Gelnica ~ Göllnitz ~ Gölnicbánya, SK

coming closer to my ancestors' place and visiting next mining city in the area, Gelnica (Göllnitz) in the region spis (zips) in eastern slovakia ~ gold, silver, copper, iron ore, lead, quicksilver, ...

a praying miner in front of the mining museum

a hammer instead of a cross on the top of the local church? yes, the people here used to believe in mining, if you asked me 😄

praying miner

1230 came the germans to this part of eastern slovakia because of an invitation by hungarian king after the mongols (wrongly named tatars?) killed huge parts of the slavic polulation here

source: the wikipedia page about freiberg, erzgebirge, saxony, DE 

part of the city square + the surrounding hills

do you want to read what wikipedia has to say? or see few more pictures?

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einsiedel

home sweet home? not really mine, but of my parents and thus an area i like soooo much even if zips (spis) is since centuries so poor ...the former mines (copper, iron ore, silver, gold, quicksilver) are closed, the forests + fields don't provide enough outcome for the people here ... so sad, my dear einsiedel an der göllnitz aka mnisek nad hnilcom

hot, my youngest daughter knows :-) ... and 2 years ago we visited also an old disused shoemaker's house with even much older oven + shoemaker's tools (einsiedel pictures in the middle part of that thinny album)

spitzenberg, there used to be a golden cross on top before ...

all saints? yep, let's visit the cemetery + evangelic church (waldfriedhof einsiedel)

an orb? a ghost? both?

R.I.P dear grandparents

catholic church

fire depertment house

spitzenberg

former house of my father's family

former house of my mother's family, the 2nd last one at the end of the village

adios sweet göllnitz valley

the other side of the mountain ~ the south ~ the conifers are gone, leaf trees came :-)

castle krasna horka after the fire (approximately 1 year ago, before fire here)

enjoy more pictures here and let's go back to the valley centre göllnitz and then back my birth city of kosice, the european city of culture 2013

ps: i think i have made some better quality pictures last time. i hope i will have some time to find them in my computer and upload few of them instead the current ones ... but you know, to keep my memories alive also bad quality pictures are good enough :-)

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kosice ~ kaschau ~ kassa ~ koszyce ~ cassovia

the gate into the city? no, it is the gate to its major church, the dome of holy elisabeth:

the dome of the sacred elisabeth / st.-elisabeth-dom / dom sv. alzbety

well, the european city of culture 2013, my home city kosice (kaschau, kassa, koszyce, cassovia) used the opportunity to restore few of its areas and turned disused objects like swimminng pool, military barracks, heat exchangers etc into cultural and urban space.

source: wikipedia

enjoy few pictures ...

the dome of the sacred elisabeth / st.-elisabeth-dom / dom sv. alzbety ... old
 

... old

... new #findthemistake

old in the middle, new on the right side, #findthemistake again

very, very old ~ archaeological find below the ground in the city centre

urban's bell tower (urbanova veza)

 

justitia, so blind :-)

 

more pictures in my google album

my last blog post about kosice? here

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silver city ~ UNESCO heritage Schemnitz (Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia)

UNESCO heritage silver city Schemnitz aka Selmecbánya aka Şelmec Ban'a aka Banská Štiavnica.

~~~

after visiting the centre of the central slovakian region, the gold + silver city neusohl aka besztercebánya aka neosolium aka Banská Bystrica few years ago and the gold city kremnitz aka Körmöcbánya aka Kremnica in 2007 and 2015 (pictures), this time we managed to spent few hours in the silver city Banská Štiavnica. well, enjoy few pictures first ... and read my blahblah if any later on. or better go to wikipedia to read more about the celts, germans, hungarians and slovaks and of course about the hills + metals which all together shaped this beautiful region, will you? wiki banska stiavnica anyway, i will ask you 3 simple questions 

1. when and where was gunpowder used for the first time in the world in a mine?
2. when and where was the first technical university in the world established?
3. how many inhabitants have had banska stiavnica in 1782 as the 3rd biggest city in the kingdom of hungary (today approximately 10,000)?

do not cheat, my dears, just put your answers as comments to this blog post below :-)

is this the hell? no, just a silver mine 😄

schemnitz (banska stiavnica) as published in the 'karpatenblatt',

the magazine for germans in slovakia, in 2024

calvary

 
main square looking downhill

main square looking uphill

zoom, zoom :-)

 

 
emblem

the old castle

the new castle

 

heaven

just to show you the difference, a gold mine looks like that:

kremnitz, 2007

as always, you can find more blog pictures in my g+ album

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