is Slovakia and contains many beautiful works of religious art.

On Tuesday, we headed back to Bratislava with a stop in Svolen where we wanted to see the gothic renaissance castle there, but unfortunately we found another closed castle although the grounds were open.  The other interesting sight there was an armored train that had played a role in the Slovak National Uprising at the end of World War II, when partisans cooperated with the Red Army to drive the German army and pro-Nazi Slovak puppet government from the country.

We learned and observed a lot on this trip.  Slovakia is a beautiful country with various different regions, each with its own charm and attractions.  The highway system is quite good.  There are very good limited access highways in much of the country, and the other two-lane roads are well-designed.  The land is heavily agricultural, even in the mountains.  We were really impressed with the richness of the soil as well as with the size of farms.  There is a deep and interesting history with many sites that support its study - from early Celtic sites to castles and cathedrals that speak of the several different cultures that have impacted the country.  We did not see a great deal of poverty except in the Roma (Gypsy) villages that we passed through.  These villages contained the roughest of shacks with garbage strewn to a considerable height all around.  We have seen signs of unemployment in the villages and cities, with some poor neighborhoods, but the social support network seems to take care of most needs for these people.  The Roma are an obvious exception, but we don't know much about them. We hear a lot of opinions from our students and others about their character (or lack thereof), but we are curious to learn more about why they live in such poverty.  We feel that Slovakia has a long way to go in terms of meeting the needs and desires of tourists - it is not "tourist-friendly."  The people who provide service in restaurants and hotels are very good at providing service, but other agencies that could be providing information, quidance, and service to visitors are almost non-existant.  Accurate and specific information is often in short supply.  In spite of our disappointments with not being able to see much of what we had planned to see, specifically the insides of churches, castles, and museums, we came away from this short trip with a good feeling about the country and its culture.

After returning home, we experienced two thanksgiving celebrations.  On Thursday, the student council at school organized a "Turkey Day" complete with turkey and  (some of) the trimmings.  They put on a Thanksgiving skit and we American teachers sang a song that one of our group had written.  It was fun to eat with the students and enjoy their efforts at celebrating our holiday.  On Saturday, we had a Thanksgiving party (again at school) with all the ELCA missionary teachers from Slovakia and Poland.  They all came to Bratislava for the weekend, so we had plenty of opportunity for fellowship and good food.  Everyone brought some parts of the dinner, as best we could construct them from Slovakian recources - canned pumpkin, Jello, and fried onion rings (for green bean casserole) are virtually nonexistant.  We had a great spread, enjoyed skits by the various groups, and played the gift-giving (and -taking) game of "IT", sort of a frantic version of a white elephant exchange.  Both of these events gave us the opportunities to be thankful for the experiences and friendships that we are forming here, but also to reflect on those from home who we miss very much.  We love you all.

Busy Times in October

The last several weeks have been filled with friends, exams, and issuing the first sets of grades.  Our friends Barbara and Doug Faires had been visiting in Central Europe since late September, using Bratislava as headquarters.  In addition to traveling to Budapest with them, we saw them several times here and travelled to Vienna Monday of last week to meet them for dinner.  It was very good to have friends here and to enjoy a little of home with their company.

We had been giving regular quizzes and homework in our classes, but two weeks ago, we gave the first round of tests to all our students, so we did lots of test-writing and grading.  The students did pretty well, but we were disappointed by the attitudes of a few students who don’t seem to take school seriously.  I guess this isn’t too surprising with teen agers, but somehow we hoped they’d be better here.

After grading tests, we still needed to accumulate scores and enter “marks” for each student into the “Classification Book.”  The marks are numeric scores from 1 – 5, with 1 being high and 5 indicating failure.  This is really equivalent to our usual grades of A – F without pluses or minuses.  The difference is that each student gets a number of marks in each course over the semester and these are averaged by the “Class Teacher” and then discussed by all the teachers at a “Classification meeting” at the end of the semester before a final mark for the course is assigned.  That’s not a meeting that we are looking forward to.

We continue to be somewhat mystified by the Slovak system, but we’re learning to go with the flow.  We occasionally receive official papers for our signatures, all with the assurance that these are either mere formalities or “something that is new this year.”  Since they are in Slovak, we can only understand about 15% of what is written, so we may have agreed to some form of involuntary servitude for the rest of our lives.  We recently received our Slovak medical cards for treatment in state-approved clinics and hospitals.  In addition, we were given European medical cards, that will supposedly pave the way from medical treatment should we be traveling within the European Union.  We hope we don’t need to use any of this, but it would be interesting to find out how it works. 

We received our visas and work permits on Wednesday, so we’ll now be official (and able to re-enter Europe legally after returning home for Christmas).  This was a long and drawn out process involving visits to the magistrate for criminal background checks, to the doctors for physicals and x-rays, and to the foreign police for checking that all the data is OK.  But now we have the visas good for two years pasted into our passports, so we’re able to come and go in the European Union for the next couple of years without limitation.  It’s somewhat amazing that we have been able to work and receive pay from the state as well as medical benefits without any official documentation.

The American system also baffles our Slovak colleagues.  We’ve tried to explain the idea of “local control” of schools and especially the relation of this to housing patterns and the quality of education received in some neighborhoods in the US.  Our colleagues cannot understand why the state or federal governments put up with the apparent inequalities of educational performance, and why don’t they just fire the “Director” (i.e. school principal) who allows such things to happen.  They are used to a much more centrally controlled system.  The Slovak Department of Education directly monitors the performance of the schools and, even in the case of a church-related school like the Lyceum, exerts influence over the “Founders,” the governing board of the school, as well as on the Director who administers the school.  Ah, the joys of central control, but they do pay our salaries!

We don’t know how many of these ideas come from the time of the communist government or even from the current social democrat government system, but we have noticed a decidedly different attitude among our students regarding ideas of cooperation and collaboration.  We were warned about student cheating and copying, but it occurs on a very large scale here and students seem to see nothing wrong with this type of collaboration.  Phil did a small experiment with his first year social studies students when they were studying the characteristics of cooperation, competition, interdependency and independence.  He gave his students an index card and asked them to write the word that best described their attitude - on one side either the word cooperative or competitive and on the other side, either interdependent or independent.  Almost all the students in both classes said they preferred cooperation and interdependence.  This is quite a different attitude from most Americans who seem to prefer competition and independence.  The students were also appalled at the idea that in some American classrooms the professor who “graded on a curve” might only give a limited number of “top marks” and that the students would then be in a situation where they might be competing against each other for those marks.  They definitely have different attitudes toward issues of competition.

The fifth year students have a very nice tradition somewhat like our proms.  In November before they begin preparing for their very rigorous end-of-year tests, the classes put on parties for their families and teachers.  They arrange for a nice dinner, put on a program and recognize their family members as well as the teachers who have impacted their studies.  Then they have a dance that lasts until the early morning.  It is certainly a nice way of thanking the people who have been important in their lives. 

The students have very limited school-related activities.  There are a few clubs and some intramural sports, but no organized sports, school newspaper, or other opportunities for students to learn leadership skills.  Some of the students are involved in sports, music or folk dancing outside of school, but most of them just go back to their dorm rooms or to their homes if they are commuting students.  Interestingly, each time we’ve left Bratislava on Friday afternoon, we’ve run into some of our students on the train – whether we’re heading for the Tatras or to Budapest.  Similarly, we see many of them returning to school with their suitcases from the train station early on Monday morning when we take the bus to work. 

We continue to be involved in the Bratislava International Church.  The church is still without a full-time pastor, but we are fortunate to have Rev. Arden Haug, The ELCA Director of Missions for Europe and the Middle East, located in Bratislava.  He serves as Interim Pastor and leads the service when he is in town.  Fortunately, Intern Pastor Taryn Montgomery arrived two weeks ago and will be able to pick up some of the work of serving the community.  She will also be teaching a couple of religion classes at the Lyceum so her life will be very full.  Taryn is a student at the Philadelphia PA Seminary of the ELCA  who will be preparing for ordination after she returns from this internship.  Taryn’s husband, Christoph Schmidt is also a seminarian who completed an internship last year and who was scheduled to come to Bratislava with her to teach at the Lyceum.  Unfortunately he had a recurrence of cancer for which he has been undergoing treatment and is expected to rejoin Taryn in late November.  We’re all looking forward to greeting Christoph.

The Bratislava International Church is provided pastoral support by the ELCA, but is a truly international congregation.  There are fellow members from South Africa, Korea, Iran, England, and many other countries and it is a wonderful and culturally rich community.  We worship in the Malý Kostal (Small Church) that is adjacent to the Velký Kostal (Big Church) where services in Slovak are held.  These churches were built in the late 18th Century and reflect the multi-national German-Hungarian-Slovak culture from the time.  Bratislava was the capital of Hungary between 1536 and 1784 and, during this period, Evangelical (Lutheran) churches were not allowed to be built to look like churches nor were they allowed to have doors onto the streets.  For this reason, both churches look very simple from the outside and both open onto an alley that connects two streets.  I’ve included some pictures of the exteriors as well as the interior of the Malý Kostal.

  

We think the modern picture that illustrates the development of the Evangelical Church in Slovakia is interesting.  You can trace the baptism and crucifixion of Christ through the arrival of Bishops Cyril and Methodius in Slovakia; the Reformation led by Martin Luther; the building of the church on the main square in Bratislava; the Counter-Reformation and resulting difficulty in building and keeping Evangelical churches in Slovakia resulting in laws outlawing building of any except wooden churches without using nails; the declaration of freedom of religion by Emperor Franz I; the building of the Big and Small Churches along with the development of the Lyceum; the string of church leaders as well as those national leaders who were related to the Lyceum.  This picture sure tells a story.

We’ve also begun to enjoy and appreciate the arts in Bratislava and Vienna.  Two weeks ago, we spent a rainy Saturday visiting the Cathedral of St. Martin and the National Art Gallery.  The gothic cathedral dates back to the 14th century and was the site of Hungarian coronations from 1563 through 1830.  It’s a beautiful representation of this style of architecture and contains many interesting treasures.  The Art Gallery had some interesting modern exhibits including one on the Czechoslovak exhibit at the Brussel’s Worlds Fair in 1956.  Also that Saturday we enjoyed a modern ballet by a company from Brno, Czech Republic.  This was held at the new and very modern Slovak National Theater near the Comenius University.  Last week we went to the first in our series of concerts by the Slovak Philharmonic.  They performed Dvorák’s Stabat Mater in the historical National Theater Building on the Hviezdoslavlvo Square.  This is a beautiful baroque hall that is not designed for symphonic concerts, but the orchestra’s hall is being renovated over the next two years, so we’ll see our concerts in this smaller venue. 

Last Saturday we spent the day in Vienna, visiting the Museum of Applied Arts, shopping, and having dinner in a wine heuriger on the outskirts of the Vienna Woods.  The museum contains household goods and furniture from Roman times through the present and gave us further insight in comparing the arts and crafts style furnishings we saw in Budapest with those in Vienna.  The wine heuriger  is a cafe-restaurant for presenting the new wine of the season in a rustic, informal atmosphere.  We sat at a large table with a Viennese  couple – he originally from Bratislava and she from Portugal.  You buy your food by weight from a counter, much like a cafeteria, but the food was excellent and unusual – cooked pumpkin and kraut; spinach soufflé, excellent beef and ham, and great cheeses and desserts to start and finish the meal – and of course a liter of the local white wine.  When I asked the vintage, our table mate said that “it didn’t know its name yet”, but nevertheless it was very fresh and good.

Yesterday, while perusing the local “Things to do in Bratislava” on the web, Sue found that we had a choice of the Festival of Gregorian Music and a local Jazz Festival, both taking place over the weekend.  So last night we attended a concert by five Scholas, i.e. cathedral schools for teaching and singing Gregorian music, and held in the Jesuit Church of the Savior (the former Lutheran church near the main square that was converted to a Catholic church during the Counter-Reformation).  The singing was excellent and the venue was spectacular, both visually and aurally, for this concert.  Next week we have a fall break, beginning on Thursday October 29, so we decided to go to the Amalfi coast in Italy.  We’ll report on that trip in the next installment of our blog.

Wine Festival, Parent’s Meeting and Visitors

Our last two weeks have been filled with growing school responsibilities as well as by visits with old friends. The weekend before last found us at a wine festival in Pežinok, a town about 35 minutes north of Bratislava and one of the several towns on the local “Wine Tour.” The “Small Carpathian Mountains” just to the north of Bratislava are the sites of several small wine villages that produce quite good vintages. The whites are light and dry while the reds tend to be smooth and fruity. While in one of the small towns, we saw wagon after wagon being pulled up to people’s homes and grapes being unloaded. Some were small trailers attached to a car and containing only a few bushels of grapes, probably for individual family use. Others were large farm wagons pulled by tractors and destined for a vintner who would offer the product for sale.

The wine festival was an event that took up most of several streets in the small town of Pežinok. We understand that the festival moves from town to town throughout the region during the harvest season. This event contained hundreds of booths, carnival rides, and entertainment of various sorts. The entertainers varied from costumed dancers and musicians to American Indians playing flutes and hawking CDs (click here for a video.) The booths sold local crafts (some very nicely made), junky toys, local food (sausages, kraut, slabs of pork, and general carnival fare), and Burčiak. The latter is very young wine containing a good bit of yeast. The local American teacher folklore is that it ferments in your stomach, but we only had a small glass so we can’t verify that tale.

The rest of that weekend was spent in trying to get ahead in our preparation for school by a couple of weeks since we were expecting our friends Doug and Barbara Faires during the next week. We were successful to the extent that we were able to spend time with them on both Wednesday and Thursday evenings and then travel together with them on Friday for a couple of days in Budapest. Another distraction was a meeting with the school parents on Monday of that week. This was somewhat stressful in that we could understand nothing of what was happening until after the meeting when one of our Slovak colleagues gave us a short version of the heated discussion. It turns out that the parents of a small group of nineteen students who had been moved into the school from another school that was closed were not happy with some of the arrangements and were raising questions. We were happy to be there to lend support to our Slovak colleagues and leaders, but we wish we could have understood the proceedings. In any event, it was good to be able to spend time with Doug and Barb as they began their three week tour of Central Europe. They are using Bratislava as their headquarters and will be here again in a week and then again several days later.

The trip to Budapest was very interesting and relaxing. It’s only a two and a half hour train trip and we were able to leave after our classes on Friday and arrive at our hotel in time for dinner. We stayed in a hotel adjacent to the Opera and it was a very fortunate place to be since the Opera was celebrating its 125th anniversary that weekend with Gala concerts on both Saturday and Sunday evening. We had left our fancy duds at home, but we didn’t have to miss much because they broadcast the concert on a giant screen with an excellent sound system on the street in front of the Opera. This is one of the main streets in the city, but they closed it off for several blocks, set up chairs, and arranged for the broadcast by what appeared to be the Hungarian version of PBS. The whole thing was free; what a great idea! There were people of all ages there, including young guys who went for beer at the intermission but who also applauded vigorously along with everyone else for the performances. It’s interesting to see such a different attitude toward music and art. We should talk to folks in Cincinnati about doing this.

We spent the morning on Saturday taking a boat trip to Szentendre, about two hours up the Danube from Budapest. It’s a charming arts community with a beautiful setting on the river. After a 45 minute train trip back to town, we walked around Buda, the old part of the city and enjoyed the beautiful views of the Parliament and city of Pest across the river. After walking across the Chain Bridge, we visited St. Stephen’s Basilica and then returned to the hotel for dinner and the evening of music in the street. On Sunday we spent the morning in the Museum of Applied Arts where we saw a very interesting display of Hungarian Art Nouveau furniture. While it had many of the features of other furniture from this era, there were rustic touches that were very interesting. After lunch, we caught the train back to Bratislava and finished the evening by preparing for the next day’s classes.

Into the routine – then vacation again!

We experienced our first full week of classes during the week of 7 – 12 September. All went well and we felt that we may be able to cope with all the classes and uncertain schedules. The students continue to be pleasant, although we’ve begun to run into excuses – “Professor, please accept this work tomorrow because … (fill in the blanks with your favorite reason.)” Phil had to substitute for Sue in her third year English class one day because she was “assigned” to go to one of the apartment buildings housing American staff to supervise the cleaning of the heating system. This supervision didn’t call on her knowledge of higher thermodynamics, rather it was a matter of keeping an eye on the workers doing the cleaning. There still seems to be a level of mistrust in the society that we find interesting.




We were anticipating a day off on Tuesday 15 September for the Slovak National Holiday in honor of “Our Lady of Sorrows,” Mary, the patron saint of Slovakia. On Wednesday of the previous week we found out that the Director of the School had decided to cancel classes on Monday as well since most of the dorm students would probably miss class anyway. Not being ones to waste a four-day weekend, we busily got to work and planned a trip to visit Phil’s family near Dolny Kubin and perhaps extend this into a trip into the High Tatras if the weather permitted.




We left by train at around 8:00 on Saturday morning and traveled for a little more than three hours to Kral’ovany where we caught another rain for the short (17 km) trip up to Veličná, the birthplace of Phil’s grandmother and near the home of Phil’s cousin Iveta. The trip began in the broad plain of the Danube, then travelled north in the valley of the Vah river with the low hills of the Malé Karpaty (Small Carpathian) mountains to the west. We passed though land that was primarily agricultural (corn and sunflowers) except near some of the larger cities where we encountered auto plants and other heavy manufacturing – Peugot/Citroen near Trenčín and KIA near Zilina. The train from Kral’ovany ran alongside the Orava River and was a beautiful trip into the Malá Fatra mountains just to the west of the Tatras.

Iveta and her children, Ninká (12) and Maťko (8) met us at the Veličná stop and took us to their home for lunch. After partaking in the usual toast of slivovits, we sat down to a delicious meal of mushroom soup (with mushrooms from the nearby mountains and vegetables from Iveta‘s garden), fish and potatoes. Iveta’s husband had driven on his 4X4 ATV up into the mountains to pick blueberries, so we had a delicious cobbler for desert. Iveta’s parents have several large gardens where they grow vegetables, potatoes, and fruit, and where they keep a goat that they milk to make a wonderful, low-fat goat cheese – we could easily market this in the US. One of Phil’s cousin’s wife was celebrating her 62nd birthday so, in the usual Slovak tradition, she prepared delicious cakes and treats for a party. We spent much of the weekend eating the delicious food and drink prepared by various family members. It was special that so much of this was grown, gathered, distilled, etc. by the members of the family. It’s a much different lifestyle than we are accustomed to either in Bratislava or at home in Kentucky.

We’d like to give you some insight into family relations and local customs. Iveta and Phil are second cousins whose maternal grandmothers were sisters. Iveta’s mom’s brother Pavlo also represents another line of the family with Phil and Pavlo’s children similarly related. One of the reasons that we have corresponded extensively with Iveta is that she is a teacher of English in elementary school and so serves as an interpreter on our visits. We discovered that we understand a few more Slovak words and phrases than we did on our previous visit, but generally we are only able to give “stupid smiles of misunderstanding” during much of the conversation. One of our goals this year is to be able to have a meaningful conversation with all family members before the year is out. One of the things we learned about Pavlo was that he served in the Czechoslovak Air Force in some kind of navigation role during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We’d love to be able to talk with him about his and our experiences at that time.

In addition to the wonderful meals, Slovaks pride themselves on other forms of hospitality. On entering the home and frequently thereafter, a guest is offered a small glass of dangerously clear liquid. This could be slivovitz, a distillate of plums, hruškavitz, a condensate of pears, or some other fruit liquor. The custom is to look each other person in the eye and offer a toast of “na zdravie” (to health) to which the formal reply is “nech slúži” (let it serve us), followed by tossing the drink down is one swig. So far, we’ve mastered only “na zdravie” and peering into the eyes. The custom of fruit liquors has an interesting history. While Slovakia now enjoys excellent locally produced wines, the past Austro-Hungarian monarchs laid claim to all wine production and the local peasants were only able to drink beer or whatever else they could produce. This led the local folk to develop distillates of the juices of the several fruits that grow bountifully in the country – plums, pears, apples, etc. thereby leading to today’s libations. In addition to drinks, Slovaks also lay out plates of locally-made or home-made cheese, vegetables, and delicious small treats called koláče. These are thin cakes with fillings made of fruit, nuts, or poppy seeds. Sue promises to work on developing her skills a kolač-making.

After enjoying the family’s hospitality along with trips to an old village in the mountains as well as to church and a walk about town in Dolny Kubin, we returned back to Bratislava on Monday morning. We had previously planned to travel into the High Tartras, about ninty minutes by bus to the East, for some hiking on Monday, but the mountains were socked in by clouds and threats of rain. We are postponing that trip for a couple of weeks until a time when we can meet Iveta and the family for a day of mountain hiking.

We spent the Tuesday holiday preparing some clases for the coming week and then went to Devin castle just outside of Bratislava. This Slovak castle is located at the confluence of the Morava River with the Danube and overlooks Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic. It dates back to the ninth century as a castle fortification but contains ruins of a Roman settlement as well as archeological evidenc of habitation back into the Bronze Age. Unfortunately the castle is in ruins since it was destroyed by Napolean in the early nineteenth century.

Today, Wednesday 16 September, we returned to school to find slightly new schedules. Hopefully these are final (at least until some event requires changing them again). We only had a few changes to ours, the worst of which requires Phil to stay slightly later on Wednesday and Thursday than previously and requires Sue to have a relatively late class on Friday afternoon. We also have our scheduled “Substitute“ times, so we need to be aware of thee opportunities to replace absent teachers. Life goes on, thank God!