Bratislava, Sunday 6 December
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own personal opinions, not those of the Fulbright Commission or the U.S. Department of State.
There is so much to talk about this week! Lots of odds and ends about living in Bratislava and an excellent orchestra concert on Thursday. But I am going to leave all of that for next week's post because there is so much to say about our trip to Central Slovakia over the weekend. This post is very long, but most of it is pictures rather than prose. (You probably shouldn't come here for prose anyway!)
With the weather getting colder by the week, we decided to travel to some of the more mountainous regions of Central Slovakia before snow becomes an impediment. Our route took us to three main destinations: Martin, Banská Bystrica, and Bojnice. Here is a map of our travels for those who are interested in geography.
Martin
On Friday we drove up the D-1 motorway (the longest in Slovakia) past Trnava and Trenčin to Žilina and over to the historic city of Turčiansky Sväty Martin, whose name was shortened by the Soviets to just Martin. (Can't have cities named "Saint," you know.)
Martin is recognized as the "home" of the Slovak state because many of the important meetings leading to the founding of the Slovak nation were held here. At the independence of Slovakia in 1994, Martin was declared to be the home of Slovak culture, with the Slovak National Library and the Slovak Matica (center for study of the Slovak people) located here,
The setting of the city is magnificent, in a mountain valley with the Lesser Fatras on one side and the Greater Fatras on the other. The Turiec River that runs through Martin gives its name to the entire region. It was foggy for most of our visit, so we were not able to appreciate fully the lovely views you see on postcards.
The center of modern-day Martin is short on the charm that one might expect from such a historic place. A few old buildings still stand, some of which have been restored as museums or other institutions of historical interest. But mostly it just looks like a small, not-particularly-prosperous city.
We came to Martin to visit museums. The first is the remarkable
Museum of the Slovak Village. This outdoor museum has collected several dozen buildings from regions of Central Slovakia, all transported to this site, placed in a realistic setting, and furnished in the style of the region and period. Most are houses, but there are also barns, granaries, shops, bell towers, and a church. They date from the second half of the 19th century through the early 20th century, though one must imagine that architecture and technology had not changed greatly since much earlier times. It is a bit like Colonial Williamsburg, but without the crowds.
We were the only visitors on a cloudy and very chilly Friday afternoon. This is not prime tourist season and we got a lot of attention from the staff (a couple of whom spoke a little English). Some of the buildings were open, so we could go inside and see the furnishings up close. I'm going to post a lot of pictures, which you can ignore or scroll through quickly if you're not interested in traditional Slovak architecture or furnishings.
The entrance to the museum is at the end of a long path through tall pines. As we were walking through, the landscape seemed very similar to the forests of Central Oregon, and I was reminded of the story of Oregon's Sunriver Resort. The land that John Gray bought to create Sunriver was an army base during World War II, which was used by the Corps of Engineers to practice using locally found materials to build structures, all in preparation for a possible invasion of Central and Eastern Europe. Had the U.S. Army invaded this part of Slovakia, their training in Oregon would have prepared them well. (Of course, it was the Russians who liberated this part of Europe, which is another part of this post.)
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| Entrance path to Museum of the Slovak Village |
Once inside (after paying the 2 euros each that almost all museums in Slovakia seem to cost, plus an extra 1.50 for permission to take pictures), we could choose from four main villages, each containing structures from a specific region of Central Slovakia. Most of the open buildings were in the sections from Turiec, the region near Martin, and Orava, near the Polish border in the north.
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| Buildings from Turiec region |
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| Granary |
Little chapels like the ones below are common along the roadsides here in Slovakia. Many commemorate a specific event that occurred at that spot. Note the two-armed crosses that are a national symbol of Slovakia.
The homestead below consists of a two-story house with accompanying farm buildings around a central yard. The woman in the foreground is not Slovak, though she does have legal residency!
Most of the houses consist of a large "living room," which was used for living, dining, and sleeping. Some of the houses had separate kitchens and work quarters, but most of the family's activities took place in this room. All of these indoor pictures were taken with flash, which probably made the rooms brighter than they ever were, even on the brightest sunny days, when they were inhabited.
In this house, the kitchen was separate, with a wood-burning stove for cooking.
The house below had an outdoor gallery on the second floor, which could be used for sleeping in hot weather. Again, the homestead is built around a central yard, which in this case includes a pig sty (bottom picture). All of the open houses had small pine branches spread in front of the door for those entering to wipe their feet (first picture).
This is a much fancier house belonging to a weaver, and includes a room with a loom and other equipment used for making cloth.
Note the Christmas tree in this house, which is one of the most modern with a fancy white heating stove in the corner of the living room and a kitchen stove in which the fire and smoke were contained within the stove (bottom picture).
This little building was a bell tower that came from a town that was too small and poor to have an actual church.
This building was the factory of a drapery maker. It was at one time next to a small creek and ran on water power, but there was only enough power to run one machine at a time. In the early 20th century it was converted to electricity before being moved to the museum site.
In a small building at the very bottom part of the collection of buildings is the Museum of the Culture of the Roma in Slovakia. We had to ask the museum staff to open it and show us through, but they were happy to do so since we were the only visitors. There was a lot of information about Roma history and culture, the most photogenic of which was the costumes.
The second Martin museum (of about 5 in the city) that we visited was the
Slovak National Ethnographic Museum, like the Museum of the Slovak Village a branch of the Slovak National Museum system. We arrived at this museum only about an hour before its closing time, so we did not have time to linger at the exhibits.
This museum has extensive displays of clothing, implements, and artifacts of daily life in Slovakia. It is not nearly as photogenic as the outdoor museum of the village, so I won't add as many pictures, just a display of flutes and a statue of a shepherd playing the
fujara.
And I cannot resist adding a picture of a very large wine press.
We stayed at an eponymous hotel in the tiny town of Bastrička, about 2 miles south of Martin.
Our dinner in the hotel dining room was quite excellent. I had a lovely piece of salmon with mashed potatoes and 6 spears of asparagus, alternating in green and white.
Veľmi dobré! And even nicer as the total bill for both of us, including three glasses of decent wine, was 32.50 euros!
We arose early on Saturday morning and had to wait for the hotel breakfast to open at 8am. When it did, we were surprised to find our waiter from Friday night, on duty again at the opening of Saturday breakfast. This is not the first time this has happened on this trip. I guess that people work long hours here.
Banská Bystrica
We left Martin on Saturday morning and drove south along the Turiec River, then turned east to wind through and over the low mountains of the Velká Fatra range. After a beautiful drive through a light fog, we emerged into the valley of the Hron River. (Not to be confused with the Rhone Valley a couple of countries over even though it's pronounced about the same. I don't think they grow much syrah and grenache along the Hron.)
Our destination was the city of Banská Bystrica (pronounced BONN-ska BEE-street-sa), a former mining town that is Slovakia's fourth largest city.
Slovakia is full of things commemorating the Slovak National Uprising, or Slovenské Narádné Povstanie. One of the main squares in Bratislava is Namestie Slovenského Národného Povstania (and there is a similarly named square in nearly every other city). I change between a tram and a bus every work day under the bridge named Most Slovenského Národného Povstania. We arrived in Slovakia on 29 August, which is the Day of the Slovak National Uprising, a national holiday. It is such a commonplace term here that the ubiquitous abbreviation SNP is universally understood.
Most of the action in the Slovak National Uprising took place in or near Banská Bystrica and the national museum to commemorate it is located there. The uprising occurred in the late summer and fall of 1944, when various groups of Slovak dissidents attempted a coup against the Nazi-puppet Slovak government. The uprising lasted a couple of months but was eventually successfully suppressed, with the rebels who survived retreating into the mountains to continue fighting a guerrilla war against the Germans, then joining the Allied invasion troops in 1945 when they arrived.
The SNP museum is a modernistic structure consisting of two buildings connected by a bridge on the second floor. In between the buildings is a grotesque and sobering sculpture with an eternal flame burning at its base (apparently replacing a large statue of Lenin that once stood there). The sculpture, called The Victims Are Warning, sets an appropriate tone for what is a very dark story told in the museum exhibits.
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| Two buildings of the SNP Museum |
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| Sculpture between the buildings, with eternal flame |
The exhibits in the museum are mostly artifacts such as uniforms and medals from the Nazi military, the Uprising fighters, the Slovak pro-Nazi army, and eventually the invading Allies. Outside is a collection of large military equipment, including tanks and a plane. Throughout the museum are very informative text displays in Slovak and English that tell the story of World War II, Slovakia's place in that war, the Uprising, and the aftermath, which included a vast amount of what we would today call "ethnic cleansing" as the ethnic German population was deported to Germany and Slovakia and Hungary both forced their respective citizens to return to their ethnic homelands.
I will spare you an endless parade of pictures of military uniforms and weapons, but there were a few displays that I think you might find quite interesting.
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| Banners used in the Uprising and after, many expressing solidarity with the Russian Allied invaders |
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| The flight jacket of an American pilot who served as air support for the Uprising |
Among the most moving of the exhibits was one devoted to the Jewish population of Slovakia, much of which was interned in the ghettos, sent to forced labor camps in Slovakia, or sent to extermination camps across the borders in Poland or Germany.
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| Prisoner's uniform from work camps |
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| Jewish identification stars worn by a teacher from the city of Žilina |
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| A woman's uniform from the work camps |
We learned a lot about Slovak history from visiting the museum, partially because the period from 1939 to the early 1950s was largely ignored in the history museum we visited in Bratislava. I now have an even greater sympathy for the Slovaks, emerging from the Austro-Hungarian empire to be united somewhat uncomfortably with the Czechs, then taken over and ruled by the Nazis, then liberated by the Russians only to be similarly taken over by them. They truly deserve a bit of national pride for having finally become an independent state in 1994!
The other museums in Banská Bystrica are closed on Saturdays at this time of year, so we spent the afternoon wandering around the lovely central city square (unsurprisingly called Namestie Slovenského Národného Povstania). As a historic-looking city, Banská Bystrica is all that Martin is not. Old buildings and churches abound around the square, which is also the home to their Christmas market at this time of year.
Our hotel, the Arcade, was located right on the square, but we had a little trouble figuring out how to get in. There is no entrance from the square! You can see the front of the hotel below with the green sign, but all of the doors lead into restaurants. It turns out that you need to go into the passageway to the left (the Slovak restaurant) and the entrance is off of the passage. The hotel proved to be most comfortable.
The square is lovely by day, and at this time of year wonderful by night as well.
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| Central square looking north toward the church and city hall |
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| Side street off the central square |
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| Lovely old building decorated for the holidays |
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| Holiday lights on the square |
The churches and historic buildings at the north end of the square are beautiful, although the churches are not open to tourists (except for services).
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| Church of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary |
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| Cemetery behind the church with magnificently colorful flowers |
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| Branch of the central bank of Slovakia, located a block off the square in Banská Bystrica |
We enjoyed our time in Banská Bystrica greatly. It proved to be a charming city with lots of highlights. And we didn't even get to the Museum of Central Slovakia or the Literary and Music Museum that were closed on Saturday!
Bojnice Castle
From Banská Bystrica we headed south to Zvolen, then west and north to the magnificent castle at Bojnice (pronounced BOY-neet-say). This is yet another of the castles that most recently belonged to the Hungarian Pálffy family. (We've visited four so far, plus their Bratislava palace.) Like the castle at Červeny Kamen north of Bratislava, this castle was not destroyed or ruined. It was a functioning residence until about a century ago and has been beautifully maintained/restored since then.
The castle sits above the small town of Bojnice, which is near the larger city of Prievidza. Today, being the first Sunday of the month, tours were free ... but only in Slovak. We made it work with an English guidebook and a couple of lovely English-speaking Slovak ladies whom we met standing in line and who occasionally translated important points for us.
The exterior of the castle is like a fairy tale.
As we toured through the rooms, I couldn't help wondering how families like the Pálffys had time to acquire all their art, decorate the rooms, and actually live in all the places that they owned. Must have been a rough life!
Here are a few of the many pictures we took inside the castle.
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| A small model of the castle complex |
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| Many of the rooms were decorated for the holidays |
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| There must have been 50 Christmas trees, often 4 or 5 per room |
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| The Oriental parlor was used as a bedroom by some residents |
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| 19th century Viennese piano in one of the rooms |
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| The Gold Hall is one of the most spectacular rooms |
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| The beautiful chapel of the castle |
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| Chapel ceiling |
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| One wall of the chapel |
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| The Blue Room has paintings on the walls of occupants of the castle over the centuries |
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| The magnificent floor of the Marble Room |
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| This carved partition is all that separated a bedroom from the Great Hall (to the right) |
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| View of the town from the castle |
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| An organ, strangely located in a tall room all by itself, away from the chapel |
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| One of the more modern large parlors |
So this afternoon we returned back to Bratislava, sated with history and Slovak culture. What a difference between the tiny homesteads of the Slovak peasants and the contemporaneous opulence of the Pálffy castle! I guess that we have the same contrasts in our modern cities, but going from one to the other in the same weekend really makes the differences stark.
I hope I haven't bored you too much with all the pictures. As I said in the opening, I have more to talk about this week, but this post is so long that I'm going to save everything else for another post during the coming week. Until then, I hope you are all enjoying the pre-Christmas excitement. Dovidenia!
