The Friday after meeting the ambassador (end of last post,) Gary and I got on a train to visit Oravsky Hrad. This is the castle I enjoyed back in November when Gary was in Brno, in the Czech Republic.
We rode to Kral’ovany. There we boarded a small, “doodlebug” train. The doodlebug term is ours. It is like the one in the photo, except it only had two cars. This went up the little valley in which is Oravsky Hrad. These little trains travel all over this country and are the reason a person is able to get to so many places by train. The train was full most of the ride. It was a beautiful ride, following the river at times.
When we arrived in Oravsky Podzámok, the first view of the castle gave us a clear understanding of the fact that this castle was never conquered or destroyed by outside armed forces.
When we bought our tickets, it was a steep walk up to the castle gate.
Inside the walls, you get an idea of how high this castle is. When I took the picture that is below, I was two levels (or stories) below the first set of windows that you see. Counting those two levels, I count at least twelve levels up to the highest. The higher four levels were closed. Two will be opened later in the year. And the very highest levels are never open to the public because of “static,” which I understood was probably the danger of lightning.
We took so many pictures that I cannot even begin to show you. However, I like this picture because you can see the size of the walls and windows, as well as the swords they used. The sword on the far right weighs 7.5 kilograms (about 15 pounds.)
The shield shown is ten kilograms or about 22.5 pounds.
This was a castle complete with a picturesque tower and chairs that looked like they were made for the Knights of the Round Table.
Have to relate an incident of God specifically providing for a need:
Jeannine began the day with a meeting with a first grade teacher about what to teach the following Monday. The subject matter is animals from the forests or in the wild. What does Jeannine know about the animals that live in the wild in Slovakia? I thought about visiting the nature museum in Martin, across from the post office, but that is closed for “re-construction.”
Well, one of the places we visited in the castle was a museum. And in the museum were examples of different animals living in Slovakia, such as the roe and stork, pictured below.
GOD IS SO GOOD!
In the tour, the stairs were many and the views spectacular.
In the background, behind the flag, is the highway, filled with trucks, in stop and go traffic. This leads us to the Jenks’ Adventure for this trip. In the morning when we approached Oravsky Podzámok, we had seen that the highway was bumper-to-bumper with large vehicles. They appeared to be stopped.
Six hours later, when we are riding a bus to Kral’ovany, we find ourselves on narrow roads, riding through small villages. At first this was not surprising, because that’s where the buses travel. However, we began notice the heavy traffic on these narrow roads. This is not normal.
Apparently, road-work or a very bad accident has moved most of the traffic, (except the large trucks) off of the highway. There was much stopping and waiting our turn on the narrow road. This led to us getting to Kral’ovany an hour and a half late. We not only missed the train we had expected to take, but we had missed the last bus to Martin.
So we waited almost two hours for the next train to Martin. Kral’ovany is a very small town, with homes of people who live there and the train station. Nothing to do. So we ate our sandwiches, Jeannine knitted and Gary toured Kral’ovany.
We did get home about 7:20, but without enough energy to make it to the Bible study.
In telling of our Adventure, I skipped over our wonderful mid-day meal that we had in a little restaurant at the beginning of the walk up to the castle. Gary had pork with gravy and dumplings. Jeannine had pastries filled with sheep cheese. These were served on traditional Slovak dishes.
Speaking of Slovak dinners, Saturday, Janka, a Slovak teacher of English who lives in the Gymnasium, invited us to dinner in her flat. She, her visiting sister and Emily had been cooking all day. It was delicious.
Sunday after church, we hosted a potluck dinner for our Bible study. We had it in the Gymnasium café. Two Scandinavians, four Slovaks and the five Americans were there. We made the taco soup, Brenda made the cornbread, and others brought their “pots.” It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
That was all in one weekend.
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