Click here to see all of mum's pictures and here to see Jamil's.

Monday 15^th July 2002

Stola village somewhere in the Slovak Tatra Mountains, part of the Carpathian Mountain range, about 5 miles from a town called Svit.

9am. At the moment I am sitting on a kitchen chair in the sun out in the garden of a mountain cottage in the Slovak Republic with our daughter-in-law Ivana and her family – mother Elena, sister Mirka and her son Samko and her boyfriend Rob plus Jamil.  We are here in this rented cottage for a week and then return to Nova Zamky, where Ivana’s family live in the south of the country, for a couple of days before we three fly back to London.

Slovakia has had the hottest summer for 90 years with temperatures up to the 90s F (it was 38 C when we arrived) so a bit hot for us Brits after the summer we have been having.

On Friday we flew via Vienna and Mirka and Rob collected us by car and we drove over the border and past Bratislava (about 35 km) down to Nova Zamky and it was hot, hot, hot. We stopped at the village where Ivana’s father lives and had a light lunch of open sandwiches at their flat and met his partner and some of her family – daughter and grandson. Ivana’s father works at a huge chemical factory which is situated some way from the village.  It has a huge pipe to bring fresh air into the works.  This pipe stretches over a couple of fields before the air intake starts  Her father very kindly lent us his car for the week’s trip into the mountains, for Jamil to drive. When we arrived at Elena’s flat in NZ she and Samko were waiting for us with a welcoming meal.  In the evening we went for a walk to the town square, only a few minutes away, and had supper sitting outside a very smart restaurant.  Despite the heat and the annual pop festival in the distance we slept very well.

On Saturday morning we were away by ten in both cars. It took about 4½  hours to get up to the mountains and we stopped for lunch on the way.  It was cooler as we got nearer the mountains but still very hot. After we arrived and settled in there was a thunderstorm and rain – the first wet weather for a month, apparently.  Yesterday  (Sunday) we had a leisurely breakfast – cold meats, various sausages and cheeses, eggs, cucumber and cut, pale green, elongated peppers, bread and rolls and coffee – before setting off to a famous ancient town to see the 4^th and last day of the annual folk and craft festival.  We had been there about half an hour and were watching some folk dancing on the stage in the square when the heavens opened and we had to seek shelter.  When it cleared up a bit we looked at some of the stalls which were all down the main medieval streets and I bought a lace motif for Tata from some lace makers.  They had a big board up with lovely designs and pictures on it, which you could order to be made for you.  Some of the stallholders were dressed in regional costume and sold pottery, glass, wood carvings, embroidery and leatherwork. As the rain persisted we had a late lunch in a very expensive looking restaurant (the nearest to hand) and had an excellent meal which proved to be very reasonably priced. It was a good thing it was the last  day of the festival as it poured for 5 hours and we drove home in flood conditions.

Today (back to Monday 15^th) it is lovely and sunny and cooler.  The sun is causing mist to rise off the mountains now as they dry up from the dew.  My co-mother-in-law has just returned from “playground duty” with Samko on the nearby swings and Ivana and Mirka have just announced breakfast.  Today we went to a mountain lake and the others took the chair lift up the mountain.  As they are on a continuous loop it is difficult to get on and off – they don’t actually stop - so I decided to give this a miss as I was also afraid of fainting while the thing was going and falling out of the bars. So I watched four men scything the grass with long handles scythes  and then walked up a hill until it started to rain, then went down to a café to wait for the others. Rob decided to walk down again while the others took the ski lift, so I was glad I’d chickened out at the beginning. We drove back to the cottage via Poprad, a town with a vast roundabout and confusing signs (we had already tussled with it yesterday on the way to the folk fair) of which you will hear more, in order to collect Eleanor, Ivana’s friend, from the coach station.  We also stocked up with some  provisions from the supermarket (Billa). Now I know that the sign “Potroviny” which you see up all over the place means “grocery”.  When we got back to the cottage it was sunny again and Elena produced a super sausage and potato stew which was much appreciated as we’d missed lunch.

TUESDAY 16^th

We decided to leave before 9 am to go up another mountain, the second highest in the Tatra range and overlooking Poland.  The early start paid off as we had brilliant sun and all went up in the 4 person cabin lifts to a high plateau from where we could see, just, through the mist and cloud the cabin lift which went right up to the summit.  Ivana and Mirka wanted to go up but it was booked up until late in the afternoon so they went on an open chair lift to a saddle ridge higher up off to one side.

Where they managed to see into a gorge on the other side. We wandered a little way along a trail past an observatory and the others walked by a little lake of green water, very clear and stony. So many wild flowers – blue, pink, white and yellow at this height, above the tree line but still some scrubby heath and grass before the sheer rock starts. So we took the lift back down the mountain.  The line is in two stages, from the plateau there is a steep drop down to a lower stage where you can get out and walk down the trails through the trees, then is is a gentler fall to the start.  You can also walk down from the plateau but it is very rocky. It is quite high up, the pylons which the line is suspended from,  but so quiet and smooth as you glide over the treetops and see the sudden  drops in the mountainside down below you.  Luckily there were men both at the top and the bottom to held the cabins steady if necessary for getting in and out.  I enjoyed the ride, it was the getting on and off which worried me but it was all right.

Then we drove to Lovoce via Poprad, another lovely old town with a vast oblong “square” with an old church of St. James (1300s), the town hall with loggia and a square building with a dome (protestant church?) in the centre of it and surrounded by renaissance buildings.  (The country is reminiscent of Italy with great stone buildings and piazza.)  There was also an iron cage, like a birdcage, by the town hall, the “cage of shame” where adulteresses were stoned (what about the men?).

Apart from Jamil being stopped by the police for transgressing a white line (we had followed a tractor up and down a pass and there was a clear, open run into the urban area and he wanted to catch up with the others who had managed to overtake earlier).  The police were waiting at the petrol station just outside the town – a small fine on the spot, fortunately and apart from then losing his bankcard to a rogue bank cash machine in the main square, all was well.

We had an excellent lunch in a beautifully restored old stone house with courtyard, now a restaurant.  My Slovakian favourite, fried local cheese, savoury and sweet dumplings and other goodies.

We had a look at St. James Church which has the tallest carved wooden altarpiece in Europe (and thus probably the world, considering its age)  The Master Paul carved the altarpiece and added it to the earlier, Gothic predella which reaches to the roof of the vast medieval building. There are several other carved and painted altar pieces and altars around the church. Also a lovely, intricately carved pulpit and “lid”.  Later Ivana, Jamil and I visited the house and workshop of the Master Paul, who most conveniently lived just across the square, which is now a little museum. Replicas and photographs were on display in the renaissance house, loggia and workshop round a courtyard.

As we made our way back to the cottage there was the most torrential downpour and thunderstorm which rumbled round the mountains for about eight hours. Water everywhere. The power went off and they tried 4 or 5 times before it was back on  permanently. Fortunately there were two candles in a holder in my bedroom so we had some light and could use the gas hob and Robo did his stuff and got the sitting room stove alight.  No showers tonight as no hot water and no light. Lots of large noisy frogs outside.

WEDNESDAY 17^th

It is 1.30pm in a Slovakian forest, a National Park.  I am sitting on the ground on a spare T-shirt on my folded walking stick-cum-seat hoping I shan’t get too wet a patch on the back of my trousers.  The forest floor, even at the fringes, is still pretty damp after yesterday evening's terrific storm.  The others have gone to look at the ice caves – stalactites and ‘mites formed from ice as the series of caves are below O degrees C.

As the caves are 1 km long and it seems to take about 25 minutes to walk up the steep hillside track, which is what I gather from the tourist information board, I decided to wait for the others here so as not to slow them down.  So I strolled up the track a bit and found a sunny space by a mountain brook to sit and write this.  The water is a constant background babble.  This is a popular place and there is a mixture of hikers, family parties and coach tour groups.

So far we have been lucky with the weather during the day and managed to keep relatively dry in the downpours.  Today it is lovely and warm and sunny.

They had to queue for an hour after the 25 minute walk up the very steep hillside. There is only 1/3 of the 1 km of the caves open so it only took them half an hour to visit. Jamil videoed them walking through ice passages and some of the ice formations.  When they got back down the hill we sat on a low wall outside a post office (!) in the middle of nowhere, in the shade (it was a very hot day) and ate hot-dogs from the café.

Eleanor, Ivana’s friend who had joined us for a few days, offered to show us a shortcut to our next port of call. Eleanor is a keen backpacking walker and cyclist but no motorist, as we discovered when taking her 15 mile shortcut at around 20 mph all the way due to the unmade road, dense fire tree forests winding up and down over a range of steep hills and valleys. It was never ending and really hairy-scary, like being in an enchanted forest in a Grimm’s fairy tale.

We were on our way to the biggest castle in Europe, now mostly a ruin – which just goes to show how big it must have been as there is a lot of it left standing.  It is built into the white rock of whitish stones on top of a huge hill rearing up out of a vast plain which stretches away to the Tatra mountains in the distance. What a commanding view over the countryside, by now away from the pine forests, over fields and villages for miles. I managed to walk up the steep winding road to the outer keep which has various building inside it abutting the walls, then up towards the inner keep by a steep and slippery ramp of huge uncut stones but left the rest of the exploring  to the others.  A magnificent view through the slits in the wall. A vast white stone edifice – most impressive now and in medieval times it must have had a commanding presence indeed. Fortunately Ivana was able to persuade the gatekeeper to let Jamil drive up to collect the “grandmothers” – Elena and me so we were very grateful not to have to walk all down the winding road again.

We thought we were in for another wet evening again but we were lucky and the storm moved over to the other end of the mountains. Yet another stop at the supermarket in Poprad (we stopped at this one in the pouring rain yesterday), a smaller one in a housing estate of flats, not the big Billa supermarket by the bus station  that we found when picking Eleanor up on Monday.  Tesco is “pretty big” in Slovakia as hypermarkets. There is a new one going up outside Poprad, on the Svit side nearer our village but it is not open yet and they are still laying out the vast car park.

Before we left in the morning Elena had prepared a big saucepan of onions (Jamil sliced the onions out in the garden before breakfast) peppers – the Slovak long pale green ones, more subtle tasting than our usual kind – sausages and tomatoes, so that as soon as she got out of the car when we got back to the cottage she shot inside to finish cooking a super stew.  After a decent interval Robo went outside and made up a wood fire on the ring of large stones in the garden.  There are three low benches made of planks resting on logs round this fireplace.  It is the custom to sit and cook sausages over the fire.  You sit with your sausage speared on a slender pine stick, especially cut and tapered for the purpose.  So we all sat round looking as though we were fishing  (looking rather like a lot of garden gnomes) talking and drinking local white wine, which is very good. We were cooking large ham sausages and very good they are too.

As it turned out it was a good thing we seized the opportunity of our first dry evening as it also proved to be the last !

THURSDAY 18^th

Ivana found a small bat outside hanging on one of the shutters.  A lovely hot and sunny morning so a leisurely breakfast then we sat outside. Jamil drove Eleanor to catch a train into the mountains and she hiked for the day.  It only rained for the last hour in her part of the mountains and when we picked her up again in pouring rain at 5pm.  Meanwhile we drove the other way to a village museum of rural life where a collection of log houses had been rescued from an area which is now a reservoir. This is the MUSEUM LIPTOVSKEJ DEDINY in PRIBYLINA.  These houses and their outhouses, barns, piggeries etc dated from the 1850s to the 1920s. They were furnished by the original families who had given the interiors to the nation and  it has all been very imaginatively and well done. You can go inside and see how the families lived and earned their living – spinning, weaving, cobbling, woodworking, wheelwright, blacksmith.  Even the old fire tower and village fire appliance as well as the council chamber and even a whole church was moved.  These buildings have been lovingly restored.  The labeling is excellent and in English as well as Slovak and German.  Each house relates to a specific family and there is a little history of each family as they were at the time their house is set in.  The inside of the log houses were plastered and painted white with wooden roof tiles. Very unusual stoves used for cooking and heating.  Not metal ranges but built of stone or brick plastered and painted white outside, sometimes with metal cooking plates over the fire area like a range or else an open fire kindled on the hearth at waist level with a large iron trivet on which to stand pots and pans for cooking. Logs  are stored beneath the hearth. No oven in this case but sometimes one set into the chimney  - for bread?   Some of the stoves were also flued sideways into the next room, the living room.  The cooking area was obviously always a separate “kitchen”, usually in the entrance hall with a room off to either side, one a living /sleeping room and the other a workroom or possibly a bedroom in a better off family with working facilities elsewhere about the property.  These sideways flued stoves had a brick tunnel through into the living room which ducted hot air into a huge ceramic beehive-like structure. These were tiled with glazed green ceramic tiles and had a wooden or brick bench for sitting on or keeping food or drinks warm on.  We went over the manor house, the oldest building, Rebuilt in about 1500 in stone and once a kings hunting lodge amongst other things.  A mixture of styles and ages, some of it remodeled in the 19C and furnished accordingly.  The church had been re-erected and restored and with some medieval wall paintings in the chancel. A high  carved and painted wooden altar and pulpit and pews and a wooden gallery. Stone building with a wooden roof.  The church is used.

By now it was about 2 o’clock and raining so we went for lunch via a small petrol station at the roadside which also sold all sorts of tools and gadgets, torches, sun hats and sunglasses, plastic macs and capes. Also sold Mars bars etc in the little office and took cards at the cash register, which was linked up to a computer screen – all geared up to the passing tourist trade whether motorists or hikers. 

For lunch up a winding bumpy road following a sign which confidently said there was a hotel/restaurant – it wasn’t until we had turned up the lane that the second car realized that at the bottom of the sign it said “in 5 km”!  So we went for miles through forest until we came to a campsite, then a river, then a fork in the road – two identical tracks through impenetrable pine forest.  Hum. Luckily we turned the right way (which was left) and found the hotel round the next bend. A nice hotel, bar and restaurant, very “hunting lodge” in the  continental style.  The walls of the restaurant were covered with bear (2), boar and badger pelts and masses of stags’ antlers. A nice meal.  By the time we had finished it was time to drive off to collect  Eleanor along the main road , which is fairly level but twists and turns around the lower mountain slopes weaving in and out with a narrow gauge railway line.

As we got back to the cottage we saw the police were parked on the lawn by the entrance.  The next door place, much bigger than ours, had been burgled but ours did not seem to have been disturbed. So tonight I am grateful for the shutters and have bolted the double windows as well, what with bats and burglars!  We had open sandwiches for supper, made by Mira, and watched what Ivana and Jamil had videoed so far of the holiday on the TV and black and white with no sound as the cable to give colour and sound was left in London by mistake. Robo got the fire going again in the living room.  This room heater is an almost ceiling high rectangle, like a giant thin oblong box upended, covered with beige ceramic tiles. The fire is lit in the bottom of it and the heat fills the box then goes out into the chimney up through the upstairs  and the roof.

FRIDAY 19^th

Today we went to Poprad, to the centre rather than the outskirts as before. A busy town with a central pedestrianised street which opens out into an elongated  square – really Slovak town squares should be renamed oblongs, as they all seem to be that shape – which is brick paved and lined with bustling shops and cafes which have seating out in the square. There are a lot of tourists as it is a popular area for hikers and skiers and general holiday making from other parts of Slovakia with a good sprinkling of Austrian (it is near the Austrian border) German and Czech tourists.  The square is mainly mid to late 19C frontages. We did not find the really old part – as we discovered later when we looked closely at the postcards that we had bought.

Whether the big church overlooking the square with the noisy bell which rang for five minutes at noon – you could see the wheel swinging in the separate belfry – is the one mentioned in the guidebook I do not know, as the doors were firmly locked and no one went in or out. Bought postcards, a cable for the tv/video (now black and white AND sound)  and a rucksack for Samko.  Sat out in the square and had coffee and beer then found a butcher and bought streak then went home for Mira’s to cook it, which she did admirably.  We have now sorted out how to get to the big Billa supermarket and the bus station and how to take the right road at the giant roundabout.  Didn’t do much for the rest of the day. The sun finally came out for about an hour at 4 o’clock.  By 7 it was raining.  So postcard writing, packing and early bed. Tomorrow we go back southwest to Nova Zamky, but taking a different route from when we came as Ivana wants to show us the town where she was at university on the way.      

SATURDAY 20^th    Stola-Banska Bystrica-Nova Zamky

We packed up and left the cottage at 10.30 am after the owner and her daughter came for the handover.  This was after another Slovakian breakfast of cold meat (ham, salami and spicy sausage), various soft and hard cheeses, tomatoes, cucumber and pepper salad, yogurt, jam and bread plus orange juice and coffee, just so that we didn’t get hungry before lunch.  It had been pouring cats and dogs all night but was drying up by the time we left. Ran into heavy rain as we drove out of the mountain region for about an hour and a half.  Great forested hills and valleys with little villages. Lots of cottages, ski slopes and lefts for people to come to in the winter.

In a couple of hours we were in Banska Bystrica, a town in the centre of Slovakia. This is the university town where Ivana studied for 4 years. It had been a gold and copper mining town with a charter granted in 1290. A vast oblong town square running down the main hill with a clock tower, church and castle being it at the top end and lined with elegant renaissance buildings. There are cafes and restaurants all round the square with brightly coloured awnings and chairs and tables outside. We have a wonder round the central fountain and pretty flower garden and look at the tall black marble monument which is the war memorial.  It is inscribed in gold lettering “1945” with the inscription written in Russian and a gold star. The flower garden is not just ornamental – beneath it is a very swish modern, clean public convenience – the kind  ladies manning it not only hand you some loo roll (folded neatly) when you pay but also give you a receipt for the payment!

After lunch in the square (fried cheese and chips for me. Pizza for Jamil and three different pasta dishes for the others) we continued on our way towards the southwest to Ivana’s father’s place.  A delicious spread had been prepared for us of open sandwiches and traditional cakes and we had another chance to meet her father’s partner and family. Ivana’s father drove us back to Nova Zamky so that he could take his car back – about a twenty minute journey.

In Nova Zamky it is very hot – we feel the difference after the mountains – although not quite as hot as when we left and they have also had some rain during the week.  The grass outside the flat is greener now that the drought has been broken.  Apparently up in the Tatra mountains there had been no rain for a month until we went there!

SUNDAY 21^st

A lazy day. Elena prepared a smashing lunch of home made chicken soup with noodles, roast chicken with rice and a special stuffing, cooked in a separate pan and consisting of liver, breadcrumbs, herbs, flour(?) and egg. The soup is served with a plate of carrots and celeriac.  All very tasty indeed and washed down with Slovak white wine. After the meal we had ice cream, sekt and coffee in the lounge. Mira, Robo and Samko had joined us for lunch.

Then Ivana, Jamil and I were taken by the owner to see a small garden cottage that Elena and Ivana are buying together.  It is a dear little wooden, pitch roofed cottage with room to put a sofa bed and table and chairs.  There are fitted cupboards all along one side under a continuous worktop, making the most of the “A” frame construction. There is a ladder stair up to a small floor in the roof with a window to the front.  Outside there is a block built lock up work shed and a proper wc with a window next to it.  Under the cottage there is a basement cellar. On a corner of the lawn area in front of the cottage there is a shower made of three water drums up on a frame with a shower head and pull cord to turn the water on and off. There is an electric pump or it is possible to pump the water up by hand from the mains supply. Electricity is connected to the cottage. The whole are is set aside for gardens for city folk in flats and they come out to spend the day at the weekends. Lots of family parties and children with paddling pools. The plots are productive – this one has a cherry tree, raspberries, blackberries, red and black current bushes, gooseberries, a lawn and a largish area of vines. I think the vendor said in a good year they get about 200 litres of wine, which is made in the basement of the cottage. 

The cottage is only 3 or 4 years old but does not have building permission yet. Elena will cycle out and use it at weekends and cultivate the garden, which lies close to the river, where we watch boys fishing.  Apparently, all the time Ivana was growing up the family had a weekend cottage outside the town – it is very usual here, we saw such garden areas outside all the towns we passed.  The owners of the cottage are friends of the family and are building a new house with land about 3 km out of the town. They own a freight company, mostly trading with Germany at the moment as they can only get a limited amount of trading licences with the EU. They are hoping to join the EU soon as then they will be able to expand westwards and increase their markets. (Elena did not buy the cottage in the end as the owners did not get the building permission from the council and she decided that it would be rather too much work for her – quite a long cycle ride and then a lot of cultivating to do.)

In the evening the garden cottage couple took us out for a meal to a very posh restaurant in a “belle epoch” villa out of town.

MONDAY 22^nd

Today we have to return home so we spend the morning packing after a leisurely breakfast  and then cram everything into Robo’s car and go round to Mira’s flat for lunch. Her flat is on the seventh floor with a fantastic view over the area – near the railway and out to fields beyond. The flat has two bedrooms, one of which is a playroom for Samko, lounge, kitchen/diner, bathroom plus corner bath and a large square hall. The decoration is predominantly white – large ceramic floor tiles in pearly white and white walls. In the sitting room the furnishings are dark blue. It is a similar flat in the same kind of block as Eleanor’s but some alterations have been made and the stark white makes it seem completely different. An interesting contrast in styles. We have a lovely lunch prepared by Mira – soup followed by a dish of pork and onions and mushrooms in sauce. These two sisters take after their mother and are superb cooks. Afterwards Robo washes up very efficiently, clearly very practiced at it.

Then it was time to say goodbye to Eleanor and Samko while Robo and Mira drove us to Vienna Airport to catch our Austrian Airways flight back to Heathrow. It had been a lovely hot day again in Nova Zamky and it was still hot when we got back to Heathrow that night and took a taxi (minicab) back to Jamil and Ivana’s flat.

A wonderful holiday, so exciting to meet Ivana’s family and see something of her country.  It may be only small but there is a great variety of scenery and it was lovely to get up into mountains again and be surrounded by pine forests, as I remember from my childhood in north Germany.  Such a contrast from the flat plains around Nova Zamky in the south west to the alpine meadows, fir trees and mountains of the north and east. Also I was amazed at the age of the centres of the towns we visited with their great oblong squares surrounded by medieval stone buildings in the Italian style, many even complete with loggia (s?)  and the later styles of houses clustered behind the squares. The food is excellent and very reasonably priced.

I must thank Ivana’s mother for inviting us as her quests: her father for lending us his car for the week’s trip: Robo, Mira and Samko for coming with us and Ivana for organising the whole holiday so successfully.

Click here to see all of mum's pictures and here to see Jamil's.

^ top of page