Confirmation Sunday

This past Sunday was Confirmation at our church.  Our choir sang, so we had to be there a half hour early to warm up and rehearse.  

The confirmands gathered outside the church before the service - all the girls were in white dresses and the boys wore dark suits.  

The front doors were decorated with greenery and white ribbons.  

The pastors and confirmands lining up on the square in front of the church, ready to process into the sanctuary.  

The procession heading inside the church.  

It was a packed house, with most of the center part of the main floor set aside as reserved seats for family.  The confirmands are processing into their front row seats. 

A small group of the confirmands performed a song to start the service.  

Lining up for the actual Confirmation.

Each confirmand came forward and knelt at the altar.  

Our pastors in front of the altar, with the communion rails all decorated with greenery and white ribbons like the front door.  

There was also a contemporary combo including a bass guitarist, singer, box drummer, and guitarist, who performed a couple of songs from the balcony.

Communion was served only to the confirmands at this service, and it's a three-step process.  First, the pastor goes around to everyone kneeling at the railing and places his hand on each head for a blessing.  

Next, the pastor distributes the bread (wafers) by placing it on the tongue of each person. 

And finally, the pastor goes around the railing one more time, serving the wine to each person from a common cup.  After that, there is a blessing and dismissal for the group.  (So on the rare Sundays when communion is served to everyone during a crowded service, it can take a VERY long time.  Normally, communion is offered the first Sunday of the month, at an extra Lord's Supper service immediately after the regular service, but there are usually only about 30 people or so who stay the extra 35 minutes or so for it.) 

The confirmands presented flowers to each of the pastors at the conclusion of some speeches by a couple of confirmands and congregational representatives.  Pastor Marian also received a hockey stick.  We are guessing it's because he was the culprit who put a puck through the window over the front doors to the church recently when he was out playing hockey with the confirmands one evening!!  LOL!!  

So, the confirmation service lasted for two hours, with all the musical groups, the actual confirmation, speeches, communion, as well as all the normal liturgical parts of the service and the sermon.  It was quite a production, that's for sure.  Afterwards, there was a receiving line outside in the square for all the confirmands as people left the church.  Thank goodness it was a warm, sunny day with no rain!  

In the afternoon, we went out for a bike ride along the Vah River, to use some different muscle groups than those used on our long hike Saturday.  We got to bed early to be ready for a busy week at school --- Maturita week for the seniors!  More on that in the next post!!  

Sivý Vrch (Gray Hill)

Saturday morning dawned with sunshine, blue skies, a few clouds, and no breeze, so it was a perfect day to join Saška and Ignac on one of their favorite hikes.  Our destination was up the valley behind their village of Bobrovec, past Babky (the peak where we went with them previously), and on beyond to a famous hiking destination in this area, called Sivý Vrch, or Gray Hilltop, because it has a very rocky, gray top.  Saška emailed us instructions on bringing warm clothes, rain gear, food, and plenty of water, because it would be a 7-hour hike.  We were on the bus to Bobrovec at 6:30 a.m., and we left their house by about 7:00, so it was an early start because of expected afternoon rains.  

As soon as we got started, we saw the first evidence of a bad wind storm that occurred last week throughout the Tatras.  

As we climbed up through the forest, Ignac and Saška were disturbed by the increasing amount of storm damage and toppled trees were were seeing.  

Things got worse as we continued up the valley.  There was so much devastation affecting not only the beauty of nature in the forest, but also much wildlife habitat.  

Eventually, we could glimpse huge swaths of forest trees leveled.  

In many spots, trees had fallen across our trails.  Some of them had been partially cleared to allow passage on the trail, but in many places, we had to detour around the fallen trees or climb over/under them.  It was definitely more difficult than following the trails!  

As we climbed higher, the damage was even more apparent.  This particular wind event is called a "Bora", which is a specific type of massive katabatic wind storm.  It is estimated that about 2,000,000 trees in Slovakia were toppled, and more were damaged, resulting in a catastrophic situation for the forests.  In 2004 there was an even worse Bora, so having another one only 10 years later is really sad.  

After we got above the tree line, the mountain meadows were a beautiful sight, as they were covered in a carpet of mountain wild flowers!!  

These beautiful purple/blue flowers were such an intense color.  The camera can't even capture how bright and deep the color was!  

Oh yes, I'm sure it's getting old for readers, but we still want to break out into singing  "The Hills Are Alive…."  every time we hike through mountain meadows with gorgeous views of the Tatras in the distance!!     :-)   WOW!!  

After seeing all the destruction of trees in the forest, it was even more special to see the lovely mountain flowers up higher.  

After passing Babky, we trekked through these scrub pines for a while as we went around the side of the mountain ahead.  

This part of the trail was rocky and on a side-hill lie going around the mountain.   Notice our walking sticks --  Tim and I were both very grateful to be sharing my Mother's Day gift!   Saška and Ignac used the 2-stick method, but we both prefer using just one apiece: perfect!  

Another pretty wildflower tucked under a bush along the trail.  

And at last, our final ascent to Sivý Vrch.  Ummmm - it's higher and steeper than it looks!!  

But we made it at last!!  1805 meters isn't really that high I guess, but it did take us four hours to arrive at the top, and the views were magnificent.  We can now understand why people here are always hiking up to another mountain peak to see the 360º panoramas!  

Click here for a short video  -  360º Views from the top of Sivý Vrch

Another hiker arrived at the top shortly after we did, so he took our photo all together.  And of course, the other cheesy song that always pops into my head at times like this is, 
"I'm on the top of the world, looking down on creation……"  
Sorry, but I'm just hopeless --- the songs always roll through my brain!!  LOL!!

We had taken a couple of other short breaks on the way up, but we finally sat down and had lunch up on Sivý Vrch, with the whole valley spread out below us.  Can't beat this view, that's for sure!!  

This was the view of Liptovská Mara below, with the zoom.  Some of the canola fields are still in bloom too!  

The obligatory "mountaintop" photo --- it was a little windy up there, so I was very careful of my footing climbing over some big rocks to get to this spot near the edge!  

It's hard to tell from the photo how incredibly steep this hillside was leading down to the valley behind Sivý Vrch.  Each direction had another scenic valley view!  

Heading back down our trail was a little scarier than coming up.  I always prefer climbing! (There's another small area of flattened trees behind Tim in the distance too.)

The trail down from Sivý Vrch was a switchback over rocky terrain.  Gorgeous!!  

This is looking back up the trail we had just climbed down.  I told you it was steep!!  

There's another route up to Sivý Vrch from the Orava region (to the north of the Liptov region, where we live), and the path is along this rocky ridge.  

Headed back down the trail and around the hills in the distance --- it's a LONG hike! 

But the views were more than worth the effort, and we were so fortunate to have such nice weather for our hike!  

My guy heading back down from Sivý Vrch - what an awesome day!!  

Some hikers had left this marker on the trail!!  Love in the Tatras!!   :-)

You can just barely glimpse the gray top of Sivý Vrch in the right center of this photo, which shows how far around the mountains we had to go to reach it!  

The High Tatras still had snow from last week's storms.  We only had rain down in Liptovský Mikuláš, but at the higher elevations it was snowing.  There were even a few unmelted snowbanks along our trail.  

We descended by a different route, so we saw even more downed trees. 

All along the trail, it just kept getting worse.  

I know there are a lot of photos of uprooted trees, but this is only a small sampling of the incredible devastation in the forests.  Of course there are still many trees standing too, but it's unbelievable to see the damage from the Bora.  

Another section of flattened trees.  

Thankfully, this portion of the trail is a road leading to the chata (mountain restaurant) called Červenec where we stopped for a break on the way down.  It looks like it was completely covered by fallen trees, so the roadway had been cleared off already to allow access to the chata. 

Here's one last peek at the valley below, looking through a break in the trees during our climb back down towards Bobrovec.  

We stopped for some tea and snacks at Saška and Ignac's place, heard some piano selections from their kids, and rested our weary legs for a little while before catching a bus back to the station a half a block from our flat.  We never got wet on our hike, but the heavens opened up with a ferocious thunderstorm after we got into the house.  Good timing!  I have to admit that a nice, hot bath was just the ticket to soothe my muscles that night, and neither of us was as stiff and sore as we expected on Sunday.  It was another wonderful day in Slovakia!!