dear mother, next chapter ...

dear mother, it is so easy to make you happy today and it is also so nice ... hmmm, why have you been so strict to yourself and to others all your adult life before?

 mother + son

well, my youngest brother and his wife take care of our mother in bratislava and i enjoyed to visit them and to spend a week with my mother in her native village einsiedel an der göllnitz (mnisek nad hnilcom) in eastern slovakia.

bratislva castle, bratislavsky hrad

 old views on pressburg (= bratislava)

castle krasna horka

a view to uhorna from pacansky kopec 

the childhood house of my mother looks somehow worn-out and is owned by gypsies now. well, gypsies are the biggest (and youngest) community in einsiedel today ....

there was ice cold at night - minus 10 degrees celsius

eastern slovakia is really cheap

happy sisters

a former pub / guest house between einsiedel and schmöllnitz

("pauker" if i remember its name correctly)

schmöllnitz ~ smolnik (=> link to pictures of lake uhorna, too)

kosice ~ kaschau

back to bratislava / pressburg

more pictures here.

insights + pictures from my last longer visit here.

eof

eastern slovakia

as almost every year at all hollows time, i visit the family (dead and alive) in eastern slovakia. einsiedel an der göllnitz (mnisek nad hnilcom) and kaschau (kosice) are the usual stops out there.

the life in the villages in eastern slovakia is much, much different than in germany ... and yes, there is always something to explore for me. this time was the most exciting experience to help to prepare the wood for the (next) winter.

enjoy few more pictures😄

our work is finished => let's drink a beer in the local pub 😇

of course it's cheap here when the most young people leave the region in the order to find jobs in bigger slovakian cities or abroad ...

carpathian mountains [part slovenske rudohorie (slovak ore mountains)]

cemetery in einsiedel ('totengarten' as the locals say)

R.I.P dear grandparents

the hymn of the (carpathian) germans in slovakia

we wish you all the best, dear mother

göllnitz - gelnica

my former home, kaschau - kosice - cassovia 

castle krasna horka

small carpatians (male karpaty) massif near smolenice, western slovakia

karpatenblatt = the monthly journal of the german minority in slovakia

btw, einsiedel is an interesting example how can the culture and demographics change over time. the village was created by german settlers in 1230. that was the time after the mongols / tatars killed that many people in eastern europe that the local kings / rulers invited germans into today's slovakia, czech republic, romania, ....
einsiedel stayed german till WWII with more than 95% of population still german. the remaining inhabitants were slovaks, hungarians, gypsies and jews. after WWII were many germans forced to leave their native region and the village was inhabited mostly by slovaks and germans. after the fall of the socialist system and missing job opportunities in the region left the most (especially young) slovaks and germans the village and today einsiedel become a mostly gypsy village .... hmmmm, i'm curious if the face of western europe will also change that significantly in my lifetime. who knows?

more pictures here

eof

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 :-)

eof