Churches and castles

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Today we had even more trouble finding someone to pay, and ended up being quite late to leave because of this. We stopped along the way at a small town called Levoca. It has a fully intact town wall, and inside there are a number of beautiful Renaissance houses and other buildings, with a central square. There was the Cage of Shame - near the town hall where women who had done something wrong were held to be publicly disgraced. We went into the cathedral there, and a school bus tour came in, kids about 15 and 16. They all went and sat down and prayed for about 10 minutes, some were kneeling, and there was no noise—we were astounded!! We have noted that the kids in Slovakia seem very happy—the little kids are always with parents or grandparents or both, and are well behaved and gentle, the teenagers in the streets seem happy and there are hardly any punks or hippies or Goths, none seem to have cell phones, the adults do though and talk incessantly, but no one seems to text. We’ve seen hundreds of school tours, all ages, and the kids are well behaved. Lots of touching by parents and by teachers, and rooted and grounded in their families and in their culture I think.
Most days we have had big cumulus clouds forming and thunderstorms somewhere - it will rain heavily and briefly then stop. As we were driving along we were looking at one of these ahead of us and then all of a sudden saw this imposing castle ruin with the thunderstorm in the background. This was Spis castle. We carried on to Bardejov - with the aim of looking at some little wooden churches. The first of these was in a folk Museum at Bardejovske Kupele. This is a spa town - pedestrian only - so we parked and walked up to the museum to find that it had just closed. Disappointed we walked around the perimeter of the museum to try and see what we could - and there was the church - and what is more it was open and a service underway. It is a Greek Catholic church and we peeked in through the door and listened to the service underway - unintelligible - but even in this little church - on a Thursday evening there would have been 20 people there. The spa part involves wandering around with a special cup - with the spout as part of the handle - taking the waters from various springs. These have different mineral combinations and are purported to treat a lot of different diseases. The next couple of hours were spent wandering around the district looking at several of these little wooden churches.
This was a pivotal day as this was our turning point - We had done as far across Slovakia as we could and we turned around and started out trip back towards Berlin. Stayed the night in a fairly grotty roadside camping ground.

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Photos

Spis Castle
View from coming from the West

Wooden Church
At Bardejovsky

Wooden Church
Near Bardejov

Wooden Church
Near Bardejov