Culture shock is

after being home for over a week and a half, still looking at the toilet bowl and thinking, 'It's so clean.'

Leaving Home, Coming Home

I'm leaving Tisovec tonight; I'm leaving Slovakia tomorrow morning. Right now I have no words of my own to tell you what this means to me. I can't believe this day has come. I don't yet entirely believe that I won't be back in six weeks. I'm ready to see the people I love in the States, but I'm not ready to not see the people I love here.

As always, in the absence of my own words, I turn to someone else's. From The Prophet, here is Kahlil Gibran's "The Coming of the Ship" from Juan Cole's website.

Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.

And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld the ship coming with the mist.

Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.

But he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart: How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands. Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.

Yet I cannot tarry longer. The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark. For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould.

Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I?

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that give it wings. Alone must it seek the ether.

And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

Now when he reached the foot of the hill, he turned again towards the sea, and he saw his ship approaching the harbour, and upon her prow the mariners, the men of his own land.

And his soul cried out to them, and he said:

Sons of my ancient mother, you riders of the tides,

How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.

Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.

Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,

Then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.

And you, vast sea, sleepless mother, Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,

Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade, And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.

And as he walked he saw from afar men and women leaving their fields and their vineyards and hastening towards the city gates.

And he heard their voices calling his name, and shouting from the field to field telling one another of the coming of the ship.

And he said to himself:

Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering?

And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn?

And what shall I give unto him who has left his plough in midfurrow, or to him who has stopped the wheel of his winepress?

Shall my heart become a tree heavy-laden with fruit that I may gather and give unto them?

And shall my desires flow like a fountain that I may fill their cups?

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me?

A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

If this is my day of harvest, in what fields have I sowed the seed, and in what unrembered seasons?

If this indeed be the our in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein.
Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern,

And the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil and he shall light it also.

These things he said in words. But much in his heart remained unsaid. For he himself could not speak his deeper secret.

And when he entered into the city all the people came to meet him, and they were crying out to him as with one voice.

And the elders of the city stood forth and said:

Go not yet away from us.

A noontide have you been in our twilight, and your youth has given us dreams to dream.

No stranger are you among us, nor a guest, but our son and our dearly beloved. Suffer not yet our eyes to hunger for your face.

And the priests and the priestesses said unto him:

Let not the waves of the sea separate us now, and the years you have spent in our midst become a memory.

You have walked among us a spirit, and your shadow has been a light upon our faces.

Much have we loved you. But speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled. Yet now it cries aloud unto you, and would stand revealed before you.

And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

And others came also and entreated him.

But he answered them not. He only bent his head; and those who stood near saw his tears falling upon his breast.

And he and the people proceeded towards the great square before the temple. And there came out of the sanctuary a woman whose name was Almitra. And she was a seeress.

And he looked upon her with exceeding tenderness, for it was she who had first sought and believed in him when he had been but a day in their city.

And she hailed him, saying: Prophet of God, in quest for the uttermost, long have you searched the distances for your ship.

And now your ship has come, and you must needs go.

Deep is your longing for the land of your memories and the dwelling place of your greater desires; and our love would not bind you nor our needs hold you.

Yet this we ask ere you leave us, that you speak to us and give us of your truth. And we will give it unto our children, and they unto their children, and it shall not perish.

In your aloneness you have watched with our days, and in your wakefulness you have listened to the weeping and the laughter of our sleep.

Now therefore disclose us to ourselves, and tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death.

And he answered,

People of Orphalese, of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving your souls?

Epic Road Trip to the Beach

Every fall, when Slovak schools reconvene and the traditional question "What did you do on your summer vacation?" is intoned, a common answer is that kids went on holiday to Croatia. Croatia's got the closest major body of water to Slovakia, so if you want to go to the beach, that's where you head.

Robin is leaving in the middle of June, and we wanted to do something really fun before she left, so we decided to go to Croatia. This same idea had been floated last year, with no results, but this time we had a fellow English teacher (hereafter to be called Páv) with a van who was willing to drive us there. The main thing was to reach a beach, any beach; but Páv said we might as well go all the way to Dubrovnik. I was in favor of this, since Dubrovnik is on everybody's list of the best walled cities in the world.

Croatia is shaped sort of like a rocked-back P. Dubrovnik is almost all the way at the bottom of the country. If you're driving south along the coast, you briefly pass through Bosnia and Herzegovina, since it has about one town's width of access to the Adriatic Sea (Jadran). Even though you're only there for about ten minutes, they still check (but don't stamp) passports at the Croatia/Bosnia border, especially at about 3 in the morning.

Dubrovnik used to be one of the foremost trading areas between Europe and Asia, and was even its own republic, called Ragusa.* Large parts of the city were destroyed by an earthquake in the 16th century, and then in 1991 the city was besieged by the Serbs. The city is a lot like a cross between Italy and Central Europe. Croatian and Slovak are not entirely mutually intelligible, but almost.

The one major unforeseen element in our trip was that Páv wanted to bring along his brother...his five-year-old brother. Compared to what I was imagining, Pavičko was remarkably well-behaved.

Our route was the same both ways, and was basically Tisovec to Budapest, then toward Zagreb, Split, and then Dubrovnik. We left around 2:45 PM on Thursday and arrived around 5 on Friday morning; on the way back we left around 5:15 AM Monday and got home about 5:45 PM.

There are lots and lots of apartments and rooms to rent in Dubrovnik, especially in the Old Town. We were in a place that Rick recommended. Páv and Pavičko were in a room on the second floor, and Rob and H and I got the apartment on the top floor. It had a kitchen and an air conditioning unit and a fabulous view of the Old Port. We loved it there.

The Adriatic is really salty. It's also really clear and really blue. Most of the beaches are rocky, but they're nice, rounded rocks, and were pretty comfortable. I floated in the water and looked at the Pearl of the Adriatic and it was amazing. In the foreground above is the public beach we frequented.

On Saturday we took a ferry to the island just off the coast, called Lokrum Island. The ride back is the video below; I started recording just after we left Lokrum. It's got a former monastery complex, and an old fort, and a rocky coastline where you have to climb down into the water on short ladders, and a nude section, and a lagoon called the "Dead Sea," at left, and lots of peacocks. We went to one of the rocky swimming areas first, and climbed down some rocks, then the ladder, and then swam over more rocks to get to the open sea to float around in. Getting back in was a little tricky, because you had to go over the rocks again, but this time with the waves pushing you directions you didn't necessarily want to go. I think we all got a little dinged up coming back in. It was kind of fun, though, and I'm glad I did it. Then we headed over to the Dead Sea and hung out there for a while.

Dubrovnik also seems to be a really popular cruise-ship stop. I saw more cruise ships, and really huge ones, there than anywhere else I've been. We seem to have gone at the perfect time, when it was warm enough to swim and spend the day outside, but not yet high tourist season, when the place would be packed.

On Sunday morning, H and I got up and headed out before everyone else. The city walls opened at 8, and I wanted to start walking before they got crowded and the weather got hot. The one major drawback to these particular walls is that you must pay to walk around them (70 kuna for adults, which was just shy of €10, although it does include admission to one of the forts on the north side). Because of the destruction mentioned previously, parts of the walls have been reconstructed, and in general they're very safe—well, except for the smooth and occasionally slippery stone that's used throughout the town. Inside the walls you see all the Mediterranean-style red-tiled roofs, and it reinforces the idea that you're far from central Europe. The highest point of the walls is a tower at the northeast, if I've got my orientation correct, and the western stretch is on the cliff by the sea. There are some houses built right up to the inside of the wall, but there's one bar that's actually on the outside of the western wall. (It's called Buža and we went back that night for drinks. You walk through a doorway in the wall and then down some stairs to a set of terraces with tables. Since Sunday night was cloudy, it was quite dark, and hard to distinguish where the water ended and the sky began. It was very cool.)
The way home was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that Páv promised Pavičko we'd have lunch at McDonald's near Budapest. This led to Pavičko about every 15 minutes telling his brother not to forget that we were going to go there, and also a McDonald's-hunger-induced hysteria on all our parts when we briefly got lost in Budapest, which led to Páv calling the female voice on the GPS something really inappropriate.

We drove 195 kph in a Ford minivan. We drank lots of coffee and Coke. We each got four stamps in our passports. We passed big rigs from Russia, BMWs from Germany, camper trailers from the Netherlands, and a Porsche from Switzerland. We sang along to "Don't Worry Be Happy" a lot. We held our breath going through tunnels. In short, we did everything right for a road trip, and it was a terrific experience.

*Although Marco Polo identifies himself as Venetian, there are sources that indicate that he was born on the Croatian island of Korčula. Look, it is practically a condition of my Master's that I must talk about MP whenever possible.

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.

Facts About Kežmarok

1. Kežmarok is in the Spiš region. Like all Spiš towns, it has a lot of evidence of the German settlers who lived there. One of the biggest clues is the German name for the town, Käsmark ("cheese market"). The town got its market privilege in the 13th century.

2. There are some pretty good views of the Tatras there.

3. The town castle is at the end of the old square. It's got some exhibits in the different towers, like one about a doctor from the town who was the first in Slovakia to take x-rays, and of course arms and armor. At the end of the tour are some rooms with displays on life in the town in the 19th and 20th centuries, including census information that said that the highest number of Jews in the town, before the war, was over a thousand, but that in the 2001 census there was only one Jew. There was also an old wartime street sign for Ulica Adolfa Hitlera/Adolf Hitler Strasse. It was somewhat comforting that the sign had bullet holes in it. 4. The castle's oldest tower has been significantly reconstructed and therefore has the safest stairs in all of Slovakia.

5. The town's lyceum has a library that is supposed to be pretty impressive, but is closed on Saturdays.

6. Here is a tank called Jánošík, across the street from the back of the castle.

7. The Basilica of the Holy Cross, also reputed to be impressive inside, also seemed to be closed (maybe for a wedding).

8. I thought maybe visitors could go up in the Renaissance belltower next to the basilica, but it, too, was apparently closed. Or maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places to go in these sites.

9. I did peek inside the Greek Orthodox church, but it was modern and had no cool icons or anything.

10. The exterior of the New Evangelic Church is light red and green, for some reason. The inside is light, with a very high ceiling and a set of steps leading up to the altar. On the right hand side about halfway down the nave is the mausoleum of Imre Thököly, a Hungarian nobleman who was a native of the town and supported Protestantism.

11. The best reason to go to Kežmarok is to see the UNESCO-listed articulated wooden church. It's right next to the new Lutheran church, and despite the name, the outer walls are plastered, so I wandered most of the way around it going, "What is this strange building?" before seeing the sign that said it was in fact the wooden church.

During the 17th and 18th century Slovakia (among other parts of Europe) had some of those laws that said that Protestants could build churches as long as they didn't use any nails. They also had to build on specific sites outside towns, they couldn't have towers or bells, and parishes had to pay for construction themselves. In the case of this particular church, there are two small stone rooms at the back (actually to the right of the altar, but on the side opposite the entrance) that were given to the church by the town.

The church was built in 1717 on a Greek cross plan. It measures 35 meters long, 31 meters wide, and 20 meters high (115'x102'x66'). The walls are made of red fir, the supporting columns of yew, the hardest wood found in Slovakia, and the altar and pulpit of lime. With the ground floor and six balconies, there is room for 1500 people.

In this picture, taken stealthily from behind the pulpit, you can see that the church looks like the prettiest barn you've ever been in. The ceiling is painted like a partly cloudy blue sky, with saints around the edges. The altar looks like it's marble because it's painted so nicely. Everything is beautifully carved and painted, and most of the writing, like the saints' names and inscriptions near the altar, is in German. There aren't that many pictures of the interior online, which is disappointing, because it is very nice; but on the other hand, pictures aren't as cool as actually walking in and seeing it yourself.

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!

Maturita Update

Even though having examined 44 students in the past three days (with 7 to go tomorrow) has melted my brain, there's one thing that makes it worthwhile, the most important part of maturita week...

BRYNDZA CAKES.