“That in the back yard? Oh, that’s just the castle.”Seriously. How do you go about your everyday life with a castle ruin sitting there? I guess after a while you really would grow accustomed to it; but I know that if I moved to a place where you can see the castle from a lot of places in town, I’d spend much of my time staring at it. I was staring at this castle so much on Saturday that I might have accidentally ignored someone from the school who said hello to me in English.
This is Fiľakovo, or Fülek if you’re Hungarian (or Falafel if you're my dad). Fiľakovo is one of the southernmost cities in central Slovakia. If you went much further south, you would be in Hungary. Because of this, a large portion of the population of Fiľakovo is ethnically Hungarian, and most people seem to be bilingual. Many signs are in both languages, although Slovak has precedence. The problem is that you never know which language someone is going to start talking to you in. Furthermore, I can't be sure if someone's just using Slovak words I don't know or actually speaking Hungarian until I've been listening for a minute. This led to me just staring at at least one person until he asked, "English?" So I guess that technique worked for me.
Early Saturday morning I got on the train, and arrived in Fiľakovo right around 8:00. The castle didn't open until 10, but I figured I'd have a look around the town first. It's not a huge place, and the biggest tourist draw is certainly the castle. I had a walk around the town park, with the "mini-zoo," and wandered around the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (kostol nanebovzatia Panny Márie). It's good that I went into the latter, since last week I had a dream where I said, "I need to go to a church." When I walked in, I thought, "There you are, subconscious, and you were right; this is good." The church has a monastery connected to it, and as I was walking around, a Franciscan friar came in and said something in some language to me. I just smiled and kept looking at the side altars.I liked walking around the park. It was pleasant overall, but it also had one really pretty maple tree. Pictures do not do justice to this tree.
Finally it was time for the castle to open. The man at the ticket office tried Hungarian first, and then Slovak, whereupon I answered something like "Yes. No! Everything," while waving my hands at the castle. (I have also identified this problem: if I don't really understand what someone is saying, I tend to say yes to whatever they ask.) This is when he tried English. He was very nice and gave me the youth ticket price, even after I'd said that I was a year over the cutoff, and told me to stop by before I left and he'd show me aerial photos of the castle site.
As I'm sure you know, Slovakia used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But a little bit of Slovakia also belonged to the Ottoman Empire, and that bit was around Fiľakovo. The town was the seat of the northernmost sanjak or administrative region of the empire. This is why the town's crest has a palm tree on it.
Most of the castle is in ruins now; the only part that is a complete building is "Bebek's Tower," which has an exhibition on the history of the castle (in Slovak and Hungarian). It's a little bit weird to see gold plates and pitchers with Arabic writing and Islamic designs on them in Slovakia. Even weirder was that the temporary exhibition on the top floor of the tower was of African masks, musical instruments, and dolls.
The castle used to be much bigger than the site is now. What is left is part of the old upper and middle portions. The lower castle is now part of the town. Like Edinburgh, Fiľakovo Castle was built on an extinct volcano. The rock that remains looks very different in the two places, though. When you're actually in Edinburgh Castle, you can't tell that the site is a former volcano, whereas in Fiľakovo, it's easy to see. The rock it's built on is flowy and even to my un-geologically-trained eye it just looks like metamorphic rock. The photo below contrasts the natural stone and the dressed stone of the semicircular tower there. The guide pointed out that this castle had an advantage over Šomoška, which you might recall is built on basalt. Fiľakovo is on something more like sandstone, which means that the builders were able to bore through the rock and dig wells. This is highly advantageous if you're constructing a stronghold.
(Maybe I should publish a pamphlet about how to build a castle. It'd be, like, "Captain Ahab's Guide to Your Fortress of Dreams" or something, and full of historical paraphrases. I have a bad habit of paraphrasing historical figures and events in class. My version of the Zimmermann Telegram from World War I went "Dear Mexico...Love, Germany.")From what I understand, the castle's importance diminished after the Turks lost control of the area. Once Fiľakovo was just part of Austro-Hungary again, the castle wasn't really necessary. But it remains a symbol of the town and a good reminder of an exceptional period in the history of southern Slovakia.
The theme at church this week was thanks for the harvest, and this was one of the readings. Sometimes, when you're as spoiled as I am, you forget to be thankful. This was a pertinent reminder for me to give thanks, because I really do live in a good land.
For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
Deuteronomy 8:7-10
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