Touring the Liptov Area with Grandma O.

Early Wednesday morning in the staff workroom, we were discussing Tim's work visa, and all of a sudden arrangements were being made for Pastor Ferenčik to drive Tim and Janka back to Žilina right away.  It all worked smoothly, I got a lot of organizing done at my desk while they were gone, and they were back well before lunchtime with Tim's new work visa in hand.  So that's one thing we won't have to worry about next fall!  YAY!  

I walked back to the flat to pick up Grandma mid-morning, then we drove back to the school, since our path to school has gotten really muddy after all the rain.  We gave her a tour of the school, she met some of our staff, and she got an introduction to our Slovak school environment.  

Having the traditional first course of soup for our school lunch in the basic school canteen.  Notice that Mom is now wearing a scarf, like a true Slovak woman!!     ;-)   

After school, we drove to Sväty Kríš, which is very near Liptovsky Mikuláš.  This historic wooden articular Lutheran church is the biggest in Slovakia, and it was moved to this location when the dam was built forming Liptovská Mara (huge lake here), flooding 13 villages.   I've added a link to interesting information on this unique type of church!

Slovak Wooden Articular Church 

This shows how huge the church is.  There were over 6,000 people in the congregation for the dedication service in 1774.  It was fascinating to hear the history of this church!!  

Mom O. got to see an enormous stork's next, with the stork in it, on top of this building!

For dinner Wednesday evening, we were invited over to Marian (Tim's student) and Susan's house.  The meal was delicious, and we had a great time chatting!  We came home around 9:00, so there was time to skype with Beth and with my parents too before bedtime!!           :-)  

Thursday morning, we went to school, and Betty got to meet some of our students.  Since there aren't any real classes this week, some students are on a study abroad trip to England, and grades & class books are all officially closed, the students don't really HAVE to be at school, even though they are "supposed to" be there.  So, as you can imagine, there were not a lot of kids around!  But it was still fun for her to talk to some of our students and hear how fabulous their English is.  

This morning Peter, one of my wonderful V.AP class students (graduated senior), stopped by  with their class photo board which has been displayed in a store window uptown.  It will now be hung on a wall in our school for posterity!  

 We went out to lunch today (Thursday) with Janka, before heading to to the skanzen in Pribylina.  It's an outdoor museum east of here displaying typical architecture of the Liptov region.  Again, the weather was cold and cloudy, but at least there was no rain this afternoon!  

The first building was a fire house, and it had two vintage fire engines inside. 

This house was a non-landowner peasant's house - very small and simple.  

Houses of craftsmen or tradesmen were slightly bigger.  

Normal houses had basically one large room which was used for cooking, eating, and sleeping.  Many of these houses were still in use well into the 20th century.  

These hand-decorated fabrics were gorgeous!  

Pribylina museum wooden houses with light colored stucco fronts.

You could tell the slightly higher-class houses by their more decorative furniture and bigger living spaces.  

There were sheep grazing all over the place, and these were running away from the little girls in pink!   :-)  

The wood shingle rooftops were on all the buildings.  

The oldest parts of this church date back to the 1100's, and it has been added onto for centuries.  

The pews inside the church were very ornately carved and painted.  

This is a famous Gothic wood- panel altar in the church. 

Baptismal font made of carved stone.  

Here is the altar, and some very old frescoes saved when the church was restored. 

 A wooden one-room school house, Slovak style!  The left half was the teacher's living quarters.  At some times during our careers, with coaching sports and rehearsing music groups, we have both thought life would be easier if we just slept on a cot at school - HA!

Inside the school - student desks, a teacher desk, and a pump organ!!  Music - yay!!  

There was information posted on each building in Slovak, English, and German, so we learned that many teachers took up bee-keeping as a hobby.  These hives were behind the school house, and they remind us of all the delicious honey people have shared with us here.  Yum!!  

We couldn't communicate with the ticket-seller, but I was pretty sure from the signs that there should be a guided tour and kept trying to ask for that.  Most of the buildings were open, like this one, so we could just wander in, and the written descriptions were great. 

We ran across a lady giving a tour to a small group of people, so I asked her about  getting inside the locked buildings, which were of course the biggest ones.  She was really nice about it and let us inside everywhere, even though the tours were only supposed to start on the hour.  So nice of her!!  This is the great hall of a large mansion where members of the nobility lived.  

The great hall was the original mansion, but eventually many additions were built, and it was turned into one big room.  

In the mansion were MUCH nicer bedrooms than where the lower class villagers lived! 

The period furniture was really beautiful, and we were amazed at how enormous the cabinets were in many of the rooms! 

View out the window upstairs in the mansion.  

Children's room / nursery with cribs, cradles, and toys --- darling!!  

 We really enjoyed seeing all the buildings at the outdoor museum, and we were grateful that it never rained while we were there!  

On the way back through Liptovsky Hrádok, we stopped by the castle there, so I finally got a picture of this shrine atop a giant boulder in this lake, which we have passed by in the bus many times before!  

Liptovsky Hrádok castle - which has an attached hotel now!  

We are so grateful that we have had the use of Pat'ka's car all week while Tim's mom is here.  (Pat'ka is in charge of the England trip with our students all week, so it was perfect timing!)  It made it soooo much easier to get to all the places we wanted to take her.  We always take trains and buses, but there is usually a lot of walking involved, so having the car has been perfect!!  

We headed home for a quiet hour or so - some napped, some worked on the blog - LOL!!  And then we went to the Slovenská Restaurant here in town for Grandma's traditional Slovak meal of bryndsové halušky and bryndsové pirohy.  (All the students today wanted to know if she had tried the national dishes, both made with potato dough and sheep cheese.)    It was really yummy to us, though different-tasting for Betty!  

All three of us have our suitcases packed for our travels which will begin after church tomorrow.  (The last school service happens at 8:10, and then the students will go back to school to be given their final grade reports.)   It is a great blessing that Pastor Ferenčik has arranged for us to use the church car for our the next week, since he won't need it all week.  So we will head to Bratislava, then on to Austria and Germany.  It will be a whirlwind tour!  

Good News and Bad News in Žilina

On Monday morning we met Janka at the train station at 7:00 a.m. for our trip to the Immigration Police in Žilina, to pick up our new work visas.  It was a nice ride, though clouds kept us from seeing much of the mountains.  We had an invigorating walk to the immigration office with no rain and pleasant temperatures.  

This is the back side of the immigration police office - a very old, scary looking building!   

It turns out that the text they sent Pat'ka was only acknowledging MY visa was ready for pick-up, and not Tim's.  His has been approved, but the actual photo ID card is sent from Bratislava, and it hasn't arrived yet.  So, yes, you guessed it, we "get to" go back to Žilina one more time whenever they text Pat'ka again saying Tim's visa is ready.  SIGH!!!  

Janka inquired about taking public transportation back to the old town square, since it was a very long walk for Grandma, and it was kind of fun to ride the electric trolley this time!!

We had Arabian tea with cardamon and cinnamon in an outdoor café on the square.  

We did a little shopping and had lunch at another outdoor patio of a restaurant while waiting for our return train.  Our soups were delicious - onion with cheese balls!  

I've never gotten a picture of the swans along the Váh River, when it widens out before the dam on the way to Žilina, so I tried this time without much success.  But, we've seen them often, and all of those white blobs are swans ---- really!!    :-)

When we got back, Tim took his mom back to our flat to catch up on some emails, take a nap, and write postcards, while Janka and I went to school and hurried in late to our last staff meeting of the year.  It started at 2:00 and wasn't over at 3:55 when I had to leave again to get to our church choir end-of-the-year / surprise birthday party for our pastor.  

One of the singers who doesn't speak English rode with us to give us directions, but it turns out we would have known how to get there if they had told us it was at the salaš near Bobrovec, where we've been before!!  

We started out, of course with toasts, then we enjoyed sheep milk products - žinčica (the milk we've had before, and this was the best so far!), fresh cheese, and smoked cheese, along with bread slices, bacon hunks, and cakes.  

The other table of choir members.   It was really a fun time!  

When the salaš was ready to close, we all went outside onto the porch, and the choir sang some Slovak folk songs outside.  The sheep actually came closer during the singing!!  

Here's the whole group outside the salaš.  There were several choir members who couldn't make it, but those who did certainly had fun!  We had a fascinating conversation with our pastor, (with his son, the violinist, translating), who told about the personal sacrifices his family made on behalf of their faith during communism.  It really made us appreciate the freedom of religion our families have experienced for generations in America.  

This morning, Tim's mom slept in while we went to school early for staff devotions.  We took care of some paperwork after that, but there weren't any classes to teach, so we left fairly early.  We picked up Grandma and headed to one of Slovakia's favorite castles, about 2 hours away by car.  

Bojnice Castle is a fairy-tale style castle - really beautiful - but unfortunately it was cloudy and rainy for our views and our visit.  

The castle is fascinating, and you can just imagine knights in armor, princesses with their ladies-in-waiting, and perhaps even a visit from a king and queen within these walls!!  

The moat was bigger than we expected, though it's no longer filled with water.    This castle dates back to the 1100's originally, but it has been enlarged and improved through the centuries.  It was modified in the mid-1800's into its current form.  

The tour of rooms was really fascinating, with lots to see, including this Oriental room with ornate painted wood panels, a Ming dynasty vase, and other objets d'art.  

This is the music room - nice piano!!  I took many photos of this castle .....  we had to pay a fee to use a camera, and we decided to just use mine, so I'm posting a lot of pics for everyone who is following Betty's trip to Slovakia through our blog!   :-)  
Hello to all of Betty's friends and relatives (ours too) !!  

This ceiling was amazing - each panel had the face of an angel, all with different facial expressions, or so we were told!!  

In one of the huge dining halls of the castle.  

The wallpapers / wall paintings were really neat throughout the castle.  And many of the rooms had these ceramic tile wood-burning stoves for heating.   

The blue room, with ornate wooden carvings.

The inlays on the wooden cabinets were so intricate and beautiful!  

Another dining room - with floor and ceiling wood tiles, carved panels, etc.  Wow! 

The king-size bed --- it was very high off the floor for warmth.  

I was really fascinated with all the decorative wood!

One of the castle's owners brought this oil-burning lamp back from the Holy Land. 

Grandma and her son, the knight!!  (Wartburg Knight, that is!) 

There were many stairs to climb, but it was worth it to see the grounds from above.  And in this part of the moat, there's even water!!  

A courtyard below, and part of the immense gardens on the castle grounds. 

Gargoyle water spouts on the castle walls.  Quite grotesque, yet interesting!! 

This well in an inner courtyard had an enormous stone cistern dug right into the bedrock below the castle.  

This is one of the sights that almost made me expect to see some royalty entering the gateway, or waving from a window on a parapet!!  

It was a bummer that the light drizzle kept up most of our tour, but the tour was mostly inside, so not a big problem.   

This door led from the crypt below the castle into some of the gardens.  

We think this carriage must have been a hearse

Raindrops on the camera lens???  Oops!!  But this is the main entrance into the castle.   :-)

We had seen this silver-roofed church from the highway on the way to Bojnice, so on the way home again, we decided to go get a closer view!  It is a Lutheran church (Evanjelicky), with a very nice parsonage next door!

We took a short detour (intentionally) to have some apple strudel and hot tea at the little restaurant where we'd eaten last fall after hiking to Likava Castle.  So Grandma got to see this castle as well as several others on the drive!  

(This picture is actually from last fall when we hiked up to this castle.)

We went to TESCO (kind of like a Wal-Mart) to pick up a few things as we headed into town, then spent the rest of the evening quietly - Betty: writing postcards, thank-you's, and in her journal, and also skyping with Deb - Tim: journaling as well plus washing dishes - Michelle: making two batches of classic Rice Krispie Treats for school, neighbors, etc. , finalizing some travel arrangements for next week, and now blogging after the other two have gone to bed!!  I need to do likewise, but I hope you've enjoyed the latest installment.   We also got a text from Pat'ka that she received the second text from the immigration police saying Tim's work visa is now ready for pick-up.  So we'll have to figure out when we might have time for another visit to Žilina!!  

God bless!!      :-)