Slovakia Day 2 (lost count of what day along time ago)

Hello blog readers!

It has been awhile. I was in Valtice-Breclav, the wine region of the Czech Republic (or the "whine" region, as the third week hit us pretty hard. We were all exhausted). Since I was too tired (and a little sick with a cold, but i got over it) I didn't get a chance to write a daily entry. I know, i know. I'm sorry. But here are some highlights from the last week:

* walking through Valtice and listing to the local community news blared communist style over loud speakers

* trying duck liver for the first and last time

* visiting three countries (Austira, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) all in one day.

* planting a tree, which I named "Lexie the Magnificant" at the Tri Gracie forest, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Yes, that's right- the nations of the world will be caring for my tree.

* biking 32 kilometers all over the Valtice country side. Not the smartest move I ever made, and I'm still smarting from that bicycle seat but the country side is beautiful. Think of northern italy. It's very very similar.

* seeing a million wine cellars. Trust me when I tell you, you've seen one, you've seen them all.

* staying in a castle where our Host, his girlfriend, and their 11 year old son whom everyone calls "The Baron" because he is a baron.

Ok so now we have moved on to Slovakia. Since crossing the border into Slovakia, we have learned a few things:
#1, Czech is no where near as close to Slovak as everyone tells you. You can try the very few Czech words you know, and you have a 50/50 change of it actually working. Most of the time they just make a confused face at my attempts. At least they are not laughing!

#2 the Slovak people are much more religious than the Czech people. Here many more people attend church (as opposed to the large amount of atheism/agnositicsm prevalent in the CR)

#3 The United States of America is a baby compared to the rest of the world. We were at a recently unearthed archeological dig in Nitra, and the official at the site said "15th, 16th century? Not interested. But this, this is 9th century. That's good stuff!" Uh...so our country wasn't even around in the 15th and 16th century. Hmmmm. Today I got to see a rare book from the 18th century, and I realized, this book is as old as my country! But I digress...

So far we are really enjoying Bratislava. Today was a vocational day for all of us. I got to tour some library sites with a local library director. He first took me to a local library. I started looking at their classification system, which he explained was International Classification Numbers, and it was eerily similar to Dewey. Hmmm....a possibly copycat? After the local library which was ho-hum, they took me to a special Children's library. I was in Library Heaven!!! I got to meet the head children's librarian, Ludmila, and she showed me some of their programs and projects. For instance, they just had a program about monkeys, and the children had made monkey faces to place on the wall. Next to this, there was a posterboard where visitors could draw a picture of a monkey. I most definitely added a monkey!

After a while I started commenting on books, such as "Oh! Look at that one, it's about a funny yarn ball." She ripped it off the shelf and gave it to me. Like, to have permanently. I'm all "Ummmm, this is really nice and all, but don't you need to discard this???" Apparently not. So she kept handing me books from their collection. I felt really bad taking them because their collection was very small and not in that good of shape. But the host said I would be rude not to. We kept on, and we came to a fairy tale poster featuring a witch and a princess. I commented that it was "Yegi Baba" and she got excited and ripped it off the wall to give to me. Soon I just shut my mouth and wouldn't comment anymore. She tried to get me to take 3 hardback beautiful editions of Slovak fairytales, but I told her they wouldn't fit in my luggage. Other than that, It was a very wonderful experience.


After that, he took me to a special library for teachers and education students. At first, once again i thought "Ho-hum". But we started walking down these corridors, until we got to a door with bars across it. I'm thinking "Oh gosh, this is where they lock the book stealers". They open in and don't worry, it's only the WORLD's LARGEST COLLECTION of RARE BOOKS. Yup, hundreds and hundreds of books from the 15th, 16th, 17th and on centuries. Mostly in Czech, German, Latin, and Russian. They're picking these rare books up and throwing them around and I'm all like "ACK! Put some gloves on or something! Where is the climate control??? Where are the special boxes???? DO YOU PEOPLE KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE?!?!?!" It totally blew my mind. I know at BYU, the special collections archive keeps rare books and they have not even a tenth of what was in this collection. And they treat their books very seriuosly. Not here! One of the slovak librarians opened a book and put it down spine up. I almost passed out.

My personal favorite editions where the Orbis Pictus books, (Picture Dictionaries) from the 16th century in Latin, Czech, German, and Slovak. Very cool. There were also some cool older books bound in music paper. Just the randomest coolest little collection.

Another favorite library highlight from today was to see an automatic card catalog. It was a giant wall sized box of card trays. The librarian punched in a number and correct tray would pop out. A front runner of the OPAC i guess? ;)

All in all, a very good day. Tonight we are going to see an opera at the Slovak National Theater. So I need to go get gussied up.

Love to all,

Lexie