Day Tripper

XIII

Sundays are , for Slovaks , a day of worship and family . They are an active culture , where being outside is an integral part of any family activity – weather permitting . The biggest part of this activity is food . Jano , his Mother Elena , and Father Jan drove down from Pokryvac to pick me up and then we swung up toward the very top of Slovakia to Orava Reservoir . They were going to spend the day with their daughter Elena and her husband Gero . Jano would meet them later as Jano and I planned on Saturday to go to Zuberec ( zoo-burr-ets ) , a village from ( mostly ) the 15th century .

Zuberec is in the foothills of the Western Tatras and among many things has this entire village to walk through and remember what life was like in the past . Of course on our drive up we were side-tracked as road crews were paving a bridge . It’s a major reworking of a bridge of the Orava River on the major road from Poland into Slovakia . With the usual ingenuity , they called ahead and Jano drove around the construction far enough for his parents to side-step the construction while Gero drove down and picked them up on the other side . If we had to backtrack , it would’ve taken at least an hour and a half out of our time . Brilliant problem solving !

The village is like walking through any outdoor museum in the US ; think Williamsburg in Virginia , or Salem near Springfield in Illinois . You can feel the history , and get a real sense of how our ancestors lived on a day to day basis . It was not any life , I think most of us know this , with absolutely none of our modern conveniences . Everything was done by hand . I have a greater appreciation for what my Grandparents did growing up and also , what they gave up to come to the US . The amount of space they lived in was dictated by their wealth and status with-in the village and then , of course the larger world outside . Since my maternal ancestors were millers ( by and large ) , they were just a step up from the serfs or somebody bound to the land . Without lashing the reader too often with my historiography , the Magyars ( Hungarians ) were unforgiving and relentless in their mission to either subjugate the Slovaks , or wipe them out entirely . It was only during the reign of Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II , roughly 50 years – from 1740 to 1790 . They were among the first of the ” enlightened royalty ” and they lifted , if only for a short period , the heavy-handedness of the Magyar rule over the Slovaks .

Here in the Upper Kingdom , I can still get a glimpse of that near-freedom they were granted . The churches from that period are gorgeous and florid in their architecture . I’ve read the writers that came to the fore with the training that afforded them to express themselves with the written word , Dakujem Pane Bernolak ! Standing in Zuberec , I looked up at the moutains , framed by passing clouds and wondered what it would be like to live in this village and on Sunday , sit in the grass and picnic with the entire village . It was how they did it in those days . I guess finding happiness in the small joys was the only reality that might help them to survive .

We left Zuberec chatting on like high school boys after winning the big game . Zuberec was on our radar from my last trip . On our way to the village we had passed this former smeltery outside of Nizna ( neezsh-nuh ) and made a plan to stop and see it on our way to Ustie ( Elena and Gero’s house ) . We walked across what is now a cow-field and stood in front of this shell of a building from the early/mid-19th century . Ore was smelted and made into iron products for the region . One of just a handful of industrial sites from that period . Slovaks in the Upper Kingdom were relegated to agriculture-related , or mining jobs . This building represents one type of manufacturing that the people of this region were allowed , mostly because it was cheaper to do it here , than to send the raw materials to another place – capitalism in its purest sense . Jano and then headed for Ustie to finish our incredible day with family , in quite typical Slovak style . We ate finger food and then ate a soup , meat and cheeses with bread . Elena ordered pizzas as she was busy . Perfect ! We watched the finals of the World Hockey Championships and carried on our visit with …what else ? Music and drinks . Gero is a big fan of Collegium Musicum , as I am , having been turned on to them by him in 2017 . Politics , and economics ; whatever came across the board . It was very enjoyable , and I reflected on the day as I went to sleep with a smile from more than complete day trippin’….