Wordless Wednesday: Woods Bay State Park, April 21, 2018

Wordless Wednesday: Myrtle Beach, September 30-October 1, 2017

St John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church

Slovakia Recomposed

The other day I came across this video.  Set to "Spring 0" and "Spring 1" from Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, it features footage of Málinec (southwest of Tisovec).  I think it's beautiful and captures the country wonderfully.

Autumn in Western Mass

This blog is owed much update and explanation.  I keep thinking I'll get a chance to sit down and write something for it, but it always gets away from me.  Here, at least, is some new content.

It's October, and in western Massachusetts that means it rains.  Last Friday it rained on and off for most of the day, and from the comfort of my room I got a little of it on video to share.  Since that time a lot of the leaves on the tree outside my window have blown down to the ground.  I'm not looking forward to the time when they're all gone--I don't feel prepared to see a naked tree outside my window for the next few months.  I suppose I'd better get ready.

 

Video of the Day

Man, parts of this video look unreal.  One day I hope to be able to photograph stars half so cool as this.  Props to Shawn Reeder for capturing this amazing beauty.

The Work Outing

(In the spirit of non-plagiarism, the title is taken from the name of an episode of "The IT Crowd." It's not my favorite episode, but it was the first one I saw.)

For the past two years, the school has been involved in an ecological project with other European schools. Some of our teachers and even students have visited other schools in Portugal, Norway, and Sweden, and now it's EGT's turn to host. As hosts, they've arranged excursions for the visiting teachers; today they're in the High Tatras, and yesterday there was a trip to a cave and a manor house. It may seem like an odd combination, but the two are fairly close to each other (and less than an hour from Tisovec). The boss invited us to go along on the trips, because she likes us to see the country. H'd already been to the cave and kaštiel, so Robin and I went along with the guests. They went in a small bus, and we went in the school car, where we saw nice views like this one here. Man, Slovakia is pretty.

The Ochtinská aragonite cave is one of only like three or four aragonite caves in the world. It is, of course, out in the middle of nowhere, and like Domica, the entrance is in a bizarre spaceshipesque building. Inside the cave there is pretty marble-like rock, which I liked, and the aragonite formations, like bleached sea urchins clinging to the roof of the cave. Most of them are smallish, but there's a big one called the Hedgehog. At this particular cave, I suppose because it's uncommon, they wanted 10 bleedin' euros to take pictures. I ask you. Needless to say, I have no pictures.

Then we went along to Betliar. Some websites and guidebooks call it a "castle," probably in part because the Slovak word kaštiel sounds like castle; but it's really a mansion or manor house. Generally I'd prefer to go to the really hardcore fortressy castles, and that's one of the reasons I hadn't been to Betliar before this; but it turned out to be really cool. The house belonged for many years to Hungarian noble families.

The first few rooms are standard Here's a bit of furniture, some swords, and a family tree of the people who used to hang out here; after that it gets weird, when you go into the Grotto, a faux-cave with somewhat poorly taxidermied local animals like wolves and bears and a boar, and weirder still in the rooms where there are trophies from Africa. There were some masks and spears and shields, and a couple crocodiles, and a sea turtle, and a gigantic snakeskin, and this monstrosity:What?

After that it goes back to normal, more rooms and portraits and things. As we went through one room I saw a piece of furniture and thought, 'Where is the spinet?' and a few rooms later, there it was (I think it was really a fortepiano), with a bust of Beethoven on it and everything. One thing I thought was cool about the house was that the corners have square projections, sort of like towers or bay windows, and all the bathrooms are in those corners.

But really, the coolest room in the place is the library.
After the tour we walked around the grounds for a bit. It's got several odd little building that seem to serve no purpose, like a Masonic temple and a Chinese pagoda and Rob and I may or may not have climbed on one of them. You'll never know for sure.

Stormy Weather

First, a quick announcement: Happy fourth birthday yesterday, blog!

As you no doubt remember, last spring was exceptionally rainy. In comparison, this one has been quite dry. Until today (dun dun dun). The rain woke me up at 2 this morning, and had stopped by the second time I woke up at 7,* although there were some clouds lurking in the sky. I'd planned to go to a castle ruin, Pustý hrad, near Zvolen, but I didn't feel sanguine about my chances of not getting rained on as I walked around, so I decided to stay home. I feel this was a good choice.

We've had strong rain, thunder and lightning, and hail. The thunder was more impressive in real life than it sounds here, but you can see the lightning pretty well.

It took about an hour to upload this to YouTube, so the storm has stopped for now. Chances are good that it'll start up again, but I'm prepared with lots of candles for the anticipated power outage and various accoutrements for when I have to go outside.

Ah, there it goes again. Rain boots, engage!

*For some reason we teachers here always talk about when we woke up on weekends/holidays. Sleeping past 8 is quite an accomplishment.
Also, please note that footnotes are now clickable. Progress!

In Living Color

For about a year, Blogger hasn't let me post videos directly to my blog. I investigated moving to a different service, but the one I was interested in charged for video uploading, and that was not going to happen, so I stayed put and just didn't post videos. But after the accordion madness, something had to be done. I needed you to be able to see the accordion videos! To that end, I broke down and signed up with YouTube.

If I've marked everything correctly, you won't be able to comment on the videos on YouTube, nor will they come up in a search. People are rude and ignorant when commenting on that site, and I don't want to have to deal with that; the videos are only going on there since Google Video is kaput. So I know the videos are poor quality, often shaky, blah blah blah. Most of them were taken on a digital camera (although a few were done with my mom's camcorder), and I have problems holding still. It's not necessary for you to tell me these things.

Now I'm going to post some of the videos that I would have done in the past had I had the ability. First up is the bus tour of Kraków from last July, at a dizzying quadruple speed.

Next, what Tisovec looks like from the fourth floor of the hotel.

Here are the bells from York Minster.

And finally some head-butting sheeps.

Haiku

I wrote one in Slovak and am terribly proud of myself.

Hurá, jar je tu!
Lesy sú plné kvietkov
A tiež medveďov

which of course means

Hurray, spring is here!
The woods are full of flowers
And also bears

Only one line of this is true. Of course, now that I think of it it should say "The trees are full of skulls," but I don't yet know the word for skulls.

Alas, Poor Trigger

Spring is here, and you know what that means...time for a skull in a tree.

"Many sink down to the underworld..."

"...and few return to the sunlit lands."

I don't remember why or whose idea it was, but last year we visited a few caves. The first, and by far the least impressive, was the Bystrianska cave, not far from Banská Bystrica. We saw two different kinds of bats there, and that's really all I can think of to say about it.

The next was much more interesting, because it was one of Slovakia's two ice caves. We visited the Dobšinská ice cave on the edge of Slovenský raj. (The other one, Demänovská ice cave, is in the Liptov region.) The ice cave was more than just a hole in the ground...it was a hole in the ground filled with ice. It was quite pretty, though, and not excessively cold. I mean, I licked the ice, and my tongue didn't get stuck or anything.

After last weekend I can be done with going in caves for a while. Domica was on my (very short) list of caves I wanted to visit because of its underground river, and the possibility of riding a boat on said underground river. Domica isn't far away at all, although it's only about two kilometers north of Hungary. Getting there took a little maneuvering because of public transportation being what it is; we couldn't get to Domica from Tisovec on a Saturday, so we went part of the way on Friday afternoon, stayed in a hotel in Rožňava that night, and took a taxi to the cave the next morning. "Hotel?" you say. "Taxi?" you say. "Slovakia," I say, where it was all to be had for a reasonable price. Also, it was Birthday Weekend, which automatically justifies the price.

H and Robin and I arrived at the cave well in time for the first scheduled tour, at 9:30. I decided to pay the 7€ photo/video fee, just in case the cave was rad. (For better pictures than mine and information on other Slovak caves, check out the Slovak Caves Administration's website, which is quite good.) The tour was the three of us and a Slovak couple, and the guide spoke a little English, so he was able to tell us some things.

The cave was pretty big and quite open in places. The boat ride was not as epic as I'd hoped, but it was cool. Of course the idea of an underground boat ride automatically makes me think of The Silver Chair (whence the quote), when Scrubb, Pole, and Puddleglum are escorted through the underland. I think my favorite part of the cave was the area called the Roman Spa, below. It looks totally fake, straight out of Disneyland. I'd been taking a picture of something and when I joined the others I said, "This is fake, isn't it?" It made us all feel like we should be singing "A Pirate's Life for Me" on the boat ride, or looking for One-Eyed Willy's treasure.

FAKE

After the tour finished we took a short walk on a nature trail, ate lunch outside the closed and sort of creepy resort across from the cave entrance, then began our return journey. Theoretically we would take a bus to a place called Plešivec, then back to Rožňava, and then to Tisovec. There was going to be about two hours in Plešivec, a town of which we had no knowledge but hoped would be interesting. Alas, it was not. We briefly considered hopping a fence so I could get a better look at the Gothic church, but decided that would not be the best idea. So we got a taxi back to Rožňava, ate ice cream, went to Tesco, and then came home.

Slovak caves: done. Believe it or not, there are still some castles I haven't been to yet. Yet...

FAKE

"SNEŽI!"

"It's snowing!" This is what the kids always yell whenever it starts snowing during school, as it did last Wednesday. They act as though they've never seen snow before in their little Slovak lives. And shortly thereafter I always end up saying, "Snow stays outside the classroom."

Hiking in the High Tatras

Last weekend we went up to the High Tatras to go hiking. This, as I’m sure you realize, was not my idea. I went because I’d not spent much time in that area before, and I wanted to see the beautiful nature* for which the area is famous. At first we’d arranged to meet some of the teachers from Poland, but they ran into transportation difficulties—apparently all of the trains coming into Slovakia were sold out—so it ended up just being the four of us. We’d also first planned to go on Friday afternoon, do the main hike on Saturday, and come back on Sunday, but instead left on Saturday morning so that people could get more stuff done before the trip.

We took buses to Poprad, and from there took a train to Popradské pleso. When we got to the train station in Poprad, the signs for our train listed the platform as “TEŽ” rather than a number. TEŽ stands for Tatranské Elektrické Železnice, the electric railroad that runs to the resorts and towns in the Tatras. Like many trains that go to areas frequented by tourists, this train had announcements not only in Slovak but also in German and English.

We got off at Popradské pleso and walked up a road for about an hour to get to the actual lake (a pleso is a high mountain lake) and our hotel. There are lots of chaty to stay in on hiking routes; these are cabins which often have dorm-type accommodations. On the shores of Popradské pleso, though, is an actual hotel. It was probably nicer than the one I live in, but it wasn’t greatly luxurious. We each paid about 16€ for our night’s stay in a six-bed room with bathrooms down the hall. (I didn’t see showers anywhere. Maybe if you’re a hardcore hiker you just don’t shower for as long as you’re on your trek.)

Once we’d checked in and eaten lunch, we started off on our hike. We were heading for Velké Hincovo pleso, the highest lake in Slovakia. It was a pretty hike; we crossed rivers running over rocks, and saw snow high in the mountains above us. It was also hard. For some reason I didn’t expect there to be so many rocks on the trail. In places it was like climbing stairs. After a while we were stopping every few minutes for a break, and soon I decided I couldn’t go any further. (On one of those breaks we saw one of our second years coming down with his parents. He seemed rather surprised to see us, and his father kept telling him to tell us to get a move on and not waste time if we wanted to reach the lake.) My legs were tired, and my knees were starting to ache, and it wasn’t going to be a lot easier going down than going up; so though it galled me, I admitted defeat. I was pretty frustrated for a while, since I was trying to prove that I could do it, and I hated having to give up. But being able to walk in the future was pretty important, and it’s not like I was going to miss seeing something I actually cared deeply about. If there had been an awesome castle at the end of the hike, I would have kept going. So Robin, who’d already seen the lake, didn’t care about seeing it again, and had already joked that she was a quitter, went back down the trail with me. We walked around the pleso and relaxed for a while before the other two got back.

The next morning H went up another trail and the rest of us walked the trail around the lake to the symbolic cemetery. The cemetery has plaques and memorials to people who have died in the Tatras. Most of the people were climbers and hikers, although there are two memorials for people who died in plane crashes in the mountains, too, including a group of soldiers during the Slovak National Uprising. The mountains around us kept appearing and disappearing in the fog.

Before we could get back on public transportation, we had to get down to Štrbské pleso. Originally we had planned to come up this trail on Friday evening, and it turned out to be a good thing we didn’t, since it would have been a steep, rocky, dark climb then. On Sunday morning it was beautiful, because we walked through the fog. We couldn’t always see the valley to our left. I think this trail was my favorite, and not because it was the one we were leaving by. We could actually see the fog moving around us, and quickly, too.

In towns and villages in Slovakia, people don’t always acknowledge or greet you. They may even look at you with suspicion if you say hello. But on the hiking trails there was more camaraderie, and a definite informality. People greeted us, sometimes with the formal “Dobrý deň,” but often with a simple “Ahojte” (hi, plural). Perhaps it was just because it’s hard to ignore someone on the same trail you’re using. Whatever the reason, it was nice to be greeted, and I liked observing all the different kinds of people who passed us.

So now I can strike “Hiking in the Tatras” off my list of things I never actually intended to do in life. This coming weekend is fall break, and I’ll be returning to a place I’ve already visited, with a new twist. Here’s a video clue. Get excited; I am.


* “The beautiful nature” is something we hear about all the time. People don’t spend time outdoors, they go to the nature. It’s got to the point where it’s very hard for me to even suggest any alternative phrase to “the nature.”

Back in Action

I've gone from this to this.

I've left behind the cheeseburgers, but come back to the Kofola. It's not quite an even trade, but it's acceptable.

Pozor Medved!

After seeing "Robin Hood" on Friday night, I obviously had to go out to traipse among some trees on Saturday. So I was walking along, trying to avoid getting covered in mud, when I noticed a strange footprint in the track before me. My first thought was to wonder why someone was walking around barefoot out there. When I saw a few more prints I realized that they had claws.
Lo, we have heard tell that there are bears round these parts, but, having not seen them, I had not believed. I've been more afraid of people than animals, because I hadn't seen anything more dangerous than a fox, and that from afar; but I know that there are people with guns, and am unable to communicate that I am but walking harmlessly and will get off your land, no need to shoot me. Now I have incontrovertible evidence that there are FREAKIN' BEARS HERE and I could be eaten at any moment.

For scale, please observe my funny-lookin' hand next to a front and rear print. For further scale, my hand is about eight inches from heel to middle fingertip. Also, it's not nearly as pasty as it looks in these pictures.

Castling

On Saturday one of the boys (who, because he agreed to be my buddy for the day, shall be called just that) and I went on a hiking/sightseeing trip with a Slovak hiking group. One of the Slovak teachers told us about the trip, and she and/or her husband was supposed to come with us, but bowed out at the last minute.

At 4:40 in the morning, Buddy and I got on a train going south. When the train reached Hnúšťa, the group got on, as well as our coworker, who told us that they wouldn’t be going and showed us who the group leader was. If Buddy weren't there, I would’ve got right off the train and gone home then. But he was, and he speaks much better Slovak than I do (and is, by his own reckoning, 80% muscle and 20% awesome), so we went on. We and the group disembarked at Hajnáčka, about two hours south of Tisovec.

Then we walked a lot. There's not much interesting to say about it; we walked for about five hours, over hill and dale, and saw some wild boar tracks and a pheasant and a hare. Some of it was tiring for me; but I am like a stout little bulldog, I will make funny noises and breathe hard, but will get there eventually. The trees were covered in new green leaves and were very beautiful. On the way we saw an old quarry where basalt was mined—there’s a lot of basalt in that area, apparently—and an area called Mačacia, with ruins of buildings used by miners and their families during the '20s and '30s.

Eventually we got a glimpse of the castle we were heading for. From a distance it looked like the perfect storybook castle, with a round tower topped with a conical roof. Beyond it, on a further distant ridge, was the ruin of another castle, this one most likely in Hungary. I mean, look at that! It looks like a movie set! I live in this country!After a bit more time we got to Šomoška Castle. I've taught many of my students that having the high ground is a tactical advantage in warfare, and most castles are indeed built on high ground. That's great for defense, especially against tourists. At the top there isn't much left in the castle; the most complete part is the tower, which looks as though portions have been replaced or repaired over the years. I defied Slovak wisdom by lying on the ground in the tower to take some pictures of the inside of the roof. (I seem to have a thing for roofs lately; before church on Sunday I found myself wondering about the construction of the sanctuary's roof. I really need an architecture book.) Slovaks don't like people to sit on the ground, much less lie on it, and last weekend we were told that you're only supposed to lie on the ground in months that don't have an R in their names. This makes no nevermind to me. Thus far, the ground hasn't killed me.
From the castle we took a different route out of the area than the one we'd taken in. On the way to the train station, we stopped twice for refreshment. The first time was at a picnic area near the parking lot for the castle. Since it was a nice day, there were a few groups there, grilling sausages and/or making gulaš. I used my stealth capabilities to record one group as they sang part of a folk song.


I don't think Šomoška has knocked any of the Portuguese castles off my list of future residences, but I wouldn't know that unless I'd gone. It was definitely worth the hike to see it from that first ridge. That was the kind of view that makes my life brilliant.

However, before our next hike with Slovaks, Buddy and I have to go shopping so that we're properly prepared. Neither of us had hiking socks, a big knife, or a sausage. I'm not sure how we survived, having started off so ill-equipped.

Happy 100th post, everybody!

It's Happening...

Will This Winter Never End?

At least it's pretty.

Fall Break

I am now convinced that the best thing to do for a birthday party is go out to a cabin in the woods, make gulaš, and watch your friends sing along to '90s pop songs that they otherwise would not admit to knowing all of the words to. And when you wake up in the morning, this is what the world will look like:And you will think that it is good to exist. Happy birthday, B.