Fahrradbrücke der Freiheit

Today we walked to Austria on a bike bridge across the Morava River. It was a lovely five mile trek from the bus stop to Schloss Hof, a baroque castle where we had lunch of schnitzel, fries and radler under umbrellas on the patio. I figured I earned the calories, walking on the warm day.

This picture is taken from Austria looking to Slovakia. Anyone know which Saint the picture portrays?

Getting in an evening walk

I'm walking a lot getting around the city, but I'm also trying to set aside times to just walk. My blood sugars have been good.

Riding the bus

Today I rode in one of the seats facing backward. I had a good view of the double-length bus and three of its doors. I noticed the woman, waiting as we pulled up. She was carrying boughs of flowering shrubs, not as a prepared bouquet, but stems up, as if she had just cut them on the way to the bus stop. She got right on and sat next to the older woman, immediately sharing the scent of her offering. They chatted easily. Then I noticed the older woman has a smaller bunch of red flowers. I pulled out my phone and moved to a seat closer. Using the international language of a smile, I indicated that I wanted to take a picture of the flowers. They smiled and agreed. I then asked a question even though I knew the answer.

"Sisters?" 

"No, my mother!"

I smiled again and acknowledged the relationship, wishing the older woman, "Happy Mother's Day!"

As we got off, my husband asked "Wasn't Mother's Day weeks ago?" I said that they could put it on an ignorant foreigner. 

There is an epilogue. The women were on our bus returning several hours later. I didn't get close enough to acknowledge them. They no longer carried their bouquets. I wondered if they had been to church or had visited someone.

Hot stuff

An aging American couple are sitting over an early lunch in an Irish pub in Bratislava. They are listening to the piped-in disco music. Sounds like the build-up to a punchline worthy of only a groan,

The slow way home

Yesterday, I went to the store late morning. As the bus approached the transfer point on the way home, I saw the back end of the "28", the bus back to Devin, pulling away. Oh well, there is always another. When I got to the stop to look at the schedule, there as a gap in times. It must be the lunch break. I would have to wait almost an hour. So I decided to walk back on the bike path. It wasn't that far, a couple of kilometers. It is a lovely route, between the road and the river. It seemed well used. I saw several cyclists and pedestrians, as well as fisherman. There were campsites on the river bank. Trails are well marked in Europe. The slower modes of transportation allow signs with more detail. I was intrigued with the marking, "Iron Curtain Trail". When I got home, I looked it up. There is a bike trail that runs the entire length along the former border between East and West.

Barbed wire

We walked along the riverside of the castle yesterday. There was a sculpture in the shape of a heart.

Cottonwood

It is the season of blowing cottonwood seeds. After one night in our apartment over a garage, I know that I will be spending time sweeping up dust bunnies of seed fluff. We love opening the windows without screens.

It makes sense that there are lots of cottonwood trees, or specifically here, black poplars. They thrive where they can have damp roots. We are staying in a town where the Morava flows into the Danube. Below the bluffs, there is plenty of wetland, plenty of cottonwood. 

I am thinking about this place. Across either the Danube or Moravia is Austria. In her information book, my Airbnb host talks about the medieval castle ruins on the cliff over looking the confluence. "Prior to 1989, the Iron Curtain between the Eastern Bloc and the West ran just in front of the castle. Although the castle was open to the public, the area surrounding it constituted a restricted military zone, and was heavily fortified with watchtowers and barbed wire. After the Velvet Revolution the area was demilitarized." 

I'm sure they could not stop the cottonwood seed fluff from blowing from one side to another. 

I offer the view of the sleepy neighborhood from the bathroom window. 

Kefir

In recent years, I have developed a taste for buttermilk. It started when I began keeping a sour dough starter and found a recipe for buttermilk waffles. Soon I began drinking it straight. Last year in Turkey, I found a drink there called kefir which tasted similar to the buttermilk I knew. I was surprised to find It in a grocery in Slovakia without any sophisticated labeling. It must be produced locally. So I did some reading, I.e. looked it up in Wikipedia, and found that there is evidence of fermented milk products going back ten thousand years as a way of allowing the preservation of milk before refrigeration. In particular, kefir is popular throughout Eastern and Northern Europe, Russia and Central Asia. Like buttermilk, the lactose is converted to lactic acid, but it also utilizes yeast to encourage fermentation. How much depends on the time allowed. Left longer, and using horse milk, you get the  "mare's milk" liquor that my husband sampled in Kyrgyzstan. 

The joys of traveling in May

We traveled to Norway in May, 2000, when we learned that graduating seniors wear bright colored jumpsuits/work overalls and have the run of public squares during the last month of their schooling. 

Here in Kosice, classes of students took over the public spaces with noisemakers, passing a hat to fund the party, I suppose. Merchants displayed class picture composites as sponsors. Most of these say something about 2022 which I couldn't quite make out until I saw, in English, "See you in 2022!", their five year reunion. 

Bezplatne

We went to buy train tickets for our day trip up to the mountains. This time the clerk took the time to inquire about our ages. With a passport picture and a little time, my husband came away with a Senior pass that will allow him to ride the Slovak trains for "Bezplatne"/"Free". In two weeks, I will be able to ride "Blezplante", too.

Quality for centuries

We took the train to Streda nad Bodrogom and walked over the river Bodrog into Viničky. The winery wasn't open so we continued on to a roadhouse to have lunch of soup and salad with a 500 ml bottle of local dry white wine, a Furmint. Then we ordered a glass of the wine that has been made in this area for centuries. It is not just any wine but a wine of kings, a wine of history, a wine extolled in literature. 

If the Furmint grapes are left on the vine, instead of bursting, they grow a second skin allowing "the noble rot" to convert the high sugar fruit into brown raisins which produce a sublime sweet white wine. 

It is named after this region which spans part of Hungary and Slovakia, Tokaj or Tokay.

And sublime it was. 

The winery was open on our way back to the train station. We will be taking a bottle home to age in our cellar.

Radničné námestie

Kosice's city center is a long and narrow strip of park footed at one end by the gothic cathedral, St. Elizabeth's and the State Theatre, an Art Nouveau masterpiece. It is a wonderful place to walk or sit in a cafe to people-watch. On these warm, sunny days it seems to be a favorite for enjoying an ice cream cone. 

The first several times we walked through it, I was frequently looking down, mindful of the pavers underfoot. There are tracks that run the length. "Do I have to watch so that I don't walk into the path of a streetcar?" No, at one end, parking spaces are marked, covering the tracks.

There is a small trolley, with rubber wheels pulling an open wagon.

My husband and I noted as it passed that our son, a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan when younger, would have loved the ride.

Not forgotten

In less than a month in early summer 1944, the entire Jewish population of Kosice was wiped out. As a railroad hub of eastern Slovakia, Kosice sent out 137 transports of 401,439 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It began on May 14th, seventy-three years and one day before I arrived in Kosice.

Feathers in Kosice

A study in textures in the light through our transom.