A Christmas recap
2 January, 2006. 6:25 pm. Trnava, Slovakia.Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Holiday season. It hasn't stopped raining in southern Slovakia yet in 2006! This after one of the biggest snow storms the country has seen in years on 30 December (there was a forty car pile up on the highway outside of Trnava, with four fatalities). Everything, and I mean everything, is covered in slush and snow. I'll be amazed if I can get home tonight without wet feet!
I had three christmases in Slovakia: two with Miro and family, and one with Janka and her family. Christmas is celebrated here in the evening on the 24th, and the traditional meal is carp with either fish or cabbage soup. I had two meals with carp, and the third was a turkey in my honour! Carp is a very fishy fish, for those of you who haven't tried it. It is fried, but there are some rather large bones to watch out for. And to think that we throw these fish back in the water in Canada! Before this trip I didn't like cabbage soup, but after about half a dozen feedings, it turns out that I love it!
The holiday was a short, but busy one. In addition to visiting Miro and Janka a few time, I went to Piestany to visit Kristina and Sylvia, and to Jalka to spend the New Year with Lubos and his girlfriend Marta (who is Slovak, but works in Dublin). Jalka is a small town between Bratislava and Senec. The evening was quiet, until midnight when suddenly almost every house in the town released fireworks! I expected this in Bratislava, but in Jalka it was a big surprise!!
Now I am scheduled to return to teaching tomorrow. But then Friday is a holiday, so it will be a short week!!
The attached picture is my second Christmas with Miro's family. More pictures to follow...
posted by BFRE at 6:12 p.m.
1 Comments:
All the snow and rain you're talking about reminds me of when I was little.
Specifically, Dad always told us to buy the rubber boots that were made in Czechoslovakia (hey, this was the 80s!). These were, of course, the big black ones that I hated at the time because I thought they were ugly, not like the nice pink and purple ones with the smily face bottoms everyone else had. But they lasted. Dad never knew why the Czechs (and Slovaks, by definition) knew how to make boots but they were way better than anything made in Canada or China.
Hope you can find a pair of rubbers to slip over your shoes for the rest of winter and spring. Unless you already have some and they just don't work? Oh, I hope the production quality hasn't decreased that much since the Cold War.
Thanks for sharing about Christmas and New Years - always an interesting read!
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