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** SLOVAKIA 2008 - Weeks 3~4 ** |
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 SLOVAKIA 2008 - SLOVAK KARST CAVES, KOŠICE (Slovakia's second city), UKRAINE BORDER and the WOODEN CHURCHES of CARPATHO-RUTHENIA: At risk of provoking emailed accusations of train-spotting tendencies, this week's edition begins with yet another rail journey, but this time, a ride through scenically spectacular forested terrain to experience a remarkable piece of railway engineering, the Telgart Loop.
The road from Brezno winds steadily
upwards through wooded hills into the higher reaches of the Hron
From the Slovensky Raj the road
dropped 1,000 feet in spectacular looping hair-pins to the small
town of Dobšina, a desolately impoverished looking place with many
Roma gypsies milling aimlessly around. We had seen these
dark-skinned people in eastern Hungary; they are thought to have
migrated as nomads into central Europe from India some 500 years
From an overnight camp at Dobšina, we headed south into the Slovak Karst limestone region (Slovenski Kras) with its many caves. Above Štidnik, the road rose steeply over densely forested hills leading to the Ochtinska Aragonite Cave. The cave was originally discovered by mining prospectors in 1954 in this remote location 800m above the surrounding valleys. Formed in an isolated area of limestone among ore-bearing rocks, cavities created by tectonic faults were enlarged by percolating water rich in dissolved minerals. The slow rate of capillary action caused calcite to crystallise out as pure white spiky 'flowers' of aragonite (Photo 3), 'growing' in delicate coral-like encrustations in alcoves within the cave ceiling. The Ochtinska Cave's aragonite formations were as beautiful a natural creation as seen anywhere, and certainly made the journey over the hills worthwhile.
After
a further cave visit at Jasov, we walked up into a typical Karst
dolina at Zádiel, sliced by river erosion into the featureless
limestone plateau as if into a gargantuan wedding cake, with
cliff-like walls 1,000 feet looming above. At the southern margin of
the Karst tableland, the broad, open glacial valley of Bodvianska
Kotlina spread out towards the hills of the Hungarian border. Here
we approached Košice (pronounced Koshitsa), Slovakia's second city
with a population of 250,000. The city's economic and
In leaving Košice, we visited Europe's
only geyser outside of Iceland at the small village of Herl'any in
the foothills of the Slanské vrchy; originally spurre
Curiosity at this point compelled us
to investigate the settlement of Čierna, close to the 3-way border
between Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine by the River Tisza. This was
indeed a forlorn little place, even its paneláki
swamped by enormous railway marshalling yards with lorries queuing
at the major railhead to take on board freight from the east for
onward
We continued our eastward journey beyond Sobrance, a dreary little town with a forlorn Back-of-Beyondsville feel, at last to approach the Ukraine border at the main crossing to the Ukrainian city of Užhorod. The border village of Vyšné Nemecké seemed from the map to have a by-pass. As we advanced cautiously towards the border, we understood why: in effect it formed a lorry park for the 4 km line of trucks queuing to get through customs control into the Ukraine. It looked as if it would take more than 24 hours to pass the border. We were not about to test whether stories of such extreme delays and the venality of Ukrainian customs officials were apocryphal. Turning back from the border, we turned north, parallel with the border up into the wooded hills for the next phase of our Slovakian travels to find the Rusyn (Ruthenian) people and to learn more of their largely unknown history and religious culture which has left a treasured heritage of their 18th century wooden churches.
This area of Carpatho-Ruthenia, now
bounding eastern Slovakia, Poland and western Ukraine, is
traditionally home of the Rusyns (Ruthenians), one of Europe's lost
peoples. The
Unsure of campsites in this remote NE
corner of Slovakia, we found the delightful Camping Stanový Tábor,
set among tall birch trees (Photo
11) close to the small town of Snina and run by Štefan Labanič
and his wife who welcomed us with glasses of excellent Steiger beer. From this base, we set out to explore more of the Rusyn
Greek-Catholic
Nová Sedlica, Slovakia's most easterly
village, and the Ukrainian border-crossing at
Ubl'a were the turning points of
this
trip. From here, it will be westward
all the way, but we still have much to see in what is proving a
wonderfully fascinating country. More of that in the next episode,
coming in a further two weeks.
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valley; never before had we seen so many trees as in Slovakia, and
this was logging country on a large scale.
At the village of Telgart a few kms from the Hron watershed, the
railway builders devised an impressive solution to gain height
through into the next valley: the Telgart 360° Rail Loop (Photo
1) raises the line on a steep gradient within a curving tunnel
to continue its eastward progress. At Telgart Penzion halt, trains
disappear into the lower tunnel mouth to re-appear minutes later
trundling across a viaduct 100 feet above. We followed the road
through alpine meadows over the 994m pass to begin the long descent
into the Hnilec valley and through the massive limestone gorges of
the thickly forested Slovensky Raj, to camp by the picturesque lake
at Dedinky. From the sadly neglected village station, we mastered
the obscurities of the Slovak rail timetable to catch the well-used
local train back through the hills down the Telgart Loop, with just
enough time at Červená Skala station before the return train to
Dedinky.
Another spectacular natural
phenomenon in this area is the Dobšina Ice Cave (Dobšinska
L'adova Jaskyňa). Ice caves occur in the Alps but at higher
altitudes. At Dobšina, unique conditions at 970m on a north facing
hill around 300,000 years ago enabled underground glaciation to
form: roof falls created deep cavities filled with very cold
stagnant air causing slowly percolating surface water to freeze,
building up to the present 26m depth of ice. With a surface area of
10,000 M2, the ice takes the form of a vast underground
frozen lake, and like any glacier, it moves at an annual rate of 2~4
cms towards the lower area of the cave. Kitted up against the
freezing temperatures, we descended steeply into the underground
glacial gloom down through deep walls of ice. The route curved
around through a tunnel in the ice to emerge into a large hall
filled with ice-floors stretching away on either side. Ahead we
could make out a massive pillar of ice and ice stalagmite (Photo
2); they all the characteristics of normal cave calcite
formations but made entirely of ice where percolating water had instantly solidified. The sheer bulk and scale of the
underground glacier at Dobšina Ice Cave was yet another awe-inspiring experience to add
to others from our travels.
ago.
Despite German attempts in WW2 to liquidate them along with the Jews, this ethnic minority now numbers some half million in Slovakia;
their numbers, living conditions and dependence on state benefits is
one of the country's major social problems. Until recently, their
welfare was of concern to no one; the Communist regime's solution to
the Roma problem was to pay for Roma women to be sterilised.
Discriminated against by Slovaks and despised as an almost
sub-species, they now exist on the fringes of this normally
industrious society, living in third-world conditions in squalid, semi-derelict ghettoes on
the edge of towns and villages with no running water, no sanitation,
and no hope. They have virtually no education, and are victim of
perennial unemployment or menial seasonal jobs. No wonder that many
turn to petty crime. They are viewed generally as work-shy and
sponging off state aid, and are to be seen everywhere begging and
hanging around aimlessly with bottle in hand, harassed by the
police, an easy scapegoat for society's ills. The discriminatory
prejudice against the Roma is both understandable and a continuing
cause of their downward spiral into isolation. An attempted break-in
to our camper in Hungary 2005 was readily blamed by police on the Roma,
and we had been warned to be on our guard in eastern Slovakia. Is
this however just another symptom of discriminatory mythology? To us they seem utterly aimless and forlorn, but we still take care. At
least the present Slovak government with EU help is trying to
address the Roma problem, but such is the scale of deprivation and
prejudice, it will take decades to end their plight and integrate
them into normal society.
This
region around the attractive town of Rožnava has for centuries been
a centre of iron-mining and founding industry. You could appreciate
how the 1920 Trianon Diktat redrawing of borders deprived Greater
Hungary of most of its mineral wealth and transport infrastructure;
the new Czechoslovak Republic began its existence in 1918 with a
windfall economic bonus. Rožnava has a comfortably affluent feel
about it: once a flourishing Hungarian and German mining centre set
at the confluence of several valleys, the town's economy is still
supported by local iron-ore mines, steel foundries and associated
industries. The Mining Museum presents the history of the town's
links with iron mining and founding and is well worth a visit. The
town hall's triple language sign - radnica, varoshaz, rathaus -
reflects its multi-ethnic traditions. Rožnava's Gothic
watch-tower in namestie Baníkov gave panoramic views over the
central square (Photo
4), the paneláki suburbs and surrounding hills. An
industrious and unpretentious town, Rožnava impressed us by proudly
making the most of its historical inheritance and taking care to
welcome visitors with its helpful TIC, features markedly missing in
most Slovak towns.
We camped that night at Krásnohorske Podhradie,
literally meaning 'Below Krásno Horske Castle', the gaunt Gothic
seat of the Hungarian aristocratic Andrássy family, which looms
dramatically on a limestone bluff above the village. From this base,
we visited two other caves of the Slovak Karst region each with
spectacularly distinctive formations. In a remote corner of the Slovenski
Kras hard on the Slovak-Hungarian border, the Domica Cave system
extends for several kms under the border to emerge by the Hungarian
village of Aggtelek where we had camped in 2005. On the surface, the
open-Schengen border now allows ready access between the two EU
states, but in the underground cave, a metal grille still blocks access as
we had seen when visiting the Hungarian section of cave. Domica
Cave's range and scale of calcite formations (Photo
5), flowstone and sinter waterfalls was mightily impressive and
well-lit, and the cave's resident bat population flitted around as
we followed the winding passageways. At nearby Gombasecká Cave,
a combination of slowly percolating calcite-rich water and stagnant
high humidity air caused unique formations - starkly white, fine
spaghetti-like straw stalactites (Photo
6) covering the ceilings. With a growth rate of 1 cubic mm every
10 years, the longest straw with a length of 3m will have taken
47,000 years to accumulate.
employment
mainstay is the gigantic steelworks, originally developed under the
Communists in 1950s and now ironically owned by the ultra-capitalist
US Steel. We had hoped that Košice's standing would merit a worthy
campsite, but Autocamp Salaš Barca on the city's by-pass was a real
let-down with decrepit facilities, indifferent staff and outrageous
prices (by Slovak standards). But on a bright sunny Sunday morning,
we caught the tram from the outskirts into the city centre. Viewed
from a distance, Košice seems an unattractive industrial
wilderness, but once past the shabby and fortress-like paneláki
tower-block estates which encircle the city, its old centre of Staré
Mesto along the elongated main street of Hlavna ulica is a
real jewel (Photo
7). This whole central area,
lined with a handsome parade of art nouveau and neo-classical
buildings, was sensitively restored in 1990s. Credit for Košice's superb
revival is due to Rudolf Schuster, the city's mayor until 1999 when
he was elected Slovakia's national president. Believing that a
physically attractive city was the keystone to urban renewal,
Schuster invested Košice's wealth to produce the republic's most
attractive city. The southern end of Hlavna ulica is dominated by
the bulky mass of Košice's Cathedral, Europe's easternmost Gothic
dom (Photo
8) with the sunlight glowing on its cleaned stonework. The
handsome environment of Hlavna ulica, with the former stream that
once ran through now restored as a stone water channel running the
length of the square, this was understandably the ideal place for Košice's
more affluent citizens to take their Sunday afternoon stroll. But of
the city's inevitable Roma underclass, there was not a sign. The
square's centrepiece were the gardens of the Singing Fountains
set against the grandiose Baroque backdrop of the State Theatre (Photo
9). Local people gathered here and children ran around the
gardens as the fountains rose and pulsed to unobtrusive musical
accompaniment; it was sheer delight. In contrast in the
back-streets, the 1927 former synagogue now stood in a state of
abandoned dereliction, a memorial to the 12,000 of Košice's Jewish
population dispatched to the camps by Tiso's thugs for ritual murder
at the hands of the Germans. Behind the cathedral, the elegant
Stolničný dom was the setting for Beneš's 1945 declaration of the
post-WW2 Czechoslovak government; he also awarded key ministries to
the Communists which led after Beneš's death to the Party seizing
monopolistic hold on power for the next 40 years. After such an
aesthetic feast in Košice, we caught the tram back to our camp in
the suburbs, and as August drew to a close, dusk fell earlier and
the evenings began to feel chilly.
d
into action by 19th century drilling for a mineral water spa,
build-up of carbon dioxide pressure causes the geyser to erupt tepid
water 15m into the air every 36 hours. Our visit coincided with the
lull period, and all we saw was the grubby concrete basin
surrounding a small hole in the ground from which the unpleasantly
mineralised water erupts. But our priority was to continue eastwards
over the Dargov Pass, a mild climb today but in January 1945, it
cost the lives of 22,000 Red Army troops to liberate this region
from the retreating Germans. At the top of the Pass, tanks and a
vast Communist memorial commemorate the losses. Traffic on the
main eastward Route 50 was unrelentingly the worst experienced this
trip, with aggressive tail-gating and suicidal overtaking.
Descending from the Pass, the utterly flat Zemplin plain stretched
away to a hazy horizon eastwards towards Ukraine and south to
Hungary. Trebišov, despite its upbeat description as 'gateway to the
Slovak Tokaj wine region', was just another rather grubby, forlorn
town with the usual gaggles of Roma hanging around the paneláki.
We continued south across the plain to find Autocamp Maria; what
seemed to us a perfectly reasonable request to camp at her campsite
evoked total incomprehension from Madame Maria. Never before had we
been totally unable to find any means of communicating in any known
language, and only eventually did she relent to our camping for the
night behind the huts. The best you say about Camping Maria was that
it existed - just.
In
this area, a northward extension of the Hungarian Zemplén Hills, the
Slovakian Tokaj grapes are grown in terraces up the south facing
hillsides. Wines produced under the Tokaj Aszú method of adding
small wooden containers (puttony) of late-harvested extra sweet
botrytised grapes to the fermenting must have been made in this
corner of Slovakia since the time when it was part of Greater
Hungary. Under an EU agreement however, Slovakia is not allowed to
export its Tokaj wines. We visited the Slovakian Tokaj
wine-producing villages (Photo
10) of Mala and Vel'ka Trňa to sample their wines and compare
them with the Hungarian version tasted at Tokaj itself in 2005. And
the verdict? Well the Tokaj wine is too sweet for our taste, but
we'll know better at Christmas when we open the dry white Furmint
and Muscat wines bought in Slovakia. And so down to the Hungarian
border at Slovenski Nové Mesto where we walked across a footbridge
into Slovakia's neighbouring country, just for old times' sake,
where the inevitably wishful-thinking Trianon memorial recalled the
much-resented creation of this border in 1920.
transportation
into central and western Europe. These railway sidings were the scene of the
last-ditch talks between the Soviet hard-liners and Dubček's
reformists shortly before the Soviet invasion in August 1968 brought
to an end the Prague Spring. Heading north, we reached the small
town of Vel'ké Kapušany where a lane led between the rail tracks to
the Ukraine border. But 500m from the border, a police post deterred
further progress; knowing Slovak sensitivities about protecting the
EU's eastern border against the passage of illegal immigrants from
the east, we retreated not wanting to invite problems at such spot.
A direct approach to the Ukrainian border would have to wait until
further north. At Mikalovce, Slovakia's easternmost major
town and capital of the Zemplin region, industrial estates on the
outskirts showed the town to be economically even if not
aesthetically well-endowed; but for such an unpromising place, the
central square proved more promising, decorated with fountains and
lined by attractive fin de siècle buildings, making for a pleasant strolling the late afternoon sunshine. For tonight's campsite, we
continued east to the so-called Slovak Sea (Zemplinska Širava). In a
land-locked country, any such large area of lake even if
artificially created is considered sea, as developers fill the
shores with so-called leisure activities. In the hills above the village of Vinné, by the
small lake of Vinianske Jazero, we found a delightful informal
camping area with all the basic facilities needed at no charge.
Having settled in, we retired to a nearby bar for much-needed beers
after a long day's travelling, and by the last light of the day,
prepared our BBQ supper looking over the small lake. The following
morning brought comic entertainment courtesy of the Slovak army who
arrived at the lake in a huge truck to fulfil their NATO
commitments in the form of canoe training. It was like an
episode of Dad's Army as the squaddies were instructed in the use of
the paddle; watching these Cockleshell Heroes, somehow western
defence
seemed in a fragile state if we depended on this to keep out
the Russian hoards! And after a day's walking in the nearby Vihorlat
Hills by the lake of Morské Oko with the sunlight filtering down
through the beech trees just beginning to gain their golden autumn
colours, we returned to our quiet lakeside camp. 
name is of unknown origin but is thought to mean
Ukrainian (Little Russian). Their language is related to Ukrainian
though their homeland in the Carpathian mountains was never part of
historical Ukraine, only becoming part of USSR-dominated Ukraine
after Stalin annexed the region from Czechoslovakia as war bounty in
1945. Historically, the Rusyns were of the Eastern Orthodox faith,
but from the 16th century, a series of schisms split their church,
and while retaining all the trappings of Eastern Orthodoxy,
they aligned themselves with Roman Catholicism. This great Rusyn
cultural institution and guardian of the Rusyn national identity
therefore gained the name of Greek-Catholic Church. Those Rusyns
remaining in Czechoslovakia were regarded by the Communist regime
officially as Ukrainians, and despite their ethnic and religious
distinctiveness, their Greek-Catholic church was forcibly
amalgamated with the Eastern Orthodox church and its
priests
persecuted. The extent of the Rusyn population is unknown but
clearly forms a significant part of the rural eastern Slovakian
population. Since Slovak independence, their prospects have improved
with more understanding towards ethnic minorities and greater
religious tolerance. It was the Rusyn Greek-Catholics who
during the 18th century built the many characteristic wooden
churches which we now set out to find.
At the remote village of Inovce, high
in the wooded Carpathian hills, we literally reached the end of the
road; the Ukrainian border was just 1 km away and the presence of
police jeeps showed again this was a sensitive area. Here in this
isolated farming community, we found our first wooden Greek-Catholic
church (Cerkev drevený) dedicated to the Archangel Michael and set
on a hillock overlooking the village. Nearby in a similarly remote
setting in the wooded hills, we reached the village of Ruská Bystrá,
and found the Rusyn wooden church of St Nicholas the Bishop, and in
Hraborá Roztoka, the wooden church of St Basil the Great. These
churches were all of the Rusyn Greek-Catholic faith, but in the same
villages, we saw newly-built evidently Eastern Orthodox churches,
with their characteristic onion-domes. The two distinctive faiths
evidently still co-exist. Clearly also
the population of these remote villages was predominantly Rusyn or
Ukrainian since the village name-boards were dual-language, Slovak
and Ukrainian Cyrillic. We still had much to learn.
wooden churches in a remote pine and beech-covered valley high in the Poloniny National Park:
at Jalová the Greek-Catholic wooden church of St George (Photo
12) stood on a hillock in the heart of this small farming
community surrounded by columnar hay stacks, and at the next
village, similarly tucked away into the hills, we found the Church of Archangel Michael at Ruský Potok
(Photo 13). We continued to the furthest point of the high
valley, and at the road's end, we reached this trip's turning point,
Nová Sedlica the most easterly village of Slovakia (Photo
14). Above the village, the 1,200m high mountain of Kremenec
marked the 3-way border between Slovakia, Ukraine and Poland. The
church in this village was modern and had replaced the former
Nová Sedlica wooden church (Photo
15) which we saw later at the outdoor Rusyn museum (skanzen) at
Hummené. Having reached this most furtherly eastern point of
this trip's host country, it just remained for us to pause briefly
near the Slovak-Ukrainian border-crossing at
Ubl'a
(Photo
16)
and take surreptitious photos before the Slovak officials
hustled us on. We turned west and began the long journey homewards.
