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SUMMARY OF THE
WINTER ISSUE
Volume 11, No. 4, WINTER
2003
Slovak
Heritage Live
A quarterly newsletter
published by Vladimir Linder
Winter issue was published in
December 2003 and it was mailed to 1200 recipients world wide.
Nativity scene from the
Church of St. Egidius
in Bardejov
FROM THE EDITOR
I
have returned few weeks ago from a month long stay in Slovakia, that is
why the newsletter is a bit late. You can read about my trip on the
following pages.
Christmas
season has started and soon there will be a time for joy and a time for
giving and I do hope that you will remember us at this time with kind
donations for the newsletter. Many thanks in advance. With the next issue
will start out 12th year of publishing Slovak Heritage Live. Please
remember that NO GIFT IS TOO SMALL OR TOO
GENEROUS. I wish all of you and
your families’ joyous Christmas season.
Vinšujem
Vám v tento velký sviatok, aby na vašom stole bolo vždy všetkého
dostatok, chleba peceň, syra hruda, na poli bohatá úroda, v maštali
mocný statok, v sýpke obylia dosti, aby ste všetci žili v svorosti.
Toto vinšujeme Vám gazda i Vám gazdinná, vašim dietkam i celej rodine.
Vysliš
Pane Bože.
I
would like to extend my invitation one more time to anyone wishing to
write his or her stories for the newsletter. You
can email it or snail mail it including pictures, which will be returned
after scanning. It you are mailing your story it should be typewritten...
CHRISTMAS
RECIPES REMEMBERED
We
have received many requests to publish the Christmas favorite recipes
again, so here they are:
BOBÁLKY
This
is a traditional Slovak Christmas Eve dish.
You
will need: 2 pounds of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, one tablespoon of salt,
vanilla, 1/2 cup of butter or margarine, one table spoon of oil, 2 eggs,
4-5 tablespoons of dry yeast. Mix all dry ingredients, add butter or
margarine, oil, eggs, mix well together, and let rise. Roll out the dough
to about a thickness of an inch, cut into stripes, roll the stripes into
sticks of about 1/2 to 3/4 inch. Cut into one-inch pieces and place on a
well-greased baking sheet. Bake until golden...
KAPUSTNICA
CHRISTMAS
SAUERKRAUT SOUP
Take
a pound or more of smoked pork, ham or smoked pork hooks and cook it. Take
the meat out, if you want, separate the fat, and cut up the rest. Add a
pound of pork meat, one large diced onion, diced garlic, caraway seed,
marjoram, dried mushrooms, one small can of tomato paste, few dried plums,
and a jar of sauerkraut. You cook it for few hours and add couple of
Hungarian farmer sausages...
BISKUPSKÝ
CHLEBÍČEK
BISHOP’S BREAD
This
is my Christmas favorite.
You
will need: 1/4 pound of butter, 1/2 cup of icing sugar, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup of
all purpose flour, 2 ounces of chocolate chips, 2 ounces of almonds, 2
ounces of chopped figs, 1 ounce of raisins, 2 ounces of candied chopped
fruit, one tablespoon of baking powder.
Mix together butter, half of the sugar and yolks. Beat up a snow from the
egg whites, add the other half of the sugar and finish the snow...
HRIATÔ
HOT BRANDY
From ČAKLOV-ZEMPLÍN County
You
fry a little butter in the pot, add little of granulated sugar, and cook
it until it turns to caramel. Add little water, bring the mixture to a
boil add a bit of ground coffee and pour in alcohol or vodka or slivovica-plum
brandy-to taste. Drink Hot.
HRIATÔ
HOT BRANDY
FROM TELGART UPPER HRON
You
warm-up honey in the pot. When the honey is really warm, you add geese
lard or butter. At the end you add clear alcohol or vodka. You can
substitute sugar for the honey from which the Hriatô will get golden
color. According to older people Hriatô is a good medicine against cough
or common cold. Hriatô is often drunk at weddings, christenings, and
Christmas Eve. Drink hot.
For
complete recipes visit our: RECIPE
CORNER
MY
FALL 2003 TRIP TO
SLOVAKIA
I left Canada October 20 on
Lufthansa Airlines to Frankfurt, where I arrived after flawless flight the
next day and continued to Vienna where my long time friend and our
correspondent MIROSLAVA DULOVÁ met me. Before my departure I emailed her
to come to pick me up at the Swechat airport around 3:00 PM. This of
course I forgot by the time I arrived in Vienna. The flight was right on
time. Vienna Airport is relatively very small on the world scale of
international airports and it takes almost no time to get to the arrival
hall and to claim your luggage. So I was out by 2:30 PM. There was nobody
there to pick me up. I went back and forth between the parking lot and the
arrival hall for half an hour, almost having tears in my eyes as I was
tired and didn’t feel to wait for the bus to Bratislava. My luggage
consisted of two huge suitcases, one camera bag, one carry on suitcase for
my photo equipment and a huge box containing a set of golf clubs. All of
this was piled up on the luggage cart, that was really difficult to
maneuver, and for which by the way you must pay 1 or 2 Euro. This is a
problem for any first time North American traveler except for the people
from countries where the Euro is their currency. You can change some money
at the exchange boot right in the arrival hall but you will also pay a
hefty service charge for it. You will get the money back after returning
your cart to its proper location. Mira arrived right on time as per my
forgotten instructions just as I was about to buy an Austrian phone card
and call her on her cell phone. Going through both borders was smooth as
usual and we went right away to pick up my car from my friends at
ADVANTAGE CAR RENTAL. Juraj Petro was waiting for me at the office. This
time I got the same Škoda Felicia again, which I rented on previous
occasions. I seem to have luck for the same car...
A
CHRISTMAS TO FORGET
By: Marcel York
Marcel
York is a West Vancouver resident, who was born and raised in
Czechoslovakia. Marcel is a personal friend of mine. Last Christmas we
discussed the Christmases of our past and he recalled his Christmases at
home during his childhood years and for him indeed a time to forget-until
he came to Canada.
My
earliest memory of a different kind of Christmas starts in 1943 in Trenčín,
a city of about 28,000 people located on the river Váh in the White
Carpathian Mountains in Slovakia.
It was then occupied by the Germans who had formed three large garrisons
and an air base.
Day and night the city streets were full of trucks, troops and tanks,
their movement making a constant rumbling sound. Uniformed people were
everywhere.
The Germans were running all the local industries and since the work
force contained few local people (since most men were away, fighting with
the partisans), the work was‑done by Germans and prisoners of war
from Russia, Poland and France.
In the winter of 1944, the cold weather started early and persisted with
no relief. It seems to me that all bad years bring hard, cold winters,
seemingly to add to the discomfort..
MANOR
HOUSE MOJMÍROVCE
The
baroque-classicist manor-house in Mojmírovce surrounded by a pleasant
greenness of a protected park is not only an important dominant of a
village, but also a cultural, tourist and educational center, the tourist
attraction of Nitra region.
Mojmírovce
manor house, surrounded by a beautiful park is located in the center of
the village of Mojmírovce, 15 kilometers south east of Nitra.
The
history of its existence started just after the end of Turkish wars-in the
period when refugees were returning to the villages-the original
inhabitants, but as well the newcomers.
In
this period, the village was called URMÍN, and you can hear the family
name HUŇADY for the first time. The first members were Ondrej and
Ladislav Huňady-arrived in Urmín in 1675. Little by little they
became the largest estate owners and the richest family in the village.
In 1721, Huňady built a great manor house in a baroque style (later
after the fire, the manor house was rebuilt in a classicist style). A part
of this manor house was a small botanic garden called a “green house,”
but it does not exist any more. In the following centuries, the park
belonged among the most beautiful ones of the Upper Hungary-Slovakia, with
a wide range of exotic trees, bushes, and plants.
The pride of Huňady was large stud farms where many noble Arabic,
Spanish, and Italian horse breeds were bred. Many saddle horses from this
stud farm were successful at competitions or hunts, and yoke horses at
demanding distant journeys. Exceptionally the horse Tajár became very
famous, it originated in Egypt and was a foundation stud horse for the
Hungarian warm-blooded horses. These achievements in horse breeding were
the first impulse for organization of a public horse race. The first one
was realized at Huňady manor in 1814. At that time, it was the first
horse race in Hungarian Kingdom. After 1892, they moved the competition
organization first into Bratislava later into Pest, and that was the end
of a promising tradition...
JASOVSKÁ
CAVE
UNESCO WORLD
HERITAGE SITE
Catastral
area: Jasov, District: Košice, Region: Košice
It
is situated in the Medzevská Upland at its Subscribet with the east margin of
the Jasovská Plateau in the Slovak Karst, at the west boundary of Jasov.
It is located in the National Nature Reserve Jasovské dubiny in the
territory of the Protected Landscape Area and Biospheric Reserve of the
Slovak Karst. The entrance to the cave is at the eastern foothill of
Jasovský Rock, 257 m above the sea level. It was formed in the Middle
Triassic Gutenstein dolomites, Steinalm lime stones and dolomites of the
Silický nape along tectonic faults, by the former underground waters of
Bodva River, at five developmental levels.
It reaches the length of
2,122 meters, with vertical range 55 m.
Rich sinter filling is represented
by pagoda like stalagmites, stalagnates, shields, drums, straw
stalactites, and other forms.
The lowest parts of the
cave are often flooded as a result of vertical movements of underground
water. The lowest water level of the cave lake is 7 m below the surface
flow of Bodva, the waters of which are not flowing through the cave at
present.
Bones
of cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) and cave hyaena (Crocuta spelaea) belong to
palaeontological findings discovered here. 17 species of bats have been
found in the cave with dominating Rhinolophus
ferrumequinum and Rhinolophus
hipposideros. The cave is one of the most important winter refuges of
these species in Slovakia...
SLOVAK
HISTORY
CHRONOLOGY
& LEXICON
Publisher:
SPN
This
book is in English
The book (350 pages) is divided into two sections.
The
first section, the calendar, presents Slovak history from the first
evidence about human beings on Slovak territory up to the events that took
place in 1998 with notations summarizing important historical events and
phenomena.
The second section is an encyclopedic dictionary with three hundred
alphabetically arranged entries characterizing the most important
concepts, institutions, and events. It includes genealogical tables of the
longest reigning dynasties on the Hungarian throne, a list of all rulers
and presidents of states to which the lands of Slovakia belonged (Great
Moravia, the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Slovakia).
Six historians from Bratislava prepared this chronology of Slovak history
(J. Bartl, V. Segeš, V. Čičaj, D. Škvarna-main author, R. Letz
and M. Kohútová).
It is said that the way to the knowledge of the present leads through a
knowledge of the past. Therefore, this book can be recommended to all
readers, who are interested in the Slovak history as well as to those, who
are involved in genealogical research.
We can only welcome this book trying to fill the gap because until now,
Slovak history was not sufficiently covered and to a very limited extent
in the English language.
It is not frequent to mention the translator’ s name, but an exception
in this case is allowed, thank you David P. Daniel for your excellent
translation.
Reviewed
by Miroslava Dulová
This
book is available now. Cost is US$75.00.
Please mail personal check to
Vladimir Linder
3804 Yale Street
Burnaby, BC, V5C 1P6, CANADA
OPEN
AIR MUSEUM SKANZEN IN BARDEJOV
By:
Martin Mešša
The
origins of Slovakia’s oldest exposition of folk architecture were
efforts of Eastern Slovak museum employees. The idea to build a skanzen in
this important centuries old spa was born in the 1920’s, where the
disappearing relics of the folk architecture of northeastern Slovakia
could be saved. Transfer of the church from Mikulášová in 1926-32 was
the first accomplishment in this effort. Though they could not master
enough resources to continue saving architectural relics, the idea
survived, and finally at the end of the 1950’s matured to solid
projects.
The
aim, besides the protection and preservation of folk architecture, was
also to increase the attraction of the spa for tourists; and establishing
the connection of the spa and tourism with the presentation of rescued
relics of folk architecture was an important contribution to visitors of
this exposition, which rose on the margin of the valley between 1960 and
1965. In the ensuing years other buildings were added. Among the
conservationists who took part in the preparation and realization were the
project’s authors, Imrich Puškár and Blanka Pušakárová; as well as
Šariš Museum employees A. Frický, J. Mihál, T. Weisz and A. Koval; and
a whole range of village carpenters, builders and farmers from the
villages of Frička, Bardejovská Nová Ves, Zborov, and Dlhá Lúka.
Thanks to the fact that the first exhibits were built by people
experienced in timber construction, the first open-air museum in Slovakia
grew quite quickly. The small area, and the limited possibilities of
activity in a zone for preservation of mineral
waters influence the
park-like method of presentation..
MONS. VIKTOR TRSTENSKÝ (1908-)
By:
Mons, Doc. ThDr. ICLic. František Dlugoš, PhD
The personality of monsignor Trstenský, a papal
prelate belongs to the lightest personalities in the modern history of
Church in Slovakia. He was born on March 28, in Trstená. After graduation
in his birth town he registered to study theology at Priest’s seminary
in Spiš’s Chapter. He was ordained to priesthood on June 29, 1931 in
Spiš’s cathedral, by Spiš’s residence bishop Ján Vojtaššák.
After his ordination he became chaplain in following
locations: in 1933 Levoča and in the same year he went to Oravské
Veselé, in 1932 again in Levoča, and in the same year in Rudňany,
in 1933 back to Levoča and immediately after to Stará Ľubovňa,
in 1934 for the fourth time to Levoča and from there he was named
administrator of Reľová behind Magura parish. In 1939 he was named
priest and deacon in Dolný Kubín in Orava, where he was active until his
arrest in 1949. He was arrested in 1949 and wrongfully sentenced for
supporting Salesian order sisters. He was imprisoned in several places: Žilina,
Ilava, in labour camp in Hronec, Nováky, Ilava, Trenčín Močenok-Sládečkovice.
The state court sentenced him wrongfully again on April 23, 1951 for two
years and a fine of 10.000.00 Kčs for not reporting a visit
from abroad, and loss of citizenship rights for five years. The highest
court in Prague confirmed this sentence on October 18, 1951 in full. He
was imprisoned in Leopoldov, Jáchymov, Svätoplukov and Ruzyň. After
that he spent six months in priest’s camp in Pezinok, army camp in Plzeň,
Rokycany, Zvolen and Banská Bystrica. He was freed in 1954 without
possibility to work as a priest. He spent a year at home
unemployed and then they made him a disabled pensioner. January 13,
1958 he was arrested again and sentenced wrongfully for 15 years for
visiting bishop Ján Vojtaššák in Dečín. He appealed this
decision and his sentence was reduced to 9 years. He was imprisoned in Žilina,
Ilava, Olomouc in Prague’s Pankrác and in Mirov. He was freed on May
13, 1960 during amnesty and later worked as forest laborer and a stock
keeper...
BOOK
REVIEWS
THE
END-KONIEC
Authors: Peter Kubínyi (a
reporter) and Alan Hyža (a photographer, holder of 8 Czech Press Photo
awards)
At
the end of the 90’s of the 20th century different forms of the communist
ideology controlled approximately 1.6 billion people throughout the world.
This book presents more than 100 unique pictures from such countries:
Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Cambodia, Cuba, China, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Kazakhstan, Korean People’s Republic, Libya, Mongolia, Mozambique,
Nicaragua, Rumania, Russia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam,
Yemen and Yugoslavia as well as own experience from several of the above
– mentioned countries. It is worth to mention that the prologue is also
in the English language. This book is a unique document of the period of
time which, let us hope, will never return.
BRATISLAVA
A OKOLIE
AND ITS ENVIRONS…UND UMGEBUNG
Text:
Vladimír Tomčík
Publisher: Media Svatava and Filistein Verlag 2002
The
ambitious publishing house, Media Svatava launches again a very nice book,
acting globally, in three languages: Slovak, English and German languages.
It
is a perfect marriage of old and contemporary pictures and readers will
feel as a part of the picture when opening at once one picture on two
pages consisting again of two pages each side.
The combination of wonderful pictures and text is well balanced, you will
learn not only about Bratislava but also about that what is beyond the
town gates.
This book was awarded at the international book fair in Almati (June
2003), Sankt Petersburg (August 2003) and Amsterdam (October 2003).
As usually, this innovative publishing house offers several alternatives
of this book:
Book; book +CD (compositors inspired by Bratislava: Mozart, Hummel,
Beethoven and Haydn); book in a wooden case; book leather-bound or book
leather-bound with a relief (a limited edition, only 100 pcs).
SLOVAKS-SLOVÁCI
Author:
Karol Kállay
Publisher: Media Svatava, 2001
This is a book full of people and it
began to take shape almost sixty years ago. This is a book exclusively
about people-about Slovaks. People presented in this book make up a
picture of the country and they represent culture, science, sport,
business, banking, and other sectors. The compilation of this book is a
compromise.
Reviewed
by Miroslava Dulová
For FREE sample issue of
The Slovak Heritage Live Newsletter
please send in or email your postal address to:
Vladimir
Linder
3804 Yale Street
Burnaby, BC,
Canada, V5C 1P6
Phone/Fax:
1-604-291-8065
This limited time offer is good
only in North America
GO
TO SLOVAK HERITAGE LIVE MAIN PAGE
vlinder49@shaw.ca
Copyright © Vladimir Linder 2003
3804 Yale
Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5C 1P6
The above article and photographs may not be copied, reproduced,
republished, or redistributed by any means including electronic, without
the express written permission of Vladimir
Linder. All rights
reserved.
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