http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Brett-and-Sylvia/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Brett and Sylvia en-us Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:47:31 +0000 Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:47:31 +0000 I recently made a trip to visit a second school for Roma in the region around Roznava. A few kilometers outside of town is the village of Brzotin which has a population of a few hundred and a large percentage of Roma gypsies. I struggle with the use of these kinds of terms gypsies versus Roma etc because they all carry various political meanings. I have found that in academics one must b http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Slovakia/Kosice-Region/blog-457263.html I have been meaning for a while to write about our recent trip to the Czech Republic as well as to Southern Germany. My cousin Hana lives in Moravske Budejovice a city in the Southern Moravia region of the Czech Republic. Sylvia's best friend Janka and her husband Fred live north of Stuttgart the home of Porsche and Mercedes cars in a city called Ludwigsburg. Our first stop on the trip was to http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Baden-W-rttemberg/Stuttgart/blog-453726.html All Saints Day in Slovakia as well as many other Slavic countries is a highly celebrated holy day. Throughout the entire weekend Slovak families travel across the country to visit cemeteries where their deceased family members are located. Cemeteries overflow with flowers and thousands and thousands of candles are lit and placed on the graves. Families take time to meet together and take car http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Slovakia/Kosice-Region/blog-450253.html Since being in Slovakia is such hard work...Sylvia and I decided we needed to get away from it all and take a little vacation. I convinced Sylvia that Egypt would be very interesting since the pyramids were something I had always wanted to see. We booked a trip to stay at a resort along the Red Sea near Hurghada and flew from Kosice on a chartered flight with nothing but Slovak vacationgoers. http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Egypt/Red-Sea/Hurghada/blog-438745.html After finishing my class in Poland I headed back to Slovakia. Sylvia and her family came to Lublin to pick me up. After one day back in Roznava Sylvia and I headed to Presov Slovakia so I could attend a research conference on religious geography in Europe. The conference went well and on the third day we had a small group tour of some of the most important religious architecture in Northea http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Slovakia/Presov-Region/Presov/blog-430031.html One weekend several of the students in our program made a trip to Majdanek Concentration Camp outside of Lublin. Majdanek was one of the very worst of the concentration and death camps set up by the Nazis during World War II. It stands on the outskirts of Lublin which was meant to be one of the administrative centers of the Nazi regime after the war. This camp is strange in that it is near a http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lublin-Province/Majdanek/blog-426390.html On the weekends during my first two weeks in Lublin I made trips to two wellknown towns nearby the renaissance towns of Kazimierz Dolny and Zamosc. Both have retained to a large degree their renaissance architecture and character. Kazimierz Dolny which lies to the West of Lublin is known for its wellpreserved Old Town as well as its unique renaissance style Catholic church and Castle Ruins http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lublin-Province/blog-424570.html For those of you who might enjoy reading this blog I am writing again now that I have moved to Europe for a year. I had a really busy and stressful school year. I finished all of my Ph.D. coursework and passed my comprehensive exams and proposal defense so now I am technically no longer a student. Of course I haven't written my dissertation yet so I'm a Ph.D. candidate. I received two ni http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lublin-Province/Lublin/blog-424145.html So to anyone who has read my travel blog in the past I last wrote in August of 2008. Since then I have made some progress on my degree and am now ABD. I have a summer language fellowship program I am attending in Poland and also have a yearlong dissertation fellowship lined up for the coming year. I will be living and doing research in Slovakia in 20092010. I am excited for all of the new http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/blog-400128.html Our last stop on our two week long trip was in the Southeastern part of the Czech Republic at my relatives' house. We made one vital stop on our way through the Czech Republic at the Plzensky Prazdroj Pilsner Urquell brewery in the town of Plzen. While German and American breweries are often associated with Pilsner styles of beer it was the Czechs who originally developed it and in my opini http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Czech-Republic/blog-309783.html After leaving Germany we headed Northwest to visit one of Sylvia's good friends in Rotterdam. On our way I made Sylvia stop in the city of Arnhem so I could track down some World War II history. The city of Arnhem as well as the nearby cities of Nijmegen and Eindhoven contained bridges that were important Rhine river crossings. The allies attempted to capture these bridges in Operation Mark http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Netherlands/South-Holland/Rotterdam/blog-308524.html Our next stop on the trip through Germany was to the town of Lennestadt to see my friend Martin. He was an exchange student in Harvard during my senior year and we became good friends. He and I played a lot of table tennis together and even won gold medals as doubles partners at the Cornhusker State Games. I last saw him two years ago when I was in the Czech Republic and we met in Prague. As w http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/North-Rhine-Westphalia/Cologne/blog-307909.html The main purpose of our trip to Germany was to visit Sylvia's good friend Janka. She and Sylvia were the only two Slovaks at the University of Nebraska Kearney which is where I met both of them. They have known each other for 12 years and went to high school together in Kosice. Janka is recently married to Fred and they live in Ludwigsburg which is very near Stuttgart. The one idea I had abo http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Baden-W-rttemberg/Stuttgart/blog-307587.html Sylvia and I set out on a two week long trip through Germany Holland and the Czech Republic. Our first stop and one I had been looking forward to for a long time was in the village of Furth im Wald which is the town where some of my ancestors on my mother's side Webers emigrated from over 100 years ago. The village is situated just a few kilometers away from the Czech border in the region http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/blog-307070.html Today Sylvia her cousin Marian and I went to Detva for one of the best known and largest Slovak folk festivals. Think of it as Czech Days in Wilber NE but with some authenticity. The festival features authentic Slovak crafts music and folk performances. It is encouraging to see that these traditions are being valued once again and that younger people are willing to learn them especiall http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Slovakia/blog-299189.html On Friday we drove to Kosice to attend the graduation of Sylvia's cousin Ka. She has been studying in vet school for the last six years at a bilingual SlovakEnglish program. The graduation was held in the town theatre which has been very well restored. The graduation ceremony was rather short but it might have been half as long if everything was not repeated in English. It is quite common f http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Slovakia/blog-294057.html The last day of our trip through Poland we stopped in the town of Oscwiecim which in German is Auschwitz. It is of course home to the famous Nazi concentration camps. It is not always clear from the information seen in a TV documentary or read in a book but there are actually three Auschwitz camps close to one another. The main camp has been preserved and turned into the Auschwitz museum. I http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-293198.html After Gdansk we started back south toward Slovakia. Our first stop was the city of Kolobrzeg which is one of the most popular health resorts on the Baltic coast. It is also a favorite place for Germans to vacation because of its proximity to Germany. The city is known for its famous lighthouse and also for some of its World War II history. Traditionally Kolobrzeg has been the sight of Polan http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lower-Silesian/Wroclaw/blog-292705.html Our next stop on the Poland trip took us all the way to the northern coast and the city of Gdansk. The city is an important Polish port and is the location of the famous Lenin shipyards where the Solidarity movement began. Lech Walesa worked here as an electrician in the 1970s and in 1980 he helped form Solidarnosc as a trade union to combat communism in Poland. We had nice weather and walked http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Pomerania/Gdansk/blog-291477.html Sylvia's parents went along with us to Poland for a week. We set out in our CNG compressed natural gas powered Fiat Multipla. They call it the ugliest vehicle in Europe see picture. CNG is approximately half the price of gasoline almost 9.00 a gallon here and works very well. After crossing the Tatra mountains which create the border between Slovakia and Poland our first stop was the t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/blog-291251.html