Day 1 Levoca

July 24, 2007 Sunday

Breakfast buffet at the hotel. Eastern European breakfasts are great. Meats, cheeses, eggs, hot meat, yoghurt, incredibly great breads & rolls.

After breakfast, Chuck went off to the conference (out a door in the dining room and into the conference hall.) I walked around ½ of the town, following the walls.

This is a pilgrimage church built on the neighboring hill.

Steps down to the moat.

The moat is now vegetable gardens.

The style of houses in this area includes the wonderful paintings on the outside.

One of the important things about this town is that it had a cage for “wanton women” outside of the town hall.

I keep finding out more about this cage. Sometimes many women were crammed into it. Saturday was a favorite day for this public humiliation because it was market day. There was a list of offenses, among which were screaming at husbands, and walking after dark. I think that I would have probably been in the cage – uppity women for sure would have been there.

We met up for the conference lunch, chicken soup, chicken cutlets, rice, salad and ice cream for dessert.

After lunch, Chuck went back to the meeting (he is chairing the afternoon conference) and Han Georg and I had a coffee at a table in front of the hotel. Just as he was deciding to take a nap instead of going to the afternoon meeting, Vonda and Vic (I don’t know their last name, as I had never met them before) came running over and invited us to go with them for a tour of some of the sites in the area. They have a car. Give us 2 minutes and we were ready.

Vonda loves to visit UNESCO sites and there were 3 nearby in close proximity. When we got in the car (Hans G and I in the back) Vic asked if either of us could navigate. It seems that Vonda isn’t very good. Hans replied that he usually drove so wasn’t sure about the navigating. Since I am the navigator for all of our trips, I said that I could do it. First Vonda had to explain where she wanted to go. She couldn’t find it on the map – but was sure it was there somewhere. Yes, it was and I found it.

Vonda loves the fact that Slovakia is so “unspoiled” without a lot of tourists. One side effect of this is that the signs aren’t very good. Half the time, I was directing by the seat of my pants. We stopped to take a picture of the castle from a distance and discovered that we were directly in front of the town and church that she also wanted to see. (They thought that I was a bloody genius!! I didn’t correct their impression.)

The town consisted on the clock tower and one street. At the top of the street was the church.


We bought tickets so that we could have the tour inside. The guide unlocked the church and gave us a booklet in English for us to read while she gave the tour in Slovakian. We could wander at will and this was really good. Unfortunately, just as we were about to leave, she came over to give us some tour in English, so we had to look at everything again. It turned out that we couldn’t have left anyway, because she had to unlock the door to let us all out. (I wondered why the others were sitting on the pews waiting.)

Finding the castle was quite easy – it was the highest thing around and visible for miles.

We drove as close as we could and then hiked up the hill. Here I am with Vonda and Vic:


We had a grand time exploring the castle, but had to get back by 5:30. There was a tour of the cathedral in Levoca and then a welcome reception.

In this town, there was a master carver named Master Pavel of Levoca. He carved an altar which is 88 meters high. He also seems to have carved everything in the town.

The reception was in the old town hall.

They had a whole roasted pig:

This is something that I had read about a lot, but had never tasted. I expected the skin to be crispy and tasty, instead it was hard and bland, but the meat was very good. They also had a lot of Slovakian wines to taste.

We all went home to bed in a happy mood.

Chuck is suffering from jet lag. He wakes up at 3am and turns on the computer, so I am awakened by the windows welcome chime. Why did I ever teach him how to use my computer?