Spring is my favourite season in the area of Slovakia I live in, in the west. After a grey winter, nothing sparks hope like new growth and warming temperatures. In the Malé Karpaty, spring comes on in full force. Of course, spring can lie too – this year, after a few weeks of warmth, winter returned for another few weeks. Click to continue reading
Spring is my favourite season in western Slovakia. The sun starts showing itself again, new signs of plant life begin to appear. Bear garlic, the European version of ramps, carpets the forest. And the trees burst into bloom.
March was a month of chicken pox here, and we limped into Easter. On Palm Sunday, instead of palms we use branches of pussy willows at the church.
Easter Sunday lunch is, of course, rezne (schnitzel) – deep fried breaded cutlets. My oldest daughter loves to cook, here she helps her dad. Hammered pork (sometimes chicken) is dipped first in finely ground flour, then beaten eggs, and then breadcrumbs before being deep fried.
As any reader of my blog will know, I’m a big fan of keeping traditions alive, whether a village, song and dance, or lighting candles in the night. So many people, however, seem to take these traditions for granted or consider them as unimportant.
I was taking pictures in the old shed behind my inlaws’, grinning that they would not understand my fascination. A shed of old junk, to them.
We had two weeks of holiday in August and the first week was spent at the end of the Vysoke Tatry, the highest mountain range in Slovakia. I’ve got a number of posts coming up about different places we saw coming soon (so sign up for the newsletter, if you haven’t already), this is random bits of what we saw on our journey.
There are ruined castles all over Slovakia, tucked up on the hills. I find the ruined castles more romantic, in a way, that preserved castles. And so many times I wonder at how much work it must have taken to build these huge buildings, high on hills with not-modern technology and often in awkward places. Click to continue reading
I started a monthly series where I share photos from the month that didn’t garner their own post. June was the first month, here is the second.
I’m starting a new series with photos from the month that didn’t warrant a whole post but that I wanted to share anyway. I’ve shared some on Instagram but my new phone requires more work to put up a big camera photo, and therefore I get them up less.
This month I actually have photos since the end of April, so there are some spring ones in there as well.
Sunrise on the former monastery in Gaming, Austria.
Despite looking like lilacs, these lilac coloured flowers were growing singly in my sister in law’s lawn. I have no idea what they are, but I saved them from the lawnmower.
