Wooden Churches and Squalor

As a friend from India says "You want squalor? We got squalor!". And I got to see a bit of Slovak squalor today. But the point of today's ride (besides getting in a good ride) was to go out to Brežany to see the wooden church. There are a lot of these churches in far eastern Slovakia, but Brežany has the only one in the Prešov district. It was a pleasant but cool day today, and it took me about 45 minutes to ride the 10 miles out of town to the church. Along the way I went through Rokycany, where most of the houses looked pretty decent, but there was one row of decrepit and decaying houses along the bottom of a narrow valley at the edge of town. I didn't stop to inquire, but it looked like all the residents of this part of town were Roma (also known as Gypsies). I thought of taking a picture, but thought better of it - some of our Slovak friends are going to take us to a Roma village where they know the mayor, which should be more of a controlled visit.

Anyway, 3 km up a side road I found the church. I was the only tourist around, and the church was locked, but the sun had just come out and I spent 20 minutes wandering around taking pictures. The church dates back to 1726, which is a bit older than anything we have in the Boulder area. Wooden churches are usually 'Greek Catholic', which is the particular version of Catholocism followed by the Ruthenian minority here. Andy Warhol is probably the most famous Ruthenian, and there's a Warhol museum in Medzilaborce - we'll check it out some weekend.





There was a strange device outside the church that looked like a crank-powered noise maker. It had a large sounding box and 3 hammers on spring steel that were actuated by a set of spikes when you turned the crank. I was really tempted to see what happened when I turned the crank, but from the strength of the steel springs, I was afraid that it make enough noise to summon the entire village. Visions of a crowd of Slovak peasants armed with pitchforks surrounding a lone orange-lycra-clad cyclist convinced me to leave it alone. There were also a couple of tempting bell ropes coming down from the steeple, but I left those alone too.



After visiting the church, I went a few miles on up the road past Zipov. The road climbs fairly steeply for a while before descending to Margecany, a popular destination for cyclists. Margecany will have to wait for another day. Traffic on these roads amounts to a car or truck every couple of minutes, and everyone seems to give cyclists plenty of room. I haven't run into the Slovak version of a redneck in a pickup yet.