Vaxholm Island

We are down to the end of our stay in Sweden. We have one more weekend left here, before we leave for Italy, and 2 of our friends (Dustin and Irene) are coming to visit, separately but at the same time, for a few days over that last weekend (Dustin lives in Atlanta, and is coming to work with Don for a few days, and Irene is working this fall in Rostock in Germany). This past weekend, we decided to do something we had not had the chance to do before: we took a 50 minute boat ride out to the island of Vaxholm, which lies at the gateway from the Baltic Sea into the inner archipelago that Stockholm is a part of. Vaxholm has been lived on for over a thousand years, but was settled forcibly by the Vasa kings in the 1500s, in order to guard the inner archipelago. A fortress was built on a small islet just off the larger island, and was involved in wars in the 1600s and 1700s. That fort was updated in the 1800s, but was immediately obsolete, in terms of the art of warfare.

Today Vaxholm is a major tourist destination, and is accessible by road as well as by boat. It is a jumping-off point for the rest of the outer archipelago, and has a seriously cute village with artisans, cafes, inns, and gorgeous, typically Swedish vacation homes.

We walked for about 3 or so hours,

and also had lunch, before getting back on the boat back to Stockholm. The temperature was right above freezing all day, with a blue sky and dry air (which is what we have mostly been having for weather lately). There was actually a puddle that was frozen, in the shade, in midday!

Oddly, being there was more like being on a lake in Maine than at the coast; although it LOOKED like the coast, it did not smell like it. The water is not particularly salty, and so you don't get the sort of salt-air one expects at the coast.

Chinese Terracotta Army

Thursday, October 14, 2010 Yesterday Don and I both took off from work in the afternoon and went to the Museum of Eastern Art here in Stockholm. They opened an exhibit there a few weeks ago based on the Terracotta Army found in China, buried with the First Emperor of the Qin (Chin) Dynasty, the first leader who united what had been warring tribes, into the earliest version of China (the first few hundred years, B.C.). There were about 4000 larger-than-life terracotta statues, originally brightly painted, very life-like, who made up, together, a garrison of foot soldiers, archers, horse-mounted officers, and charioteers. Archeologists are still excavating all the grave goods in and near this burial mound. This Emperor’s rule only lasted 15 years before the tribal groups and aristocracy under him revolted under his demanding rule (conscription into a 600,000-man army, half a million more slaves working only to glorify him and his wife and concubines when they were dead, and of course the taxes and food requirements to fund his extravagant way of life and of death.

The next Dynasty, the Han, was then founded, and continued the practice of burying the emperors with full-size armies, models of palaces, complete palace households full of acrobats, musicians, servants, craftsmen, models of livestock (pigs, goats, oxen, dogs), and also thousands of skeletons of real slaves (their chains and bonds were still attached to their bones), who were, archeologists believe, murdered en masse after they had built their emperors’ grave mound and artifacts. All of this reflected their basic spiritual belief system, “as below, so above;” they believed that the afterlife would look exactly as it did here on earth, and so the Emperor needed a full palace retinue to continue his lifestyle, PLUS he needed a full army to defend him and his household from his enemies whom he had conquered. Why the real live servants were killed they have no clue. Interestingly, these models of palaces, along with their full terracotta armies and households, each had literally hundreds of thousands of artisans involved in their manufacture and upkeep. The above-ground temples that were erected to actually guard the below-ground complexes, also involved real human communities of hundreds of thousands. These temple complexes were larger in population than the towns nearby that did NOT have burials beneath them.

The Qin and Han emperors’ burial mounds (they are HUGE, like large real hills) and nearby burials of real and fake humans, etc, have only been partially excavated (maybe 10% excavated). So there are many more artifacts and army and other figures to be found. For now, one major difference between the two empires is that although the Han Dynasty’s burial mounds contain many thousands more figures, those figures are much smaller (maybe 2 feet tall humans) than those of the Qin Dynasty.

The exhibit here in Stockholm contains, of course, a very small selection of the artifacts and human figures (dozens of the smaller Han models of humans, maybe 8 or so of the larger-than-life Qin soldiers). Also in the exhibit were beautiful objects from the model palaces, architectural bits and pieces from them, and some jade spiritual items, including these gorgeous disks with openings in the center. These jade discs began to be used in burials and in religious rituals in China during the Neolithic era, meaning a few thousand years B.C., and were passed down through families for hundreds and possibly thousands of years. Here is the most beautiful one they have ever found, which was from the Han dynasty burials. IN front of the disc (which has a jade cup alongside it) are numerous bronze and clay lamps (including a great ram-shaped lamp, in front of the disk, and a number of incense burners. The larger bits are architectural details.

Here is the entrance to the cave that the Chinese Terracotta Army Exhibit was displayed in, underneath the Museum of Eastern Art in Stockholm. The caves were built for the Swedish Naval Command during World War II; this is the first time they have been used for an exhibit. The building above is the church for the Navy. The church, caves, and museum are on the island of Skeppsholmen, which is home to many, many old, beautiful boats, too.

Eating Out in Stockholm

Sunday, October 10, 2010. I thought I would share with you some of the more interesting places we have RECENTLY eaten in Stockholm (we’ve eaten in interesting and/or good places before, but it’s too late to write about them now!). While out on Gamla Stan (the medieval Old Town) recently we ate in a very cool restaurant that was first a monastery and then a prison; the prison used the cells that the monks had slept in and turned them into prison cells. The space dates from the 1300s, and the restaurant had restored some of the cells and also the refectory, and so we ate in a small cell from 700 years ago. They had done a very good job; it was quite evocative.Here is the entrance to the restaurant; the lower (smaller)sign says, "DO you dare to come into our 700 year old prison?" The larger sign is saying Welcome into their medieval prison, with 6 old prison rooms. Cute. This, of course, is Donald; he is sitting in our little "cell," where we had cappucino and a homemade waffle with jam. The cell was about 4.5 feet by 3.5 feet.
And here is the large, heavy iron entrance door to the basement, which basically says that it is from the 1300s, and was a prison until the 1700s. It mentions two kings, including Gustaf III, who would have been a Vasa king.

We also ate recently in a couple of the outdoor cafes (I think I’ve already mentioned how these cafes have blankets for your chair, and many of them also have outdoor heaters, so people can continue to enjoy the outdoors as long as possible. It has gotten quite chilly, and would not be possible to sit comfortably outside to eat without these blankets) that are on Stortorget. Stor=Stockholm, and Stortorget is the old, original Town Square from the earliest town, dating from the late 1200s/early 1300s. Stortorget is surrounded, as are the old parts of many European cities, by the Renaissance-era mansions of wealthy merchants (remember Kosice and Kracow?). It is also the scene of the famous (or infamous) Stockholm Bloodbath, when over 100 Swedish nobles and other leaders were murdered by the Danish King in the early 1500s, after having been promised amnesty for having fought to get rid of Danish rule. Among those murdered were Gustav Vasa’s father and brother, leading to him becoming convinced to lead yet another—this time successful—rebellion against Denmark, which caused Sweden to finally become its own nation (remember this from Uppsala and Leksand?). So as we sat at these cafes, including the Chocolate Café (yes, that’s right, a café dedicated to chocolate and other sweets), we looked out on a market square that was not only beautiful, but also the scene of an historical bloodbath. Oh, that’s right—probably most market squares were (once again, remember Kosice?).The yellow building has the chocolate cafe.

A few nights ago we ate at a restaurant that our guide book had recommended--Cafe Piastowska, a Polish restaurant with a cozy, small room upstairs, a small, cozy room downstairs in the basement, and a larger, cozy room next to that one in the basement. They had faked some of the old-looking elements of the place, but it was still a very old basement (This part of Stockholm is not as old as Gamla Stan, of course, and is probably originally from the Renaissance era. Nearby—just a few blocks from us—is one more important historical area—where the Battle of Brunkeberg was fought against the Danes). The food was excellent; we both had the special, bigos, which is the Polish national dish, also known as Hunters’ Stew. True Hunters’ Stew usually has some sort of game meet in it (boar, venison, rabbit) and sausage; this one had pork and sausage in it, along with the required mushrooms and sauerkraut. We each had our favorite beer from Poland, Zwiec, and Donald had an even better Czech one later, Zlatypramen. We shared the Polish "cheesecake," which is what in Poland is called "Bapci’s (grandma’s) cake" and in Slovakia, "baba’s cake," with the same meaning. Everyone’s grandma must make the same cake my own grandmas made :). I think that’s pretty funny.

Last Saturday we had drinks in the Hanging Bar, 125 feet up over the water, on Sodermalm (South Town). There is an amazing view of the whole city, as well as in all directions across the waterways, and we arrived while it was light out and left when it got dark (that was a few drinks later!). We were with our friends Ryzard (pronounced, as is my cousin’s name, “Reeshard,” with the stress on the first syllable) Sculken (a Polish political émigré to Sweden from about 1969) and his wife Anna, who is 6 months pregnant. Ryzard is a Jew whose mother survived the Warsaw ghetto, in the end, by being taken in as a young pregnant woman, by a Catholic Polish woman who hid her (as Ryzard puts it, at least his mother is one Jew who thinks Polish Catholics aren’t all terrible people). Both Ryzard and Anna are great company (thus the 4-hour “let’s meet for a drink” session).

Today we met our friend Karin (a doctoral student in the department where Don is working) in Gamla Stan, and we took a boat ferry across to Djurgarden (remember where the Vasa and Skansen are, where we biked?), where we walked in the brisk autumn parkland, where the yellow and orange leaves were thick on the ground. WE ate a delicious goulash lunch—along with hundreds of other Stockholmers—at an outdoor café in the park, which doubles as a plant nursery. So our seats—with blankets—were among the end-of-season flowers and bees. Then we continued walking along the water and then back into the city itself, finally stopping to have coffee and tea at yet another outdoor café before heading home at 5:00, just before the autumn sunset (the coming winter darkness, when the sun sets at about 2:00 p.m. by Christmas, is moving towards us quickly, as it needs to in order to lose so much sunlight soon. The daylight hours are noticeably shorter since the Equinox just a couple of weeks ago).

We have learned some important lessons about eating out in Stockholm. First, if there are lots of young people inside, don’t eat there. It will be crowded and noisy. Second, every single place you eat in Stockholm--or in Sweden, for that matter--will have shrimp and/or salmon on the menu. If it is a lunch place, one of the most popular dishes will be some sort of salad that has heaps of cold shrimp. Even the sushi is almost exclusively made of shrimp and salmon—called lax--, with perhaps some tuna thrown in. Third, there are LOTS of Italian places to eat, most of which are actually run by Turks and Kurds. Their pizza is stupendous, with the thinnest crust I have ever seen, being really crunchy and wonderful. There are also lots of Chinese places, and, of course, many “regular” Swedish places to eat. There are NOT many places to get Mexican food, nor “Chinese” places. Fourth, there are LOTS of “pubs” and Irish and British-style bars, though most of them will serve the ubiquitous Swedish beer and not much in the way of Irish or British beers. We went to one place that billed itself as “the original Irish Pub in Stockholm,” and could not get an Irish beer. They had had ONE on their menu, but no longer served it. It was QUITE disappointing J

And fifth—we were going to mention to Ryzard something that we had noticed, which is that the cafes, pubs and restaurants are FILLED with people younger than 35 years old, while it is almost impossible to see ANYONE older than that out in the evening for food or drinks. When one goes out at anywhere from about 4:00 p.m. on, it seems as though all of Stockholm is made of young adults, with no older adults existing at all. But he brought it up first, saying that Stockholm SEEMED to be a city of young people. The explanation is that Swedes do not share the general European fashion of going out for food and/or drinks; it is a very new phenomenon in Sweden, and therefore is something only the young do. The older adults never did it before, and are still staying home in the evening, cooking supper.

Oh, by the way, I’ve also realized one of the reasons the young women here are so skinny: they smoke like fiends! My guess is that the amount of booze and cigarettes one takes in is inversely related to the amount of food. Oh—except that they also eat the delicious sweets. Maybe the one thing missing from their diet is actual meals!

Gamla Stan

Me at the gateway going FROM the king's palace (it replaced the Palace of the Tre Kronor--three crowns--when it burned down in the 1600s) on Gamla Stan (Old Town), heading TO the tiny island where the Parliament meets. In summer, street musicians play here and the acoustics are amazing.

Gamla Stan, the original part of Stockholm, which is on its own island in Stockholm, first became a town in the late 1200s and early 1300s. Compared with places such as Italy, Greece, or even England, Sweden has relatively recent human habitation, as it took longer for it to recover from the literally miles-thick glacier sheet that covered it during the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. As I mentioned when describing Old Uppsala, numerous areas that are now islands or even mainland were covered by water until that last 1000 or 2000 years. Additionally, the earliest local settlements did NOT included Stockholm, which finally developed as a town because it could be used to guard the entrance to Lake Malaren and to collect tariffs from merchant ships on their way in and out of the lake. Most historians think that the name Stockholm comes from the word for stockade, as Gamla Stan was surrounded by a wooden palisade, out in the water, to protect it from attack. Hence Stockholm is Stockade Island ("holm" means island).

We went last weekend to the Museum of Medieval Stockholm and learned that there were a couple of monasteries and a convent on Gamla Stan in the 1300s. There was digging being done to build a car-park, and they discovered the foundations walls for the convent, and then found part of the original town wall. The museum is built right into these sights, with reconstructions of the original Old Town. It was pretty wonderful, as all the museums in Sweden have been so far.

one of the wonderful tiny medieval alleyways in Gamla Stan, that connect the narrow, cobble-stoned streets.

We FINALLY got to see the Old City Cathedral in Gamla Stan (we kept showing up past closing time or when they were having some sort of concert or whatever). This church (kyrka, pronounced “cheerka”) is one of the oldest in Stockholm, of course, being from the 1300s (and therefore having been built BEFORE the Reformation), and is the Royal Church. It has a 17^th century altar made of silver and ebony,

a set of Royal Pews

(the current king and his wife were married there in 1976, and the Crown Princess—meaning she will inherit the throne—got married there this past summer), and an amazing carved oak statue of St. George and the Dragon from 1489. The dragon has elk, moose and reindeer antlers sticking out from its head, and the whole thing is amazing.

Visiting the Vasa

I can't believe that I forgot to write about visiting the Vasa, a ship from the early 1600s that sank in Stockholm's waters on its maiden voyage, which was thankfully a "test drive," so only a "skeleton crew' died. After resurrecting the ship, they reconstructed the whole thing, and built the museum around it, telling us about Swedish empire-building, especially on the seas, in its golden age.
Original ship, above, and painted-to-original-color models of statues from the side of the ship, to the left.

The ship is amazing; it was clearly built in order to DISPLAY the might of Sweden and of her king; it was decorated with colorful animal heads, mythological beings, the heads of Roman Caesars, and openings for cannons. But, alas, it was not built to float; it was too top heavy, with rows of second and third floor cannon. With one good wave, the cannons rolled to the right; the Vasa took on water, and sank to the bottom of Stockholm harbor!


There were displays based on Swedish naval battles; others based on the reconstructed skeletons they found on board; and still more based on the numerous items found on board that were part of the kitchen, the sea men's gear and clothing, and the ship's medical gear. Those pictured here are, of course, models.

Family history and graves

Here is the grave of my great-grandmother, Maria Beer (sometimes spelled Ber, but pronounced just like that lovely drink we are all so familiar with), who was born in Myslava, which was village outside the historically important (to the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) town/city of Kosice (Koh-shits-ze, with the emphasis on the first syllable, Koh). Her family, the Beers, is still evident in Myslava, which is now a suburb, but still has the little "downtown" area of small houses near the church of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, built in 1788.
Maria Beer's grave needs some work on it. First, the plaque itself could simply be made more noticeable and readable by having some black paint put on the letters (the bottom bit says "rest in peace") . Second, a new plaque could be made, which gives her birth name AND marriage name, and her birth and death dates. The vast majority of women's graves give both their birth and marriage names, but Maria's only has the marriage name. When she died, the people around who took care of her did not have money to do the typical plaque.
Third, the grave itself is collapsing.

The concrete that covers her is has crumbled and the whole thing is caving in. It could either be fixed, or she could be placed in the grave with her husband, Jan Tomaskovic, my great-grandfather. Normally, this is what is done--husbands and wives are placed together.

You see here my great-grandfather's grave, which is in much better shape, but which also needs a better plaque, with more information on it, and with gthe letters blackened so they are more readable. This is something that people typically do, I guess, when they visit the cemeteries: they bring blackening or gold paint with them, to touch up the lettering.

The Tomaskovic family had moved down from Bankov Mountain, from the village of Vyzne (pronounced Vizhny) Klatov, or at Jan's parents and siblings had. Some Tomaskovics were obviously still in Vyzne Klatov, as there are more recent graves up there with the name on them. I haven't figured out yet how they are related to us.

Jan's father, Stefan, who sounds like a dreadful man, did not like the wife his son Jan had chosen (Maria Beer) and so he cut them off, refusing to see them or his own grandchildren, who included my grandpa, John. He was mean and spiteful, from the stories I've heard. My great-grandparents left Myslava for Michigan, where Maria's brothers had moved, and, just as most European non-Jewish immigrants did, they moved back and forth between America and Slovakia many times. My grandpa was born in Michigan, becoming an American citizen, but moved back to America as young man. One time while his parents were staying in Myslava, Jan died, and Maria decided to stay there when her now-adult children all moved back to America. The Tomaskovic family refused to take care of her, their son's widow, and her own family had moved to the States. So she moved in with her best friends, who were also her next-door-neighbors, the Solar family, who were also her daughter, Margita (Margaret)'s in-laws (Margaret had married Jiri/George Solar).
Now I know that's more than most of you want to know, but it explains who Gita, the woman in the photo we posted last time, is. She is a Solar, one of the family who took in my great-grandmother, and therefore takes care of the graves of my great-grandparents. MArion, my father's cousin who met us there, is also a Solar, the daughter of Margaret (born Tomaskovic) and George Solar.From left to right are Gita, me and Marion.

Anyway, I am thinking that the family needs to take up a small collection to fix the grave/s. I know that most of my family will never go tho Myslava to see these graves, but it feels bad to me to have my great-grandmother's grave crumble and cave in, and to have their plaques not say when they lived and died, and that they were married.

Poland and Slovakia Wednesday, September 23rd 2010

Last weekend (from early Friday morning until late Tuesday night) Don and I went to Poland and Slovakia. We flew to that tourist mecca, Krakow, a gorgeous ancient city that was not destroyed in the 2^nd World War and that is less expensive than most European cities. It is possible to eat a meal there for 3 dollars, and to see indescribable gorgeousness. Wavel Castle: the original capitol of Poland, built on an even more ancient hill-fort, burial place of kings and of Poland’s heroes, root and center of Polish Christianity and home of Kraken the Dragon, killed by King Krakus, who gave their names to the city; Krakow: pre-WW2 home to a great and large Jewish community decimated by the Nazis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w-P%C5%82asz%C3%B3w_concentration_camp), 500-year old synagogues cheek-by-jowl with Catholic churches; Jewish cemeteries with rare tombs; St. Mary’s, the most beautiful cathedral I have ever been in (and I have been in many, in many countries), with a bugler who plays the same mournful tune on the hour, 24/7, to commemorate the attack of a Mongol (called Tartars by the Slovaks and Poles, and Huns by us, as in Attila) army—the bugle call saved the city, but a Mongol arrow caught him through the throat. Every hourly bugle call is ended mid-note, in memory of that death.

We rented a car and drove south to the Tatra Mountains, tall and craggy and rocky, with snow at the tops already in mid-September. The way south from Krakow is only an hour and a half, curving and climbing upwards the whole time, winding through mountains from which we could see the even higher ones still south of us. In these lower mountains are Goral shepherds who make a smoked cheese called oshipky, very popular with the Polish people, with a texture similar to smoked mozzarella. I find the taste unpleasant, despite its being totally gorgeous looking, being made in decorative molds whose patterns have survived for centuries. The shepherds’ families sell the cheeses on the side of the “highway.”

We drove to Zakopane, a famous ski resort in the Polish Tatras, but found it too crowded and busy. So we drove to a nearby mountain village and stayed in a room rented for $20 by a beautiful old Polish woman who spoke not a word of English, but who took my hand and showed me what I needed to know. She and I kissed and hugged when we parted, despite communicating only in sign language and a scant smattering of Polish on my part. A highlight of any visit to the Tatra area is Goral architecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorals

After walking around the village and admiring the view of the Tatras and wondering how so many back-yard ski lifts cam to be erected, we set off to drive through the Tatras to the Slovak border, where we stopped at the fast-running river and the Slovak man who sells toilet-use, cold drinks and beers, as well as hiking guides and maps, showed us great hospitality in return for getting a chance to use his English. Our drive was beautiful—somewhat, I imagine, like driving through the Alps, although the highest Tatras are about 8000 feet, rather than double that, as the Alps can be. And, thankfully, there were guard-rails! We also drove through some of the Belianske Tatry, a somewhat geologically distinct, lower range, right next to the High Tatras, and which are LOADED with ski resorts and the distinctive Goral wooden architecture. http://www.beliansketatry.com/en.html

By the way, there is excellent beer in Poland, with the best we tasted being Zywiec—pronounced Zhiviets. The beer is not as good in Slovakia (it’s not very good in Sweden, either, by the way), which makes better liquors and wines.

We continued on to the south east, stopping at Spissky Hrad (pronounced Spish-ski), the ancient ruined castle that is a symbol of Slovakia. It was a hill-fort and then a castle-fortress many thousands of years ago, and then ancient Celtic tribes came and built a hill fort on the nearest hill, making Spis outmoded. Later, when the Tartars/Mongols/Huns invaded, Spis proved more defensible, and it was re-built as one of the greatest and strongest fortresses in Europe. It withstood the Mongols over and over, and during the Renaissance became a lovely palace. Any of you who have seen “The Lord of the Rings” movies and remember the Hornberg, upon which the multi-level royal city of Gondor is built, will have some idea of what Spis Castle looks like. http://www.spisskyhrad.sk/en.html

We stayed in a small hotel in Kosice, and then attended mass at St. Alzbeta (Elizabeth) cathedral in downtown Kosice. A t least ½ of the people attending Mass did not receive Holy Communion. I later asked my cousin’s relatives about it and they said that it is because Slovaks (and possibly Poles, too) still think of the Church the way we used to before Vatican II; they do not receive Communion unless they have gone to Confession the day before. And the nun giving our Communion refused to place the wafer in my hands; she made me open my mouth to receive on my tongue.

Afterwards we wandered the beautiful medieval town square (beneath which archeologists have discovered the ancient Roman walls), and came across a car show, with all of the cars having been made in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe (Skodas and Tatras, mostly, and an old Soviet army jeep).The cars that were made before WWII were quite beautiful, despite the low quality of them after the War.

We then met my father’s cousin Marion in Myslava, a town just next to Kosice, and one of the villages that my father’s father’s family came from. When I was there 3 years ago, I could not find my great-grandparents’ graves (Maria Berova and Jan (Yan) Tomaskovic), but Marion’s cousin Margita (Gita, pictured above) brought us to them. We then spent the rest of the day with Gita’s family (her son, the son’s wife Jana, and their teenage son Tomas), at their beautiful home with amazing garden and yard. They were SO hospitable, giving us multiple apples from their yard, local honey from their own stock, dried herbs for an herb tea that they had made for me, from herbs they had grown in their yard, and fed us home-made cake and shots of a Slovak liquor, Fernat. We brought Marion and Gita up the mountain to Vyzny Klatov, the village that the Tomaskovic family came from before they moved down to Myslava. Neither of them had ever been there. It was a wonderful day, with everyone happy as could be, and Marion especially happy to introduce her father’s Slovak family to one of her relatives from America.

After visiting the day care center run by Jana (pronounced Yanna) in the morning, we drove westward along the southern border of Slovakia, at one point being less than 2 miles from Hungary, but unable to reach it, as the roads were unlabeled. I had wanted to see the Slovak Karst (limestone) region, which is also called the Slovak Paradise. It is a large area of mountains and steep valleys, with ski resorts and deep forests, bears, wolves, lynxes, and wild boars. We looked at the map and decided to take the route that we could tell went through the mountains, so as to see more than we thought we’d see from the highway. It turned out to be a logging road, without, unfortunately, any guardrails. Anna, Nick, and Eric will know exactly what this means to me, to ride on a narrow, bumpy road as it climbs steeply for a full half hour, going up at least a couple of thousand feet, without any guardrails anywhere. I did NOT end up on the floor of the car, and did not sob—both of these I and Donald both consider major improvements in my reactions. We stopped at a roadside spring, and got out to fill our water bottles, and Donald made me drink a few mouthfuls of Slovak booze, which very much helped, as did the 20 minute walk I took up the road. By the end of those 20 minutes, I had finally reached the top, and from there on the road was not as terrifying. The villages within these mountains HAVE to be completely cut off in winter, once snow falls, and it HAS to be a lot of snow. We emerged at last at Poprad, and were able to set off into the border mountains (with guardrails!!) again, making our way back to Krakow. Eric—I think Marion’s cousins took you to the Slovak Paradise years ago, right? I remember you describing the places you had to use metal ladders drilled into the rock to climb up some of the ledges. This method of using ladders to help hikers manage the worst spots, is fairly common in the Slovak mountains, it seems. Many of their mountains are steep and saw-toothed and require these ladders to be climbable.

It is fascinating to realize that eastern Slovakia is a different world from Poland, which is closer to Western Europe in many ways. Poles may be experiencing un-and under-employment and life may be a struggle for them, but eastern Slovakia is much poorer, as well as very off-the-beaten-track for tourists, oriented more towards the east (Ukraine, Russia, Belorussia) than the west, with tourist-serving people speaking German as a second language, not having any English. The smaller towns in the southern and central Slovak mountains are even less used to any tourists, as they are small and have no real tourist pulls, other than scenery, which other places also have.

Back in Krakow, we stayed in a budget hotel, a 5-minute walk from the Rynek (the largest town square in Europe). As night fell, the full moon came out and made the Rynek even more romantic and gorgeous. I can’t wait to go back to Eastern Europe again, for more of their hospitality, gorgeous scenery and beautiful cities and towns.