Monday was the day to get out of Dodge but everything was closed. All of Slovakia closes on Monday. At least the attractions (castles, zoos, etc) are closed. But that did not deter our clan.
We drove to the High Tatras, the mountainous region of northern Slovakia. It was a drizzling day but the ride was nice. We stopped at a few castles–doesn’t that sound weird? Slovakia has more castles than many much larger countries. To the people who live there, seeing a castle is no big deal.
A castle outside Moldava was burned by the Turks during their invasion of “Big Hungary” in the 1500’s. It’s a pretty ruin but we did not climb to it–too sloppy and too steep for me. Younger people could do this. Another castle just down the road is being repaired. Why? “Some Gypsies, they were smoking and they burned it down.” The Debrod guys do not like Gypsies, also called “Romani” but the guys had a much more derrogatory term for them. More about them later.
Something we learned on our drives around Hungary and Slovakia is that the Soviets sure did build a lot of large project style housing. Think Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis. (Google it; the implosion of Pruitt-Igoe was filmed and widely distributed because of its uniqueness–both the housing and the implosion–at that time.) But here it is so weird to see a lovely little town with a gorgeous church and all these commie buidlings. If BO and some of the libtards had their way, we would all be living like that.
Anyway, because the day was so cloudy, we had difficulty seeing the mountains. Occasionally they would peek out and we would catch a glimpse of them. We had lunch at a ski resort in a gourmet restaurant. The bill for 4 of us (no alcohol) came to around $50 US. And this was in a kick ass kind of place. Very good service, very good food.
On our return, we passed through Jasov, the town to the north of Debrod. We went up to Jasov earlier to visit their cave (which was very nice). We passed by the Romani and their housing in a couple of these Soviet building. One had a huge hole blown out in the middle of the first floor. That’s where the Romani were living. In the hole in this big building. If you saw HOMELAND’s 2nd season, the one where Brody dies, think of that drug building in South America. It was like that. Disgusting.
The guys, Viktor and Geza, kept telling me tales of the Romani. Viktor wrote about it before we left and Geza talked about it. Neither guy likes them and they find them disgusting. I understand why. They are fearful that, if Slovakia must take Syrian refugees, they will become like the Romani.
To ask this little country to now take in a bunch of Syrians who don’t speak Slovak and who worship God so radically different from the Slovak worship (Christian–largely Roman Catholic but some Orthodox, Lutheran, and Calvinist) would be so wrong. The Slovaks are poor people. The average Slovak makes about 700–800 Euros per month. How on earth could folks making so little support these Syrians? They would become like the Gypsies who have been there for hundreds of years.
cybersyster 