I Am Not Making This Up

This watertastes like Froot Loops.

How Do People Live Like This?

“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

Čau, September

Photos from around Tisovec two weeks ago.

the sheep farm

I don't know what these are, but they are definitely my favorite plants here. I think of them as "balloon plants," although the bulbs are more like Chinese lanterns than actual balloons. I always collect some and take them home in the fall. I've only ever seen them in shades of orange.

putting a new roof on CSM

the best hand-lettered "Beware of dog" sign

The Long Way Home

I would like to begin by requesting we all pretend that I actually posted this in a timely fashion, not some two months after it all happened.

At the end of June, my parents came out to Tisovec to escort me home for the summer, and we wandered around the area for a little before we left. We went to the SNP Museum in Bystrica, and Bojnice Castle, and then when we left Tisovec we drove north to Kraków, then to Moravský Krumlov in the Czech Republic, and down to Vienna, from whence we flew home.

on the way up to Poland

these two dudes look like the Abbott and Costello of Polish carriage drivers

In Kraków we took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour, and I'd show you the cool video of driving around the city, except Blogger doesn't want me to upload videos anymore. We stayed in Kazimierz, the Jewish district, about a block from the Tempel Synagogue, and we happened to arrive on the last day of the Jewish Culture Festival. That night Matisyahu played an acoustic show at the synagogue, which we could hear from our room. That was cool. There are some videos of the show on Youtube that are better quality, but this one shows some of the interior of the synagogue best.

When we arrived in Moravský Krumlov, about half an hour from Brno, my dad asked why he'd driven out to the back end of beyond. On the map it doesn't look like that bad of a drive, but it kind of is. There's really not much interesting about the town itself. The interesting thing shouldn't even be there. The chateau in Moravský Krumlov houses the Slav Epic, a series of paintings by renowned Art Nouveau artist Alfons Mucha (which is not, in fact, pronounced "Moo-cow," as we called him). Mucha was born in the nearby village of Ivančice. He wanted the Slav Epic to be in Prague, and the government was supposed to find or build a home for the paintings there by this year, but so far that hasn't happened. The chateau isn't a bad site for hosting exhibitions, but it's out of the way and needs to be fixed up. I was concerned about the paintings from a conservation point of view, because although there were barometers about and the exhibit is only open during the summer, it gets humid there, and these paintings really need to be protected.

The Slav Epic consists of 20 huge paintings that tell the story of the Slavic people. Photography was forbidden in the exhibit, the which stricture I actually followed this time; but there is no way photographs do justice to these pictures. They are really amazing. As my mom said, the style is reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish, another artist the commercial use of whose works often seems to overshadow his artistic talent, and Andrew Wyeth. The colors Mucha used are amazing, the size of the canvases is staggering, and the composition is untraditional but effective. It may be out of the way and take a while to get to, but it's totally worth it to go. I really hope the Czech government does right by Mucha's genius and passion and gets it the home it deserves in his native country.

Just north of the Czech-Austrian border is a town called Mikulov. We stopped at the Tesco there to buy some final Kofola and Studentskas before heading into Austria. From the Tesco we could see in the near distance an island of an old town rising above the fields and the newer parts of Mikulov.

The old town of Mikulov is very pretty and well-preserved. It's kind of like a Disney version of a late-medieval/Renaissance town. That probably sounds denigratory, though I don't mean it to be. Somehow--and this could have been more to do with me and when we visited than with the place itself--Mikulov didn't seem like an authentic old town. It had a slightly surreal quality in some way. This is not to say that I didn't like it. If I ever find myself in that area again I'd like to go back, because Mikulov had a significant Jewish community for nearly 500 years, beginning in the 15th century. One can visit the former ghetto, and there is an old cemetery that is supposed to be really cool.

Here's a view of the borderlands from the grounds of the chateau.

I may have mentioned before that even though Slovakia and the Czech Republic border Austria, there is a definite difference between the countries in terms of the divide between Western and Central Europe. The obvious difference is in signage, but there is often a different feel to the areas as well. And then there is visible, tangible evidence:Those crazy Austrians, with their sustainable energy sources.

When we got to Vienna and checked in to our hotel, we went into the center and looked in St. Stephen's and then ate dinner and I had an Almdudler and saw a woman in a kilt playing the bagpipes near the plague column. Then I had the least uncomfortable flights I can ever remember and then we went home and watched all three Jason Bourne movies within the first 48 hours we were back.

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.

To Je Pekne Mesto

This weekend was the 45th Horehronské Dni Spevu a Tanca, a three-day folklore festival celebrating the Horehronie (Upper Hron River region). The festival takes place every year in a town called Heľpa. Although it’s not the biggest folklore festival in Slovakia--that one’s probably the Detva festival, in two weeks--it’s still a pretty big deal, and it’s fairly close to Tisovec.

I love Slovak folklore because it really does bring people together. In the States we do not have one culture, and we are not an old country, so we lack these unifying elements. But in Slovakia, people know the songs and dances, and they join in the celebration. During the performances, people sang along, or clapped, at the very least; and after the main program on Saturday night, we saw a crowd of all ages, from teenagers in baseball caps to old men in traditional dress, singing with a young guy rocking out on the accordion.

As I mentioned earlier, the festival goes for at least three days. Bear and I arrived on Friday afternoon to stay with an awesome family that she knows. The general setup was that there was a market, craft displays, and a small stage in the square, and the main stage in the amphitheater. On Friday night we saw the opening of the festival, which included el presidente of all of Slovakia, Ivan Gašparovič (at left; it kind of blew my mind that he was there, because my idea of "the president" is that he's surrounded by guards and only viewed from afar, not just sitting in the front row, hanging out). Then several groups performed. Friday night was beautiful, and the amphitheater wasn't crowded so we had good seats. Saturday night was the big show, with more local groups and then the national professional folklore group, Slovenský Ľudový Umelecký Kolektív or SĽUK. They were obviously really good, and they represented the traditions of different regions of Slovakia, not just Horehronie.

At some point I might be able to get videos to work, and then you'll be able to see and hear some of the folklore. Otherwise, pictures.

When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way

Tota Heľpa, tota Heľpa
To je pekne mesto
Lenže málo, lenže málo
Švarnych chlapcov jesto
Koho jesto, toho jesto
Nie po mojej vôli
Len za jedným, len za jedným
Srdiečko ma bolí

Za Janičkom, za Ďuričkom
By som neplakala
Za Mišičkom, za Pavličkom
Dunaj preplavala
Dunaj, Dunaj, Dunaj, Dunaj
Aj to šire more
Len za jedným, len za jedným
Potešenie moje

The Triumphant Return