Church Bus Tour - Take Two!

Last year about this time, we went on a bus tour of historic Lutheran churches with our pastor and the church choir.  This year we were invited along again, and the destinations were different - this time to the northwest, into the Orava region.  (Where we took Paul, Alana, Beth, and Lute to the castle when they visited!)   :-)   I packed snacks for the bus the night before, as we had to depart for our walk to the church by a little after 7:00 a.m. on Saturday.  In order set the alarm not quite so early, we had breakfast on the bus, complete with a thermos of hot tea.   

We waited for a little while at the church, then our bus pulled up.  We had a good crowd - over 40 people including Pastor Ferenčik, who served as our tour director.  

Our first stop was one of the five wooden articular churches still standing in Slovakia. (Since they were required to be built of wood, most of them have burned down over time.)  It was quite foggy at the beginning of the trip, as we went up into the mountains.  

Erik came along as our translator for the day.  Here are Tim, Erik, and Pastor Ferenčik near the gate leading into the church grounds in the village of Leštiny.  

The interior of the church was all decorated with paintings - the walls, ceiling, balcony, support pillars, etc. - were all beautiful!  This wooden church at Leštiny is the smallest of the remaining articular churches in Slovakia.  

The altar was also painted with many Biblical stories and figures.  Moses and Aaron are the two statues on the sides of the altar.  

This gorgeous baptismal font was carved from a single piece of wood.    Amazing! 

This church is still in use today by people from three villages.  I even found a recent wedding bulletin sitting on one of the hymnal-racks in a pew!  Here are the three English-speakers at the front of the church.  It was so fun having Erik there to translate everything! 

The front door of the church was really short, and the entryway leads down steeply since the church is high atop a hill.  Pastor Ferenčik gave us a DVD about the articular churches to watch - it should be really interesting, thanks to the English subtitles!  

We were the last ones out of the church after our tour, and the woman who had told us about the church's history locked up with this gigantic key!  

By the time we were ready to board the bus again, the fog had lifted, so we got a nice view of the articular church.  (For those of you who missed the earlier blog posts about the other wooden churches we've visited, after the Reformation, in the mid-1600's or so, the Austro-Hungarian emperor tried to promote Catholicism by making things very difficult for the "evanjelické' church members, and new laws, or articles (hence "articular churches") were written specifying that Lutheran churches could not be built of any permanent materials like stone or iron.  So churches built according to these articles/laws were made of wood, without nails, had to be located outside of the town, etc. etc. etc.  But they were indeed built and used, and the remaining ones are still being used for worship services!  It's a unique part of Slovak church history.  

Next we went to the town of Dolny Kubin.  (There's supposed to be an accent mark over the 'y', just like there's supposed to be in Liptovsky Mikuláš, but that doesn't seem to be an option for my computer - suggestions anyone??)    :-)   First we visited the museum of a famous Slovak author and nationalist, Pavla Hviezdoslava, then we went next door to the Lutheran church.

The pastor of the church gave us a history of the church, which was really ornate and beautiful inside.   

The next leg of our journey was gorgeous because of the bright sunshine on the brilliant fall foliage on the hillsides.  What a wonderful way to spend an autumn day, touring the countryside with our church friends and Erik!  

Castle ruins high atop a hill.  

I really like this picture because of the one bright yellow tree growing out of the rocks, and because of the Slovak flag flying atop the castle tower!  

Another pretty hillside and its reflection in the water near a dam.  

Next stop:  Bytča, where we toured another museum on estate grounds with multiple buildings.  This is the Wedding Palace, which was built in 1601 by an extremely wealthy landowner.  Since he had seven daughters, he built the palace especially to handle all of their weddings!!  The weddings usually lasted several days or longer, and for his favorite daughter, the wedding celebration lasted two weeks and had over 2,000 guests.  Yikes!  

This castle was also on the grounds, but it was closed to visitors.  There was a bridal couple having their photographs taken while we were there.  (walking at center)

Just before we went into the Wedding Palace, we noticed all these brightly-colored bugs on the bushes.  They reminded us of box-elder bugs back in Iowa!!  :-)  

Inside some parts of the Wedding Palace, there was an exposition of various fall harvest crops.  It reminded us of the Iowa State Fair exhibits!  :-)  

Lovely veggies, and behind, some veggie art!!  

This room, upstairs in the Wedding Palace, is used for concerts and other functions, as well as weddings, but today, it was part of the harvest exhibition.  The aroma of apples was intoxicating!!  (Thanks go out to Erik, our TALL photographer!!)

Wish we could have gone inside this castle too, but not today!  

Just outside the walls of the castle area, we crossed over this moat-like waterway, and the first thing we saw was the decaying hulk of the Jewish Synagogue.  Like all the synagogues we've seen in Slovakia, this one is obviously in disrepair and there is no one left to worship there.  It's so tragic to see.  And since this synagogue is such a grand and imposing structure, we can surmise that there was once a large and prosperous population of Jews living here.  

This is basically a view from the same location as the previous picture, but I just had to include this shot too, because of how pretty and peaceful the scene is with the trees reflected in the water.   

We had a little over an hour to explore the little town of Bytča (pronounced "beet-cha") with Erik and find somewhere to eat lunch.  

This beautiful Catholic church was on the town square, so we took a peek inside.  It was all decorated for a wedding - maybe for the bride and groom we saw earlier!    :-)  

Back on the bus, since everyone had eaten lunch, a little after-meal slivovice was in order.  Of course, the same two shot glasses were refilled and handed to each new set of seats.  That stuff is definitely strong enough to kill any germs, so no worries!!    :-)

Our final stop for the day was in Stará Bystrica, to see the Slovak astronomical clock.  It is very much like the one in Prague, showing the time, date, moon phase, sun position, and zodiak sign.  In fact, the workings of the clock were purchased from Prague, and it is the only astronomical clock like it in Slovakia.  The statues are of famous Slovak historical figures, and the entire facade/roof of the building make up a sculpture of the Virgin Mary, the patroness of Slovakia.  Can you see her??  

Our landlady, Luba Betková, also went on the bus tour, so we took a picture with her too!  She is so awesome, and such a fun person!!  

When we finally got to see the clock 'do its thing' as it struck the hour, there were bells ringing, and more wooden carved historical figures appeared at the window, one by one!  

The afternoon sun really lit up the bright colors on the trees during our bus ride back to Liptovsky Mikulás.

Can you tell how much we were enjoying the fall array of colors??    :-)

We got back to our flat by 7:00 p.m., so it was another fun and full day exploring Slovakia! 

Sunday morning we were up bright and early again, to walk to church in time for our 8:15 a.m. choir rehearsal.  Because it was a harvest festival, kind of like our Thanksgiving, the choir sang another two numbers - different ones from last week!  Both songs went well - one a cappella and one with two guitars - with Jakub, our younger pastor's son playing melody on the violin for both.  

We walk past this wall on our way home from church, and I noticed it with new eyes this Sunday.  It's interesting because you can see remnants of the communist era with the barracks-style and industrial-looking buildings in the background, the concrete wall and barbed wire fence, etc.  But there is beauty in the bright blue sky, the colorful graffiti paintings on the wall, and the scarlet leaves on the tree.  

After church, hot chai & a sermon, and Sunday dinner, we rode bikes over to Vrbica (the old part of town, where Tim plays basketball) where we had been invited for afternoon tea at the flat of one of our students.  He's a stellar English speaker and a delightful young man, and we got to meet his family and enjoy some treats his mother had made for us.  Filip is applying to British universities for next year, and we know he'll do really well!  

Of course Sunday evening is usually reserved for skyping, so it was fun making face-to-face contact.  Monday at church choir we started on Christmas music, and there were record numbers at rehearsal after our young pastor made an announcement at church encouraging anyone who was interested to join us!  He's really drumming up members!  Tim counted over 30 there, and they have a pretty big sound, that's for sure.  We're working on finding out a link to videotapes of our services, so maybe our choir can go global!  LOL!   

After choir was church volleyball.  It's neat because a couple of our school students who live far away and stay in the dormitory during the week are starting to come too.  The only thing that is annoying is that whenever one of the guys hits a really hard serve or spike that comes to me, they always apologize profusely.  I guess they think I'm OLD or something!!  I'll have to learn to tell them in Slovak that I'm fine with the hard hits, and I ascribe to the theory "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!!"  Oh well!!  :-)  

Tuesday afternoon we had a 2- hour combined staff meeting with the elementary building.  We did get to tour the new building (since most of the secondary staff was teaching on the grand opening day), and there were even refreshments.  Then the meeting part was going over the annual report, upcoming plans, etc. etc.  Let's just say Tim and I wished we could have gone to Kum-N-Go for a jumbo diet Coke first!!  I was close to nodding off at one point.   :-)   Then lessons that evening with our adults - always fun!  

And that brings us up to date with life in the fast lane in Liptovsky Mikuláš.  Our classes are going well, and we have such a great time with our teaching colleagues.  We are really blessed in so many ways.   :-)