[Leslie Turek's Home Page] [2. Levoca] [4. Torysky - Sunday]
Paula Kieferova had been contacted via her son, who had access to e-mail at his place of work. She had answered every inquiry promptly and completely, so my father had gained a good impression of her. We weren't sure how much of her time we would need, but we arranged for her to meet us at our penzion at 9:00 on Saturday morning, and we would take it from there.
Due to jet lag, I awoke dreadfully early, around 5 am, so hung around reading my guidebooks and practicing Slovak phrases until my Dad was ready to go to breakfast at around 7:45. Tibor came up with a note from Paula (who was coming in from Poprad, several miles to the west), saying that she would take the first bus and would we please wait if she was late.
For breakfast, we went to the
Barbakan hotel next door,
where my father had previously stayed and where he knew some of the
help.
They had a buffet setup that appeared to be for hotel guests only, so
we
ordered omelets and toast from the menu. The dining room was very
pretty,
decorated with forsythia and pussy willow for spring, and with a
sunroom
at the back with a view of the church on the hill.
Back
at the penzion, Paula showed up pretty much on time. She was an
enthusiastic
and energetic woman in her 60's, who looked like she was really looking
forward to showing us around. When she heard that I was from Boston,
she
told me that she enjoyed reading the John Jakes series of novels that
start
out during the American revolution in Boston. She felt that reading
novels
about generations of families was a great way to learn history, which I
agreed with.
We all piled into the tiny
little Opal we had rented and
drove up into the hills, filling Paula in on the family history and
what
we hoped to accomplish on the visit. She seemed really happy about the
prospect of helping us locate family and promised that she would help
us
find "many, many" relatives. When she learned that I was Slovak on my
mother's
side as well as my father's, she was thrilled and pronounced me to be
100%
Slovak with great satisfaction.
As
we drove through Torysky, she was very enthusiastic about the village,
commenting on the "many, many" old log houses, and how romantic it was
to live near a rushing mountain stream. Part way through the village we
left the paved road and crossed a bridge to get onto the dirt road
going
along the other side of the stream. The bridge gave a nice view of the
lovely cream-colored village church.
Driving up the far side of the stream, my father was able to pick out the house of his Uncle Juraj (George) and Aunt Katya, a substantial log house with a light blue painted foundation. But there was no answer when we knocked at the door. So we drove on up the road toward Dad's Aunt Anna's house.
Just before the church, where
we had to cross back over
the stream, we saw two stout old ladies in boots, babushkas, and
village
costume coming down the road carrying shopping bags. My father
exclaimed,
"There's Aunt Katya!", and pulled over to greet her. So we all piled
out
and there were hugs and introductions, with Katya kissing me twice,
once
on each cheek. (That's Katya on the left, in the bright purple
sweater.)
Katya's
lady friend greeted us with "Christos voskrese" ("Christ is risen") and
my father correctly replied "Voistinu voskrese" ("Indeed, he is
risen").
My father then got into a lively discussion of why they changed the
church
calendar and the date of Easter observance and got the explanation that
they found it easier to get holiday time off if they observed Easter on
the same date as everyone else. My father pointed out that we were
still
true to the old traditions in America. (Paula, of course, was
translating
all of this.)
We explained that we were going
to Anna's but would return
for a visit after that. Katya also told us that Anna had been sick (she
had had a stroke) and had just recently returned from a stay in the
hospital.
Anna was a small, frail woman
with bright alert eyes in
a very wrinkled face. She was lying in bed, but clearly recognized my
father
and was able to converse with us. She seemed to enjoy looking at
pictures
of our family in America that my father had brought to show her. (The
picture
below shows Anna at our second visit, when she was feeling well enough
to sit in her favorite place, near the window that gave her a view of
the
village street.)
My
father gave her some envelopes with money gifts from himself and some
other
family in America, and Paula wrote on each envelope for her who it was
from and what the Slovak equivalent in crowns would be. Anna told us
that
her pension is 4000 crowns per month (the equivalent of $100 U.S.), so
the gifts were obviously quite welcome. I told her a little about my
grandfather,
her older brother, who had gone to America before she was born, and
whom
she had met only once on his 1972 visit.
The room we were in was about 10 feet by 15 feet, with the door from the unheated entryway in the middle of the short wall, and with two twin beds with their headboards against the opposite short wall. A table between the beds held some food and a vase with pussywillows, probably brought home from church on Palm Sunday. On one side of main door there was a woodstove and a small woodpile, and on the other side a dry sink and a wooden cupboard. There was also a bench and some straight-backed chairs.
A door in the center of the
long wall led to the larger
main room of the house, which was apparently not being heated and only
used for storage. The room was brightly decorated with red-painted
doors
and woodwork, colorful patterned wallpaper, rag rugs on the floor and
lace
curtains on the windows. Religious icons and embroideries adorned the
walls.
The house had electricity but no indoor plumbing - we learned that the
drinking water came from a well, clothes were washed in the stream, and
there was an outhouse in the yard.
Soon
after we arrived, Anna's daughter Marta bounded in to check up on her
(or
maybe she heard through the village grapevine that we were there).
Marta
was a whirlwind of energy, bustling about, tidying up, attending to her
mother, and bringing out food (a plate of salami) to offer us, and
showing
off a child's village costume that she had made.
My father asked if they had any knowledge of whether there was anyone from his mother's family left in the village. Unlike my grandfather, my grandmother, Mary Tabak, had gone to the U.S. with her entire family, including mother and father and brothers and sisters, so any family left would be more distant. The answer was that there was a Tabak in the village, but they didn't think he was closely connected to my grandmother. There was also discussion of the Klotz family (my grandmother's mother), with no conclusions I could follow. Marta mentioned a man in a nearby town, by the name of Macanka, who might know something more, and offered to take us to see him.
The next arrival was Jan Petak,
Marta's son, his wife
Slavka, and their children (Anna's great grandchildren). Jan lived in
Poprad
(Paula's town), and he was stopping by to briefly check on Anna also.
He
wore a cell phone on his hip, which seemed oddly incongruous in a log
cabin
without running water. He urged us to visit him in Poprad, and gave us
his address and phone number.
My
father brought out some family pictures that my grandfather had left
and
asked for help identifying the people in them. So all the pictures got
passed around, with Marta and Anna peering at them intently and often
pronouncing
names and family connections that my father would write on the backs.
Paula
got right into it, and in a very short time we felt that she knew our
family
better than we did. Translating was difficult with a room full of
people,
all talking at once. I imagine that some of the offhand remarks were
missed,
but Paula did a great job of getting the essentials through to
everyone.
Anna said that my father was very smart to bring a translator so that they would be able to talk to him. Anna also pointed out that there were many empty houses in the village, both wood and brick, so it would be easy for my father to move in. He could buy one for 300,000 - 500,000 crowns ($7500 - $12,500). He just laughed.
My father mentioned an idea he had to try to set up a family reunion in Torysky next year, bringing over a number of the family from the U.S. Right away, Marta started planning it. She said that my father should just pick the date and get the people here and she would take care of everything else - food drink and entertainment. (I sometimes thought that if I had grown up in the village, I might have ended up being someone like Marta. And if she had lived in the U.S., I suspect she would have been a good convention organizer or software manager.)
By the time we left the village, everyone had heard about the planned party and treated it as if it were a promise engraved in stone!
At this point, we decided that
we should leave and give
Anna a chance to rest, and we promised her that we would be back in a
few
days. As we left, Marta invited us to her house after church tomorrow.
She asked what she should cook, and when she mentioned pirohy, she saw
my face light up, so she smiled broadly and promised me pirohy.
Meeting Great-uncle Juraj was
quite a shock because he
so closely resembled my grandfather that I felt like I was close to my
grandfather once again. I can only imagine what emotions my father must
have felt. Juraj was a bit frail and hard of hearing, but he was
overjoyed
to see us and greeted us warmly.
Juraj
told us that we should have been there for Easter, which was his
birthday,
which got us into another discussion of the Easter fiasco. ("We meant
to be here on Easter...") Juraj was born in 1912, the year my
grandfather
went to America. He is now 87 and, he proudly announced, is now the
oldest
person living in Torysky.
Katya emerged from the kitchen with a plate of boiled frankfurter-like sausages for each of us, along with mustard and horseradish, a plate of bread, a pitcher of thin fruit drink, and bottles of various types of liquors. I really didn't want to eat the sausages because they were quite fatty, but I did eat one just to be polite.
I tried to explain a little about the diabetes prevention experiment I'm participating in, which requires a low-fat diet, but even Paula didn't completely understand it, so I'm sure she had trouble translating. Diabetes is fairly common here (not surprising given the overweight population), but they associate it with sugar in the diet. They don't realize that being overweight can bring it on sooner than otherwise. And after hundreds of years of deprivation, meat is now considered the best possible food, and what you always offer to your guests. So not eating meat is looked on as something of a strange aberration.
Katya asked us if we were afraid to come there, which was the first reference to Yugoslavia we'd heard since we arrived. My father said the fighting was far away, but Katya was worried that the Russians might get involved.
They mentioned the visits they'd gotten from my father's brother, Joseph, and asked about him and his wife since they hadn't heard from him recently. My father told them that Joe’s wife had died about 3 years ago, but he had since remarried. He was unlikely to visit again because his new wife didn't like to travel. Katya was saddened but not surprised to hear about Joe's first wife's death. "We knew she was sick because she didn't eat much when she was here", she said. (Oops, I thought, now I must be on the sick list, too.)
I learned that my last name in
Slovakia would actually
be "Tureková", since all women, married and unmarried, get
an "ová"
ending
to their names. (Later, in a bookstore, I noticed a book by "Jane
Austenová".)
I also would need to pick an affectionate first name for my friends and
family to use, and I selected "Leslinka" because I remember my
grandmother
calling me that. So henceforth, I would be known as Leslinka
Tureková.
I
asked Juraj what work he did - was he a farmer? He said that he had
been a carpenter, and that he did
everything relating to wood, from cutting trees in the forest to
building
houses and making shingles. He brought in a a couple of shingles to
show
us how they were made, and how they fit together. Instead of running
horizontally
on the roof, the long pieces of wood are placed in a vertical
orientation.
They still overlap vertically to shed water, and on the horizontal axis
they are shaped into long arrow-like points, with the point of one
piece
fitting into a depression in the base of the next piece. I think this
design
must have been modeled after thatched roofs. Here's a picture of a roof
made in this style.
At this point Marta popped in, ready to take us to our next visit, so we arranged with Katya to meet her before church tomorrow and went off with Marta. My father had mentioned Martha Babey's gift, so Marta was taking us to see the Babey family, who lived near her at the start of the village. On the way, however, she took us on a short detour to show us the village hall, which she said would be the place where we would hold our family reunion next year. (I told you she was taking this pretty seriously!)
We
were invited into the kitchen, where we all sat around the kitchen
table
and met the various members of the family, three generations all living
in the house. Dad gave them Martha's letter, and then pulled out his
photos
and genealogical charts, and we had another session of people putting
their
heads together and filling in little bits of information. They also
brought
out all sorts of refreshments: bottles of Coke, a meat plate with
pickles,
and little glasses of something alcoholic. I learned the word
"Nazdravie!",
which is equivalent to "Cheers!". I also quickly learned the very
useful
word "Dost", which means "Enough!".
As soon as I snapped the first
picture, the old woman
in the photograph wagged her finger at me, smiling, indicating that I
had
tricked her. Then she disappeared for a few minutes and came back in an
entirely new outfit. Obviously, she was bothered that I'd taken a
picture
of her in her "at home" clothes, and had to change into her "guest"
clothes.
I thought they were both very nice, but what do I know? So to please
her
I took another picture.
As
we left, it had started to rain a bit, and we had a tough time getting
the car back up the driveway to the road. We had to send someone up to
tell us when the road was clear (not that there was all that much
traffic
in those parts), and then take a couple of running starts before we
could
make it all the way up.
Driving back to Levoča, we learned a little bit of Paula's family history. It appears that her mother, also, had gone to the United States, stayed there a while, and eventually returned. Paula herself is named after a friend, Paula, that her mother had met in the U.S. Paula greatly regrets that she didn't talk to her mother more about her family history, "...and now it's too late". So that partly explained why she was so enthusiastic about helping us on our quest.
I learned later that there are about 6 million people in Slovakia, and about 2 million people of Slovakian descent in the United States. That helps explain why nearly everyone we met had a relative in the U.S.
We got to the bus station in Levoča, which was just a shelter by the side of the road, after dark. After some discussion, with Paula insisting that the buses ran quite often, and my father making her tell him exactly when the next bus would come, my father decided that he couldn't just leave her sitting there for an hour in the dark, and that we would drive her back to Poprad. We had a nice drive, talking about various things, including computers and how it is that she has access to e-mail, and dropped her off at her insistence in the center of Poprad, where she would take yet another local bus to her final destination.
On the way back to Levoča, we were talking non-stop, when I finally noticed that things didn't look too familiar. Consulting the map, I realized that we had taken a wrong fork about half way back, and were actually on our way to a town south of Levoča called Spišska Nova Ves. Since we were almost there, at that point, the only sensible thing to do was to continue on and then take the road north from Spišska Nova Ves, which we did with no further trouble. We agreed that we would not mention this to Paula so she wouldn't feel bad about having us drive her home.
It was good to get back to our penzion with our modern bathroom facilities. It had been a long, exciting, day, and I crashed soon after getting into bed.
[Leslie Turek's Home Page] [2. Levoca] [4. Torysky - Sunday]