Tanks and Wooden Churches on Good Friday

Today's tour covered two very different types of sights: wooden churches from the Ruthenian culture and World War II battlefields. The area around Svidnik is famous for its 'Greek-Catholic' (Ruthenian) wooden churches. The Ruthenian minority are spread across eastern Slovakia and western Ukraine, and there's a lot of Ukrainian influence in architecture and language. This area was also the scene of some major fighting in the fall of 1944 as the Soviets forced their way into German-occupied Slovakia. Our first stop (after finding espresso in Svidnik) was the monument showing a Soviet tank crushing a German tank. This monument marks the beginning of the Udolie Smrti, the Valley of Death, so-called because more than 85000 Red Army soldiers died here in late 1944.




Farther up the valley, there are tanks (only Soviet) scattered across the hillsides.


For a change of pace, we stopped in at Dobroslava to see the wooden church (which was locked), and then headed back out to the main road.




Dobroslava is a long way from anywhere:


We visited a couple more churches, and then headed to Prikra, apparently the smallest village in Slovakia (population 7 in 2001, although it looked bigger than that). At the local church we could hear a single voice chanting inside, so we got up the nerve to open the door. There was one elderly woman kneeling on the floor between the pews, reading from a small booklet in Slovak or Ruthenian. She didn't glare at us, so we sat down for a few minutes while she continued to read.

Before we left, she indicated a bowl where we were to leave a small donation (which we did).

Next, we headed over the Dukla Pass (502m) and into Poland for about 1km, just because it was there. There's a big observation tower at the pass, but it's not open until April, so we just looked at the tanks, fighter planes and artillery pieces that are scattered over the landscape. On the way back to Svidnik, we stopped at a couple of wooden churches in Nizky Komarnik and Ladomirova. Emboldened by our experience in Prikra, we opened the door and went in. At N.K., there were about a dozen people chanting the rosary(?) in some Slavic language (Slovak? Old Church Slavonic?) and we sat for about 10 minutes and listened. (Charles also snuck in a movie.) They also had a machine that goes 'thunk', but it didn't seem right to try it out during services.

At Ladomirova, no service was going on, but there were three ladies inside who were eager to show us around. They even led us behind the screen and around the altar. Cindi bought an icon (made in Russia) and we left a few more crowns as a donation.

Back in Svidnik we stopped for pizza and beer, and then drove back to Presov for a fruitless search for cake and coffee. Everything was closed up for the Easter holiday, so we went back to the apartment for ice cream and tea.