So here is a report of Saturday, continued! Tim's teacher basketball team was 2 and 1 on the day, but they are still leading in total wins. This was the third of four tournaments, so it looks like the 'mature' team may beat out all the young bucks in the end! ;-)
At 5:00, we rode our bikes to another big, nice gym in town, where we watched a men's league game that was really good. One of Tim's Friday night B-ball buddies helps to coach because his son is on the team, so several of the other guys came to watch the game.
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| The level of play was really good, and they pushed the ball up and down the floor in a hurry. |
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| The men's league seemed to range in age from about 19-30 or so. The Liptovsky Mikuláš team really dominated, scoring over 100 points, and pouring in lots of three's. |
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| We enjoyed watching the game with some of Tim's Friday night teammates. |
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| I absolutely LOVED this banner under the scoreboard --- a takeoff of the famous Michael Jordan one, but with St. Mikuláš dunking the ball ---- LOL!! :-) |
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At an American-style sports bar called Route 66 after the game with Jan and Michal, who play basketball with Tim on Friday nights. Michal speaks some English, and a lot of the conversation with Jan was in French, with me translating for Tim. Jan's family has a lot of Olympic history. His sister competed as a pairs figure skater in Innsbruck (1964), then she coached the men's bronze medalist at Sarajevo (Jozef Sabovčik 1984), and her sons competed for Slovakia in ice hockey at Lillehamer in 1994 (6th place). Sabovčik also performed in the closing ceremony at Salt Lake City with his son! Cool!!
P.S. - this info is all corrected after Jan told me in August that I had everything all mixed up! Sorry Jan! I hope it's right now!! :-) |
We finally called it a night after about 2 1/2 hours there, and biked home. Sunday morning Zuzka was at church to translate for us again. :-) In the early afternoon we caught a train to Liptovsky Hrádok, which isn't far. We met Katarina and her parents there for an afternoon concert at the Dome kultúry (House of Culture, which every town has).
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| Cigánski diabli, (The Gypsy Devils), is a very famous musical group, the best of the Roma, or gypsy, musicians in Slovakia, and internationally renowned. There was a big crowd, and they were very enthusiastic. |
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| The instrumentalists are very well-trained technicians, and they played with frenetic energy all the time. The seven member ensemble had a reed player (clarinets and a similar instrument called a tárogató), two violins, a cymbalist (like a large hammered dulcimer), viola, cello, and bass. |
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| This is the second viola player I've seen playing in this typical Slovak style - holding the viola perpendicular to the floor against the chest, with the chin resting on the side of the viola. The guy was amazing, playing the off-beats almost the whole time, as more of a rhythm and harmony player than a melodic instrument. |
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The cymbalist and the cellist are husband and wife. They were all excellent players, but the lead violinist and the cymbalist were absolutely amazing virtuosos - WOW!!
(Note to my musician friends: the crowd here claps on 1 & 3!!) ;-) |
Katarina helped me look up some YouTube clips of Cigánski diabli, so you can hear them playing some tunes. It's very different music than anything we've every heard before, and they are very impressive musicians!!
This first clip features the cymbalist, just so you can see and hear the instrument. The whole ensemble comes in after the long solo, so you can skip ahead to hear the whole group playing together if you wish.
This clip is actually a short feature on the Gypsy Devils with interviews (in Slovak, sorry), BUT, it is actually done in the hall where we watched the concert. It must be from a previous year, because the hairstyles of the performers aren't the same now - HA! So anyway, you can see where we were for the concert yesterday!
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| After the concert, the Halahijová family took us out for dessert and hot tea at this chata in Liptovsky Ján. We had such a lovely afternoon sharing the concert and conversation with them!! :-) |
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| After the concert, we were invited over to the home of one of our colleagues from school, Peter, and his wife Danka, who teaches English in Liptovsky Hradok. (Peter played on the teachers' basketball team with Tim and found out we'd be in the town where they live, so he invited us over after the concert!) We enjoyed spending the evening at their flat, enjoying food and more conversation with them!! |
Today was a busy Monday, with Slovak lessons, church choir rehearsal, and volleyball. It's so nice heading to all of our events on bicycles! The flowering trees are really starting to bloom all over town now. I'll have to get pictures this week. For our choir, the pastor had asked if I could find "Kum Ba Ya" for them to sing, so Dave Swenson emailed me an SATB a cappella arrangement that we tried for the first time tonight. It's WAY out of their comfort zone, but we're off to a good start. We even started with some vocal warm-ups for the first time too, so that was kind of cool to hear the tone quality change a little.
Well, tomorrow, our 'baby boy' will be turning 23. WOW!!! How time flies!! Happy Birthday Lute!! We're glad you are doing such a great job at Wapsie Valley, as the "New and Improved Version" of Mr. Olson, the mathematics teacher!! LOVE YOU!!
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