You might be wondering why I chose such a title for my post, or not. Currently, we're back in my hometown which is close to the Ukrainian border. Last weekend, we went with my mom and her dog on a daytrip to the easternmost village of Slovakia called Nova Sedlica.
We say that this is the place where foxes say good night as it's the end of the country and even buses turn around there because this is where the road ends. There is a primeval forest in this area, and the nature here is untouched which gives it a great potential for development, but there are no investments done in this region, so it's mostly enjoyed by the locals.
Maxo (the dog) doesn't like being in the car, so he was whining almost all the time while I was driving. Luckily, it only took us a little longer than one hour as I was slowly losing my patience. As soon as my mom opened the door he shot out of the car like a rocket! And we were ready to go..
Let's have a look around!
First of all, we visited Domček deduška Večerníčka. I'm not even trying to translate it as it's impossible. Večerníček is a fairy-tale character from my childhood. Every night before the news there was a short story in TV about him and his dog. He lived in a house just like this. At the beginning of the story he would lighten up the stars and at the end he would turn them off and return to his house which meant that it was time to go to bed. We wouldn't go to bed without watching Večerníček every night.
The house was renovated recently and placed in the middle of the village, so it can be visited by anyone. In the summer months you can go inside and admire the work of craftsmen who show how they make various traditional objects.
We couldn't go inside, but we got a glance of the interior through the windows...
My work is inspired by traditional ceramics like this one.
It's decorated sparsely - exactly how people lived a couple of hundred years ago...
Večerníček had a small white dog that looks just like our Maxo! He didn't wear a coat of course, but our Maxo is spoiled rotten...
This region is well known because of its traditional wooden churches. Some of them were dissembled and placed in open air museums, other churches can be still seen in villages.
The original wooden church from Nova Sedlica is one of the oldest and best preserved churches. It dates back to the 18th century, and currently it is placed in Humenne. Here, we can only see a smaller model.
We have visited the open air museum in Humenne before, so we were lucky to see the original church with its beautiful iconostas.
I was hoping that there would be a bit more snow, so that Maxo could play and then sleep for the rest of day, but instead most of the snow was gone, it was wet and dirty, and he returned home like a little mud piggie.
We continued our trip to Ulic where we wanted to see a small open air museum with models of all wooden churches from the region. We've been here before, and I really wanted to come back to see them again.
Some of the original churches are closed to public to preserve them for the future, and others you can visit. They are the masterpieces of local craftmanship, and it's difficult to believe that they are built with no nails at all. I imagine them to be some kind of Lego 😊
Let's walk around and enjoy the models!
This is the region of an ethnic community called Rusyns. They have close ties with Ukraine, their languages is close to Ukrainian, and unlike the rest of Slovakia they are orthodox and use Cyrillic alphabet.
The family of my father belongs to this community, so I can understand the language and when I was a child I always enjoyed Christmas twice as the orthodox church celebrates one week after the Catholics. It also meant more school holidays!
And naturally, I went to such wooden churches too...
Most of the churches date back to the 18th or even 17th centuries, and have stunning interiors. They don't use marble or other stones like you usually see in catholic churches, but instead they focus on paintings.
This museum shows not only all the details of the buildings exterior, but even the trees match the tiny size of the churches.
We didn't feel like going home yet, so we walked a bit to a lake above the village. It was partly frozen which Maxo considered an invitation to jump in there, but luckily we caught him right in time. I don't think that he would enjoy an icy bath like this.
We don't really have mountains around here, but there are countless hills and deep forests hiding bears and wolves. Although, in the recent years, they are not hiding that much as they started enjoying coming down to the villages looking for food. It's not unusual to meet a bear walking on the road and blocking it. They got so used to people that they don't care anymore.
It was snowing a lot in the weeks before we arrived, and it looks like we brought the warm weather with us. I really hoped that we would have some snow as this winter we didn't manage to go to the mountains yet and I miss it so much. We will have to go there as soon as we come back to Switzerland.
Maxo will never look into the lens. We lure him with food or sticks, but he always finds a way to look elsewhere. This is the best shot that I could get from him right before he got fed up and jumped back down.
When we're here we feel the difference in time even though we are in the same time zone. The sunrise and the sunset here are one hour earlier than in Switzerland, so it's getting dark really early for us. It was only 3 PM and it was slowly getting dark already.
We finished our walk and decided to drive back as there is almost no traffic in this direction and a lot of wild animals who can cross the road anytime, so driving at night can become dangerous.
Maxo was so tired that he slept all the way and spared us his whining, and I took a nap as soon as we arrived back at my mom's place.
See you next time...