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** SLOVAKIA 2008 - Weeks 5~6 ** |
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 SLOVAKIA 2008 - NE SLOVAKIA, the POLISH BORDER, and HIGH TATRAS MOUNTAINS: Traffic was light on a sunny Sunday morning as we resumed our westward journey towards Humenné, to visit the skanzen devoted to the culture of the Rusyn people. Parking next to the town's Soviet war memorial, we were puzzled by the absence of signs for the skanzen; after all there was little else to tempt visitors here.
We eventually tracked down the
skanzen, set out on a hillside, with preserved 19th
century wooden rural buildings from nearby villages, but most
particularly for us, the former wooden church from Nová Sedlica,
Slovakia's most easterly village visited by us last week. The town's
trim central square of Námestie Slobody (Liberty Square) commemorates the
1944 Soviet liberation which totally obliterated Humenné, hence all
the modern buildings. The road north from here passed through a series of Rusyn villages all with dual language names in Slovak and Ukrainian Cyrillic, to Medzilaborce, a remote town on the edge of nowhere. But quite surrealistically, the town manages to celebrate its most famous son, Andy Warhol, whose parents emigrated from a nearby hamlet to USA in the early 1900s. The museum in his honour recalls Warhol's dubious 'art', the building annexed by giant Campbells soup tins. Warhol never actually visited his parents' home town, discounting it with the throw-away line 'I come from nowhere'; seeing Medzilaborce, would it be too unkind to say this was not an entirely inaccurate description of the place!
The following morning, we woke to
heavy mist covering the lake; the air was still and heavy, but by
8-00, breaks magically appeared revealing blue sky. By
Inevitably
the fighting of late 1944 is the subject of many memorials in and
around Svidnik. The Dukla Pass had for centuries been the principal
route from the east across the Carpathians into central Europe. The
Germans knew that if the Red Army's tanks and endless supply of
troops breached the Pass, the days of the Third Reich's
Crossing back to Slovakia the following morning, we headed westwards towards Bardejov. Originally founded by Saxon colonists in the 13th century, Bardejov still retains the air of a well-preserved medieval town, its centre perched above the later sprawling suburbs surrounded by the restored town wall. The industrious German traders were able to exploit Bardejov's status as a Royal Free Borough; the scale and magnificence of the town's elegant houses which surround the spacious cobbled central square and the vast Gothic Basilica whose spire stands out above the town are evidence of Bardejov's affluence. As we walked through the square, it was like steeping back into the town's medieval Saxon past. And climbing the narrow, steeply winding stone steps up the Basilica bell-tower, we had the perfect bird's eye view down across the town's wonderful medieval square (Photo 5 - medieval town houses at Bardejov viewed from bell-tower).
Prešov , a city of 100,000 and capital
of the Slovak Šariš region, was our next stop. Once past the
unattractive suburbs, the city's central area has been beautifully
restored, and
After crossing dour-looking gloomy
hills, our destination that evening was Dunajec Camping in the tiny
village of Červaný Kláštor, set on the banks of the Dunajec river
which forms the border with neighbouring Poland. Viewed from our
riverbank camp, the pine and birch-covered hills of Poland rose up
across the 20m wide river; it was a glorious setting. The
reason for venturing to this remote corner of the country was to
take one of the rafting trips for which the fast-flowing River
Dunajec is renowned. In the early 20th century,
1000s had emigrated to escape the desolation which had long plagued
the impoverished Zamagurie region. Nowadays with the setting up of
the Pieniny National
In bitterly cold and gloomily wet weather, we moved on, pausing at Kežmarok to collect emails at an internet café; we have struggled with many alien keyboards but Slovak ones are bewilderingly puzzling. If you've received an email from us with random mis-keyings of y's and z's, you'll understand the dilemma of searching through Slavic accents for the @ symbol!
The
next few days were spent in the Slovak Spiš (pronounced Spish)
region. The federation of 24 Spiš towns was originally founded by
industrious German emigrants attracted here by trading privileges
granted by the Hungarian Crown to repopulate the region after the
devastating 13th century Mongol invasion. The medieval walled town
of Levoča, once
The countryside east of Levoča is
dominated by another reminder of Spiš wealth and power, the imposing
outline of Spišsky Hrad (Castle), the gaunt shell of the medieval
fortifications standing on a high limestone bluff and visible for
miles around (Photo
11 - Spišsky Hrad (Castle) dominating the Spiš countryside). From
the castle's ramparts, the view westwards of the distant High Tatras
should have given us a foretaste of our forthcoming time in
In gloomy weather, the modern-day
capital of the Spiš region, Spišská Nová Ves seemed a cheerless
place, full of industrial estates and paneláky. But beyond
the town, Nature reasserted herself in the form of the wooded hills
and limestone gorges of the aptly-named Slovensky Raj (Slovak
Paradise) From our base at the straightforward but good-value
Podlesok campsite bordering on the dark pine woods of the lower Raj
near Hrabušice village, we enjoyed a splendid day's walking up the
lower and more accessible section of the Hornád Gorge. A
nerve-wracking scramble along the side of the deep
The bitterly cold nights and wretchedly wet days had become the established norm as we paid a brief visit to Poprad to consult the internet weather forecast; we wished we hadn't: 5 more days of rain and gloom, certainly not weather for mountain walking. Poprad would be an unappealing town even in sunny weather and certainly so as we walked in centre muffled in thick jackets against the 9°C temperature. Far more engaging was another of the Spiš towns, Spišská Sobota, now rather engulfed by Poprad's industrial estates. The highlight of the elegant central square was the late-Gothic church of Sv Juraj (St George). The main altar was another product of Master Pavol's workshops, centred around a large carved and gilded wooden statue of the church's patron saint skewering a particularly monstrous dragon.
But the time had come for us to head
up into the Tatras foothills to find Camping Tatranec. The huge open
camping field with no sheltering trees was as unwelcoming as
the
The delightful lady in the TIC gave no
encouraging news of improved weather, but we had to make the best of
it. From the settlement of Starý Smokovec, we tackled a mid-height
climb around the cirque of Studena Dolina, kitting up in ultra cold
weather gear: 2 sweaters, gortex, woolly hat and gloves against the
bleakly cold, wet conditions. We gained height steadily on a wet
path up through the dark, dank pine woods. Down below we had a clear
view of the trail of devastation from the November 2004
hurricane which had cut a swathe of destruction and
de-forestation across the lower face of the mountains. We
continued upwards into the soaking mist, meeting more fresh snow (Photo
14 -
Early snow in High Tatras) and just above the tree-line,
reached our objective; from this rocky shelf, we should have had a
magnificent panorama of the ring of snow-covered peaks around the
head of the dolina. But today, nothing. All that was visible was the
dim outline of ridges descending from invisible higher peaks buried
in cloud. But a brief window of sun The following day, the cloud was down to valley-bottom level and all we could do was take a ride on the Tatranská Electrička tram. Monday, no change, so we drove over the White Tatras towards the Polish border, visiting the Goral village of Ždiar, its the traditional wooden houses having painted patterns around windows and beam-ends. These mountain people spoke a dialect of Polish and had for centuries shepherded sheep and horses across their Carpathian homelands spanning the Slovak-Polish border. We continued over the alpine meadows and pine-covered hills down to the river which forms the Polish frontier at Lysa Polana, again crossing the now open-border for a further brief visit to Poland.
With such a drastic and sudden turn in the
weather, this had been a frustrating period, but despite this, we
had achieved so much in a short space of time, learnt much and
enjoyed new adventures. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect had been
the disappointment of the poor weather in the High Tatras which had
prevented us from savouring the many superb mountain walks which
this confined alpine range has to offer. We shall doubtless return
one day to pick up on what the weather prevented us achieving this
trip. So now, onward to the Low Tatras and the wine hills of western
Slovakia. Stay tuned ....
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In scorching early September heat, we
followed the road westwards over rolling wooded hills to the small
town of Stropkov, and the huge lake of Vel'ka Domaša, where we found
the perfect camping spot for the next few days. Set on a flat
headland with panoramic views down the length of the lake, Camping
Verejné Taborisko near to Norá Vel'ča was another informal camping
area, complete with power, loos and even hot water, and at this late
time of year, no charge. It was all you could ask for, except the
ubiquitous midges (do NOT camp in Slovakia without midge protection)
and the constant armada of heavy trucks thundering past to and from
Poland. It was a perfect base for our time around the Dukla Pass,
and that evening we were rewarded with a vivid flaring pink sunset;
and later the moon rose accompanied by bright Venus, trailing its
gleaming light across the lake (Photo 1 - Moon rise with Venus
over Lake Vel'ka Domaša). 
9-00 the
sun had burnt off the mist to give another hot day for our visit to Svidnik
and the wooden churches of the remote Rusyn villages leading up to
the Dukla Pass crossing the Carpathians over into Poland. Svidnik,
like so many towns in NE Slovakia, had been totally destroyed in the
heavy fighting of October 1994 as the Red Army fought their way down
from the Dukla Pass, pushing back the German armour marshalled to
prevent the Soviets crossing the
Carpathians.
Rebuilt since WW2, Svidnik might be seen as a characterless concrete
sprawl, but somehow it endeared itself to us. On a hillside above
the town, the local Skanzen-Museum of Ukrainian-Rusyn Culture
preserves traditional agricultural dwellings from the region. Its
highlight however is the magnificent 3-domed wooden church of St
Paraskeva, conserved from the nearby village of Nová Polianka (Photo
2 - Wooden church of St Paraskeva at Svidnik skanzen). Here at
last we were able to gain entry to one of the Greek-Catholic
churches and to photograph its interior. As in Eastern Orthodox
churches, the nave is separated from the sanctuary by a screen of
icons, the iconostasis, beautifully portraying St Nicholas, Mary the
Mother of God (Hodegetria), Christ Pantocrator, and the church's
patron saint; see the picture attached to Photo 2. During the next
couple of days, we visited similar wooden churches in various remote
villages: Potoky, Dobroslava, Ladomirová, Hunkovce, Bodružal,
Mirol'a, Nižný Komárnik and Višný Komárnik, the first Slovak village
to be liberated in October 1944. In fact, for many of these villages
with their traditional wooden churches, 'liberation' from German
occupation meant destruction and many of the restored churches still
bear traces of damage from the intense fighting of October 1944.
control of
central Europe were numbered. With the Allies advancing on Germany
from the west following the June 1944 D-Day Landings, Hitler threw
all his forces in
Czechoslovakia against the advancing Soviets,
hence the desperately costly fighting of late 1944: casualty figures
for the Dukla operation were: Soviet 86,000 and German 52,000. The
Military History Museum in Svidnik recounts the events with tedious
displays of guns, uniforms, maps and military ironmongery, but the
monumental Soviet war memorial (Památik Sovietsjej Armádé)
commemorating the 1000s who died to liberate Slovakia presents a
grimmer picture, with a huge stark marble obelisk and bronze statue
of a Red Army soldier standing guard over the mass graves. In
Svidnik's main street, Soviet Heroes Street, stands an oversized
statue of General Svoboda, commander of the Czechoslovak forces
serving with the Red Army. Just north of the town, the now peaceful
villages and agricultural countryside of the side valley which saw
the bloodiest fighting are despoiled by tanks and artillery which
stand as poignant reminders of the horrors of 1944. A little further
at Hunkovce, a German war cemetery spreads up the hillside, most of
its grim grey crosses marked simply unbekannter. More
memorials litter the road up to the Dukla Pass, either in the form
of military hardware (Photo
3 - Soviet WW2 Ilusion 10 fighter-plane memorial at Dukla Pass),
or monuments such as the monolithic memorial to Czechoslovaks killed
in the Dukla fighting (Photo
4 - Memorial to Czechoslovak war dead at Dukla Pass) with its
morbidly sorrowful figure of a woman clinging tearfully to the
soldier. At the summit of the Pass just before the Polish border,
the 50m high Dukla Watch Tower was built in 1959 to give a panoramic
view over the scene of battle and surrounding wooded hills of
Slovakia and Poland.
Having
spent the day bemused by military memorials of 1944, and enchanted by
peaceful 18th century wooden churches, we found ourselves at the
Polish frontier at the top of the Dukla Pass, and since this is now
an open-border, we drove down into Poland in search of a campsite
for tonight, feeling hopelessly mystified by the Polish language
after 6 weeks in Slovakia, and not even having any Polish Zlotys
currency. 6
kms further, we found a straightforward farm-campsite at Tylawa;
Slovak koruna were quite acceptable, and the primitive earth privies
would not have been out of place in the skanzen we had seen earlier.
Darkness seemed to fall earlier, but perhaps it always does in
Poland. The seeds of a venue for a 2009 trip were sown.
with
its lively university, Prešov has a youthful and vibrant air. The
elongated central square of Hlavná ulica is lined with elegant,
pastel-coloured Renaissance and Baroque buildings, their façades
topped with ornate gables and pediments. Towering Protestant and
Catholic churches vie for visitors' attention amid the square's flower gardens and fountains. The city also serves as the cultural
centre for the outlying Rusyn population; with today's greater
religious tolerance, Prešov's Greek-Catholic cathedral now enjoys a
renaissance and has a bishop once again after the persecution of the
Communist era. The cathedral is filled with lavish ornate Orthodox
furnishings with an elaborate iconostasis topped with gilded
filigree. On a bright sunny afternoon, we walked the length of the
square, past the decorous town houses and old town-hall from
whose balcony the First Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed in
1918- so small a balcony for such a momentous political event.
Trolley buses trundled through amidst crowds of shoppers and
trendily-dress youngsters (Photo
6 - Prešov city centre on a sunny afternoon). But we had a
long continuing journey ahead, and set off again across rolling
hilly countryside, passing Prešov's other claim to fame, the Šariš
Brewery, home of the excellent Šariš beers we had been enjoying
during the trip.
Park spanning the
border, tourism, and
particularly rafting along the River Dunajec's limestone gorge,
forms a significant part of the region's economy. Early next
morning, the sounds of rafts being prepared at the nearby launching
stage echoed across our camp. Each raft is made up of 5 narrow
sections lashed together and spanned by seats for the 90 minute
one-way trip down-river through the gorge (Photo
7 - Rafting on the Dunajec river); the rafts are then
dismanted and returned upriver by lorry for the next trip. Two
rafts-men, dressed in the colourful traditional costumes of the
Goral mountain people of the region, punt and steer the boats down
the shallow and fast-flowing river (Photo
8 - Goral rafts-man). It was a bright morning for our rafting
trip, but with a chill NE wind. In the space of a few days, we had
moved from t-shirts to sweaters and thick jackets; nights were now
getting cold: autumn was definitely on the way and the beech and
birch woods across the river were clearly showing a golden hue
against the dark green of the pines. The rafts set off past the
village on the Polish bank with the Three Crowns limestone peak
looming overhead, and soon enter the Dunajec gorge as the river
winds its way through the towering cliffs of the impressive canyon. With
low water levels, the river's pace quickened as the rafts were
steered through the shallows, not white water thrills but still
exhilarating (Photo
9 - Rafting through the Dunajec Gorge). Rafts-men from both the
Polish and Slovak banks banter in friendly rivalry, but the effort
involved in punting and guiding the rafts was clearly demanding. It
was a memorable venture but left the slightly nagging concern that
this thriving tourist industry was exploiting the employment
potential it offered for local Goral men for whom there would be
little or no work other than the traditional alpine agriculture. For
them rafting was hard graft; we wondered how well (or otherwise)
they were paid. That evening we walked across the footbridge and the
open-border with the Polish village opposite, as the late sun
sparkled on the river and gave a distant foretaste view of the High
Tatras craggy peaks where we should soon be heading.
capital of the Spiš region, was one such town whose
merchants grew rich on trade and invested their wealth in adorning
their town with opulent buildings and a glorious Gothic church.
The local campsite in the narrow valley just north of the town was
poor value, but it provided a base for our visit despite the
continuing bad weather. The 15/16th centuries were Levoča's golden age
and the Gothic-Renaissance treasures of that period still dominate
the beautiful central square, particularly the sturdy town-hall, the
town's most elegant public building. The square is lined with a fine
array of 16th century burgher houses, their sgraffito-ed decorations
showing the wealth that trade had brought to Levoča. But the town's
showpiece is without doubt the Church of Sv Jakob with its
magnificent carved and gilded wooden altarpiece created by the
town's craftsman, Master Pavol of Levoča. The 18.6m high
masterpiece completely fills the church's Gothic arched eastern window, and is
reportedly the world's tallest such piece of medieval ecclesiastical
artwork. But walking the circuit of the town's surviving medieval
walls, the view of modern-day Levoča with its grim-looking
tower-block paneláky was a harsh
contrast with its elegant showpiece centre. This was the side of Levoča
the tourists did not normally see.
these
glorious mountains. Today, the horizon was totally obscured by rain
clouds; it was indeed the unwelcome prelude to a cold, wet and
gloomy period for what should have been the trip's highlight in the
mountains.
river-gorge
and a briskly steep uphill flog through pine and beech woods
culminated at the rocky shelf of Tomašovsky Vyhl'ad. From this
outcrop-balcony, the ground dropped away sheer, some 400 feet down
into the valley from which we had climbed, but the anticipated views
up the higher section of the limestone gorge were totally
obscured by the endless pine woods (Photo
12 - Endless pine woods in Slovensky Raj).
receptionist's
attitude: When we questioned the extortionate price, the girl just
shrugged as if to say 'Take it or leave it, you haven't much
choice'; and she was right, we hadn't. Tatranec was one of the few
sites open at this time of year, but with its decrepit facilities,
it was poor value for money. The Tatras, which should have presented
a noble evening skyline, were engulfed by rain cloud, and
savage-looking plumes of black cloud spiralled upwards above the
mountains. We warmed ourselves with mugs of cuppa-soup, hoping the
forecast was wrong and tomorrow would bring better weather. It
didn't. Early the following morning, after a tantalising brief
glimpse of the Tatras peaks shimmering in a clear sky, the band of
cloud rapidly refilled the valley and the cloud-base solidified
again at 1,500m. That was the only clear view we were to get (Photo
13 - Distant view of High Tatras
in early morning light). Through their shroud of drifting cloud, the mountains showed
further fresh snow covering from the recent rains. At mid-height
below the line of mountain peaks, a tramway known as the
Tatranská Electrička links the series of mountain resorts, the
easternmost of which is Tatranská Lomnica near where we were camped.
Friendly little red trams trundle along the lower slopes of the
mountains, providing reliable transport between the main climbing
centres.
brought minor reward for our efforts on the cold and wet ascent: a
hesitant rainbow arcing across the mist covered mountains (Photo
15 - Low cloud and rainbow in
High Tatras mountains).
We had one more day left in the High
Tatras, and despite continuing poor weather, we had to get one more
walk in the mountains from Strbské Pleso. With the cloud base still
low, we set off from the village; it was truly depressing in the
murky, misty half-light. 'Walk towards the mountains', the Sunflower
guide instructed; we could scarcely see the pine trees in front of
us, let alone distant mountains! After 45 minutes of steady
height-gain, the pines gave way to birch, rowan and dwarf pine, and
through gaps in the trees as the mist cleared, we began to get
distant views of the ring of snow-covered mountain peaks of the Rysy
massif. The path was superbly constructed, shelving across the face
of a high spur with the forest-filled valley beneath us. Despite
the moist and misty dampness, we made good progress encountering
more snow, and descended to the mountain tarn of Popradské Pleso
nestled in a hollow with the mighty walls of Mengusovska Dolina
rising sheer above. Returning by the same path, we at last had the
views we had waited a frustrating 5 days for (Photo
16 - Mengusovská Dolina and Rysy
peaks in the High Tatras). Dodging
the logging work in the pine-woods we made our way back into the
eerie half-light of Strbské Pleso.
