Day hike to Holíč and Kopčany
Sv. Margita Antiochijska Chapel, Kopčany
Sunday, 15. September, 2019 (excerpts from my journal The Eurotraveller, vol 4 plus a hiking log)
We left bright and early from home to catch the 8:16 train to Kúty. It’s another public holiday (Our Lady of Sorrows Day—something tied to the Catholic church), and like any public holiday, people tend to leave the city in droves. The train was completely full (we were lucky to get seats!), and I was annoyed by the behavior of some of the passengers. The guy sitting opposite Zuza and me was loud and obnoxious. Zuza said it’s a good thing I don’t understand Slovak very well. He was telling his girlfriend, who was seated across the aisle, how he wanted her to come and clean all the windows in his house and how he would dictate exactly how to do it. I was relieved when they got off at Zavod.
An hour after leaving Bratislava, we arrived in Kúty. A local two-car, putt-putt diesel train that would take us to Holíč was waiting on the platform when we arrived. Thankfully, not many people from the larger train from Bratislava were taking it with us. They were boarding another train for a religious pilgrimage, which is what today’s holiday was all about, apparently. Despite that late-summer-to-early-autumn chill in the morning air, it was already starting to warm up. Ten minutes later, we arrived at Holíč, and here we were virtually on the border with the Czech Republic. Immediately upon leaving Holíč Station, we began the trek towards the center of town and an old windmill (Veterný mlyn) on the edge of town Zuza said was worth a visit. We passed a couple of old churches. The first was St. Martin’s, dating to about 1750-something and painted a bright creamy yellow.
Sv. Martin, Holíč
Holíč is like virtually any other small Czechoslovak town: old houses lining the main street, pubs or hostinec here and there usually on a street corner, and the usual panelak (prefabricated) block of flats from the communist era. We turned left and went up a hill towards Kaplnka sv. Floriána (Chapel of St. Florian) and walked along Hurbanova Street. Now we were sort of getting out of town. We passed a gleaming orthodox church, Chrám Matky Božej Počajevskej, which Google Translate calls The Temple of the Mother of God. It didn’t look very old at all. On the other side of the road, peering over a crumbling brick wall, we noticed the sad remains of a Jewish cemetery. Nobody seems to keep these relics up. There was hardly anything worth seeing. Passing that, we were aware of popping sounds in the distance. Fireworks at this time of the year? No, those aren’t fireworks, Zuza said. We were passing a shooting range, and a bunch of people were out doing target practice. I just hoped we wouldn’t have to duck a bunch of stray bullets.
Uphill from the shooting range was a small cropping of woods, and here was the old windmill, hidden at the top of the hill in a thicket of birch trees. It’s not that old, perhaps dating from the late 19th century. When you’re from the United States and you live in Europe, you start thinking of the late 19th century as “yesterday”. In Oregon, we have some houses and buildings, particularly in Portland, dating to the 1870s and 1880s, and those are “ancient” by our standards. We camped out here, at a picnic table for perhaps 45 minutes. Zuza brought a magazine to read and I worked on a few sketches of the windmill. It was also getting hot, and I changed into a pair of shorts I brought with me. By this time, the shooting was getting really annoying.
We moved on, walking back into town, but taking a different way. In the center, we passed the Holíčské menhiry, or what could be called the Slovak Stonehenge. These long stones are some thousands of years old and boast some carvings on them. They were excavated years ago when the area housing developments were being built. As was typical of the communists, they just tossed them aside rather than try to preserve them in a museum. I guess we should be thankful they didn’t destroy them. Nevertheless, they were already somewhat damaged, according to a French archaeologist who visited the site and deemed the stones a very significant find. Like Stonehenge, the stones had been arranged in some kind of circular fashion and were used for rituals and perhaps even sacrifices. At least the stones are resting here in a park in Holíč, and perhaps most surprisingly, no one has (yet!) vandalized them with graffiti.
Slovak Stonehenge
From here, we were essentially in the center of town and quite close to the next stop on our walk, Holíčský zámok, or Holíč Castle. Well, it’s really more of a chateau than a castle in the true sense of the word, and not much different from the more famous Schloßhof in Austria. Maria Theresa spent time here in the summers, as she did at Schloßhof. Her husband, the Duke of Lorraine, or Francis Stephen, owned this estate, as well as a ceramic factory nearby. Holíč was the only second imperial seat in Slovakia after Bratislava. We decided to spend the two euros admission and take a tour of the castle, but we had to wait an hour. In the meantime we strolled around the castle, looking at the fishpond and the herbal garden nearby. This part had only recently been fixed up by the city, and the landscaping was well done. It was a really nice place to walk through.
Back to the chateau. It was built on the site of a 12th-century fortification, and apparently it occupied a strategic position along an old trade route. The interesting thing about this site is that it is not restored. At first glance, it’s pretty and impressive. However, when you walk up close to it, you can clearly see the plaster falling off the walls, the louvered window shades are in disrepair, and in general, the place is shabby. At 1 pm, we met the young lady from the information office who took us on a guided tour. We were the only tourists, so it was a tour just for us. Indeed, not much has been restored. There are only about five rooms which are open to the public, and you really do have to watch your step inside. Much of the castle is dark and dilapidated. The floors are dusty and very uneven. The stairs are worn and crumbling.
It was fascinating.
Totally abandoned. Dirty. Dusty. Dark. Lonely. Creepy. Broken tiles and plaster missing; wood scaffolding exposed underneath. It was as if the 18th century had just given up and walked out, leaving the mansion behind. I wonder what secrets are hidden here. Only the walls know. According to the guide, the chateau became the property of Czechoslovakia in 1918 at which time it was used as a basic school, then after many years it became some kind of agricultural school. At one point, some crazy American businessman bought it but did nothing with it and it sat empty. Finally, in 2007 the city of Holíč acquired it and restoration began. One or two rooms had period-correct furniture and artwork on display. A few of the other renovated rooms were used as storage for clearly much later furniture and farm machinery and tools. It was sort of an odd museum, showcasing the town’s history of the last 200 years.
Proper, historically accurate restoration of a chateau on this scale costs a phenomenal amount of money—money which the city does not have. There are, of course, private donors with that kind of cash, but more often than not they’re more interested in turning such a place into a fancy hotel or a winery—something with which they can make money. The trick is to find someone with the money and the passion to restore the residence to its former glory. The museum can raise some money from the tours they provide and from a modest gift shop inside the castle’s office. However, it will probably take years until Holíčské zámok can be properly restored to the condition that Schloßhof is—and even that is a work in progress.
Watch your step!
At this point, we’d walked a total of 7.9 kilometers since arriving at the Holíč train station. We were awed and hungry and we decided lunch was in order, and the tour guide recommended two places we might try. One was a pizzeria and the other a nicer proper restaurant. We opted for the latter, even though it was a longer walk. But the walk to the Jozef II Restaurant was worth it. We arrived and immediately sat on the outdoor terrace and ordered drinks. We both tried the Wywar beer on tap—a 11° lager for me while Zuza had the polotmavé, or “semi-dark”. For lunch, Zuza ordered camembert cheese with baked eggplant and roasted potatoes, and I went for the chili-laced pork tenderloin with creamy mushroom risotto. Everything was excellent and not at all expensive for two people for the quality of food and level of service. We were impressed. The experience was only marred by a family with screaming children, and when that family had thankfully left, they were replaced by a young couple with a baby. Only this time, the parents were the annoying ones. The mother seemed to pretend to be sweet to the kid, using silly baby talk that made Zuza roll her eyes. When the baby wouldn’t eat, the mother got angry and frustrated. I don’t understand much Slovak—I struggle with it. But I understood enough to be annoyed.
We paid the bill and were glad to leave the young family behind. We decided to hit the highway and start the 4-5 kilometer walk to the neighboring village of Kopčany. We would have enough time to see the 1,000 year old church there before catching the train back to Kúty. It was a long walk: 5.41 kilometers, to be exact. We walked along the main road connecting the two communities, straight into the sun. There was little to protect us from it, although we got to see some nice onion patches, cabbage and potato fields, as well as pumpkins and watermelon. I actually enjoyed the walk and the smell of onions. Eventually we turned off the highway and found a trail for bikes and pedestrians which meandered through sun-drenched fields of Kopčany. It’s quite a long walk, and not accessible by car. There were quite a few people, but all had come on foot or by bike.
Onion fields forever!
The Sv. Margita Antiochijska (St. Margaret of Antioch) Church, said to be the oldest building in Slovakia, is one of the oldest churches in central Europe. It’s pre-Romanesque and not very big. The signboard nearby said it was built between the 9th and 10th centuries, so it’s closer to 1,100 years old. I know of only one other such church, near Nitra at Dražovce (the subject of a future blog), and it’s not quite as old. Try to think of what else was happening in the world at that time. The Vikings were making their conquests in western Europe. The Tale of Genji, written in Japan by Murasaki Shikibu and considered to be the world’s first novel, hadn’t yet been written. Africa had its Ghana Empire. This is the "it-blows-your-mind" kind of old. And we could go inside it to see the simple altar and the remnants of paintings on the walls. The glass in one of the windows was restored, and later we found out it had been made by an artist friend of ours in Bratislava.
A group of locals sat on a bench beside the church. One of the men was the “keeper of the keys”, and at precisely 5 pm, he got up and closed and locked up the church. A lipa (linden) tree stood nearby, planted last year to commemorate 100 years since the founding of Czechoslovakia. Now we were at 14.28 kilometers and we still had a couple of more to go to reach the Kopčany train station. The walk took us away from the church, in the direction opposite from which we’d arrived. We took a very long, very straight road, outside the village, fields to either side of us.
People-friendly goats
We stopped to pet a group of friendly goats, which saw us walking by and came running to the fence. Soon, three local teenage gypsy girls stopped us to ask which train we were taking. Perhaps they were waiting for someone to arrive. The station, such as it was, was nothing more than an oversized bus stop, only one bench and a trash can. This is really local! Luckily we had return tickets, although in this case, you can also buy tickets directly from the conductor on board. Now we were at the end, 17.7 kilometers, and did our feet hurt! Before long, the putt-putt diesel showed us and dragged us to Kúty. Thankfully, our train to Bratislava was there, so we didn’t have to wait at all. We got seats and sat the whole way back. As is usually the case after such invigorating hikes, my mind was left spinning.