Moravia and Olomouc
The journey back to Brno and thence to the last city of Moravia, Olomouc, is an hour and a half by bus or car which threading these sleepy hills encounters a rather grander landscape further north.
The city has a garrison aspect even today, when Russian soldiers fill the barracks and fortifications built for a corps of the Austrian army. Though taken by the Swedes during the Thirty Years War, it successfully withstood a siege by Frederick the Great in 1758. At the centre of the great eastern road to Krakow and Galicia, it is, as one might expect for a garrison town, always rather crowded.
As well as soldiers and traders, it is full of students from the university (founded 1573), which, although moved to Brno in the eighteenth century, was refounded after the war. As well as sieges, Olomouc has known several other events of historical significance for Central Europe. It was here during the tumultuous events of 1848 that the Austrian Kaiser, Franz Josef, was crowned.
Although its older quarters boast several Baroque fountains and a number of interesting churches, it is difficult to describe Olomouc as beautiful. The Town Hall in the main square is a wedding-cake structure, all minarets and gables, relieved by a rather more serious fourteenth¬century Gothic portal and a chapel oriel of 1491.
The cathedral, dating from 1107, was enthusiastically re-Gothicized in the 1880s, although the remains of a fourteenth-century vaulted cloister are to be seen to its north.
The square in front of the cathedral extends on its east side past the fine facade of the former Palais Liechtenstein, an early work of the 1660s by Lucchese and only just Baroque. Near here rises the Jesuit church of 1712, slim and severe, while to the south-west is the Dominican chapel of St Alexis, dating from 1380, with a dark cloister vaulted in 1483.
The fifteenth-century Franciscan church is also worth trying to enter, if only to see the rather demented nineteenth-century woodwork which fills every corner. In the picturesque roads which wind from here to the Town Hall, between the murky clothes shops and occasional tobacconists stuffed with Havana cigars are a couple of cafes and wine bars.
Not far from the Town Hall rises the battlemented thirteenth-century south tower of the church of St Mofic. Its north tower is fifteenth-century and its nave, despite the dramatic skyline, plain and high. The east end, however, is more inspiring, with a Renaissance front from which flow a series of free-standing steps dating from 1564.
The upper market square
Perhaps the most curious structure in the city is that to be found in the upper market square, for of all the Baroque columns and monuments to be seen in Olomouc the early eighteenth-century Trinity Column here is the most eccentric and brilliant.
It was erected 'to the honour of the divine trinity' ('deo triune veroque'). Eight rows of steps, containing eight steps each, lead up to eight doors, opening into a small eight-sided chapel. This is surrounded by a grating to which cling stone angels holding lanterns.
Above, a sort of obelisk rises to the height of 114 feet adorned by groups of stone figures of bishops, saints and angels, perhaps best described as possessing 'oriental quaintness'. At least one nineteenth-century traveller to this square has questioned how anyone could think it suitable for the 'noble simplicity of Christianity'.
Moravian culture
Such questions were not, however, the only concern of nineteenth-century writers. Far more seem to have been moved by another feature of Moravia, the extraordinary beauty of the Moravian girls. Hardly any travel book written during the last century failed to mention this, and while perhaps the traditional Moravian beauty is still to be found in her village, dressed in ethnic clothes inherited from her grandmother, it is surprising that the ravages of the twentieth century in Central Europe have allowed this attractive sight to flourish in the city as well. But if the German stock of this city has declined, the frontiers to the east have remained open and there is certainly Polish and Slovak blood flowing in their veins.
East of Olomouc, road and railway run to Zilina, a bleak industrial
landscape but the gateway to the Tatras and Slovakia. Although Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, lies on the Central European plain, Slovakia itself is a mountainous country and the Slovaks are a hardy race of hillsmen, never quite at home in a city suit.
They are, as Mrs Phillimore pointed out in her book In the Carpathians, one of the most lovable races of Europe - kind and hospitable, with a zest for enjoyment which makes the Czech seem an anaemic depressive in comparison. In the country, society is still clannish and rather patriarchal. Village weddings last for days and gallons of alcohol are consumed in a feast of singing and dancing.
Slovakia culture
Slovakia is also a land of colour, where houses and dress are brightly tinted so that villages bathed in the light of a Carpathian sunset seem to almost glow with purples, reds and golds. As might be expected in such a country, the sort of fabulous architectural treasures to be found in Bohemia and Moravia are not so common, and although today the Slovaks are in every way the Czechs' 'equals', their cultural development was retarded for centuries by their environment and also the insane Magyarization policies that their Hungarian masters pursued here during the days of the Habsburg empire.
For if Vienna, which ruled Bohemia, allowed the Czechs free use of their language, the Magyars, who were the self-appointed master race of Eastern Europe, permitted no such privileges, and Slovaks were relentlessly forced to learn the impossible and Util the last fifty years one could speak of a peasant race with some Justification.
Poprad
From Zilina, a railway follows some picturesque scenery to Poprad which is situated at the foot of the high Tatras. The hundred-odd mile is accomplished by an express train in about two and a half hours, and on a clear day is one of the most delightful train journeys in Europe, with narrow valleys, rapids and ruins marking every turn.
As the train negotiates the low-lying Tatra mountains, tunnels lead to the dramatic defile of Strecno before reaching RU20mberok, a town situated prettily above several mineral springs. It is a quiet place, perfect for excursions to the Matras, the next tier of Carpathians, between the Fatras and the Tatras.
Two miles south of here is the Liptovsky kriz, an eighteenth-century church made of wood, capable of holding more than 600 worshippers, although not a single nail seems to have been used during its construction.
Beyond Rutomberok, the railway suddenly offers a fine view of the chief summits of the Carpathians. The line crosses the watershed here between the Baltic and the Black Sea before descending to Strba, from where a dramatic view can be had of the highest of the Tatras, once named after the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef and then after the first president of the Czechoslovak republic, Masaryk, but now simply called the Great Tatra, or Vysoke Tatry.
Strba Station
Strba is the highest station on the main line and is connected to a number of smaller resorts by funiculars and cog-wheel railways. The station here is invariably crowded with East German, Russian and Czech walkers. Rucksacks and maps are brandished, Thermos flasks waved, and anyone not wearing regulation walking boots is subjected to rigorous and bemused scrutiny.
One of the small railways with its bright red carriages runs from here to the lake of Strbske Pleso, a desolate haunting place in the shadow of the Tatras whose peaks, rising sheer almost from the trees, have even in the heat of summer a menacing aspect.
A typically styleless modern hotel with a reasonable restaurant on one side of the lake in no way detracts from the overwhelming sense of isolation. Thunderstorms occur here with terrifying force.
From Strbske Pleso, which, unless its melancholy beauty seizes the traveller, can be enjoyed quite fruitfully for a couple of hours, another narrow-gauge line runs through the dark pine forests to Star y Smokovec, an old Saxon settlement but since the end of the war inhabited exclusively by Slovaks.
This is the Tatras dressed in the spa-cum-resort facades seen in Bohemia. Large wood-panelled hotels, all in that style of Neo-Baroque-Alpine which was de rigueur in 1912 are still in evidence. Some have been given art-deco interiors and the others have been more recently restored.
In contrast to Carlsbad t lrues,and Marienbad there is a lively atmosphere here and there are no urban developments of the sixties to mar the views. This is the place to put up for a few nights. The Grand Hotel, which should be booked in advance, is with its faded parquetry, still the most luxurious establishment in the Tatras.
From here professional climbers can be hired as guides for more difficult ascents, while the local office of the Carpathian tourist club will provide maps should expeditions be contemplated beyond those suggested by the finger-posts.
A narrow-gauge railway ascends in five minutes (on foot it takes forty-five minutes) to the picturesque Hrebienok, from where signs unpromisingly marked Sliezkydom can be followed for a pleasant afternoon's walk underneath the very highest peaks. Behind us rise the mountains and their lakes, once thought to be the 'eyes' of some sea. In front, below, the valleys fall away towards Kdmarok and Hungary.
Another railway runs from Stary Smokovec to Tatranska Lomnica also essentially a nineteenth-century settlement made up of villas and hotels, although behind some green hedges near the station lie some curious coloured buildings; elegance neglected, with red facings and richly carved wooden pavilions.
At first sight these give the impression of a Himalayan railway station, but an open door, at the time of writing easily penetrated, leads to dusty rooms with encaustic tiles lit from above - clearly once the steam baths of some grand duke on holiday in the Tatras.
Although lower than Smokovec, Tatranska Lomnica has great charm and offers a number of finger-posted walks which, if less dramatic than those described above, offer calm and the almost intoxicating smell of pine.
The days when months were free to spend aimlessly wandering among this, nature's greatest gift to Central Europe, are long past, and no one but the most committed walker will wish to dwell longer than a few days here. Some will question even that amount of time, especially if they are used to the superior comforts of Switzerland or even the Tyrol.
Society and fashion have passed the Tatras by, but the mountains retain their majesty and those who seek unspoilt forests and peaks off the beaten track will find these grey castles of rock a welcome escape.
Excursions to Kezmarok
In the flat lands below, a most interesting excursion can be made for a few hours to Kezmarok, the Kesmark of the Saxons, a sleepy little town with sweet-shops selling pastilles as hard as granite. It is one of the oldest towns in Slovakia, having been granted a royal charter in 1380.
Near the imposing red Protestant church designed by Hansen, the architect of the Vienna Parliament, is an eighteenth-century wooden church. It has quaint wooden spiral columns and is an elegant counterpoise to Hansen's rather overpowering design paid for by some wealthy merchants.
The town itself also possesses an older church with some crude but none the less attractive Baroque carvings strangely at ease inside the building's rude fifteenth-century masonry. Many of the houses which make up the main street and square are from the eighteenth century, and while not one boasts the decorative and architectural quality of such houses in Moravia, taken as a whole the ensemble is attractive. Restaurants are few, but the odd cafe along the main street leading to the station will offer a glass of delicious Slovak red wine, at its best as good as anything in Hungary.
The city has a garrison aspect even today, when Russian soldiers fill the barracks and fortifications built for a corps of the Austrian army. Though taken by the Swedes during the Thirty Years War, it successfully withstood a siege by Frederick the Great in 1758. At the centre of the great eastern road to Krakow and Galicia, it is, as one might expect for a garrison town, always rather crowded.
As well as soldiers and traders, it is full of students from the university (founded 1573), which, although moved to Brno in the eighteenth century, was refounded after the war. As well as sieges, Olomouc has known several other events of historical significance for Central Europe. It was here during the tumultuous events of 1848 that the Austrian Kaiser, Franz Josef, was crowned.
Although its older quarters boast several Baroque fountains and a number of interesting churches, it is difficult to describe Olomouc as beautiful. The Town Hall in the main square is a wedding-cake structure, all minarets and gables, relieved by a rather more serious fourteenth¬century Gothic portal and a chapel oriel of 1491.
The cathedral, dating from 1107, was enthusiastically re-Gothicized in the 1880s, although the remains of a fourteenth-century vaulted cloister are to be seen to its north.
The square in front of the cathedral extends on its east side past the fine facade of the former Palais Liechtenstein, an early work of the 1660s by Lucchese and only just Baroque. Near here rises the Jesuit church of 1712, slim and severe, while to the south-west is the Dominican chapel of St Alexis, dating from 1380, with a dark cloister vaulted in 1483.
The fifteenth-century Franciscan church is also worth trying to enter, if only to see the rather demented nineteenth-century woodwork which fills every corner. In the picturesque roads which wind from here to the Town Hall, between the murky clothes shops and occasional tobacconists stuffed with Havana cigars are a couple of cafes and wine bars.
Not far from the Town Hall rises the battlemented thirteenth-century south tower of the church of St Mofic. Its north tower is fifteenth-century and its nave, despite the dramatic skyline, plain and high. The east end, however, is more inspiring, with a Renaissance front from which flow a series of free-standing steps dating from 1564.
The upper market square
Perhaps the most curious structure in the city is that to be found in the upper market square, for of all the Baroque columns and monuments to be seen in Olomouc the early eighteenth-century Trinity Column here is the most eccentric and brilliant.
It was erected 'to the honour of the divine trinity' ('deo triune veroque'). Eight rows of steps, containing eight steps each, lead up to eight doors, opening into a small eight-sided chapel. This is surrounded by a grating to which cling stone angels holding lanterns.
Above, a sort of obelisk rises to the height of 114 feet adorned by groups of stone figures of bishops, saints and angels, perhaps best described as possessing 'oriental quaintness'. At least one nineteenth-century traveller to this square has questioned how anyone could think it suitable for the 'noble simplicity of Christianity'.
Moravian culture
Such questions were not, however, the only concern of nineteenth-century writers. Far more seem to have been moved by another feature of Moravia, the extraordinary beauty of the Moravian girls. Hardly any travel book written during the last century failed to mention this, and while perhaps the traditional Moravian beauty is still to be found in her village, dressed in ethnic clothes inherited from her grandmother, it is surprising that the ravages of the twentieth century in Central Europe have allowed this attractive sight to flourish in the city as well. But if the German stock of this city has declined, the frontiers to the east have remained open and there is certainly Polish and Slovak blood flowing in their veins.
East of Olomouc, road and railway run to Zilina, a bleak industrial
landscape but the gateway to the Tatras and Slovakia. Although Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, lies on the Central European plain, Slovakia itself is a mountainous country and the Slovaks are a hardy race of hillsmen, never quite at home in a city suit.
They are, as Mrs Phillimore pointed out in her book In the Carpathians, one of the most lovable races of Europe - kind and hospitable, with a zest for enjoyment which makes the Czech seem an anaemic depressive in comparison. In the country, society is still clannish and rather patriarchal. Village weddings last for days and gallons of alcohol are consumed in a feast of singing and dancing.
Slovakia culture
Slovakia is also a land of colour, where houses and dress are brightly tinted so that villages bathed in the light of a Carpathian sunset seem to almost glow with purples, reds and golds. As might be expected in such a country, the sort of fabulous architectural treasures to be found in Bohemia and Moravia are not so common, and although today the Slovaks are in every way the Czechs' 'equals', their cultural development was retarded for centuries by their environment and also the insane Magyarization policies that their Hungarian masters pursued here during the days of the Habsburg empire.
For if Vienna, which ruled Bohemia, allowed the Czechs free use of their language, the Magyars, who were the self-appointed master race of Eastern Europe, permitted no such privileges, and Slovaks were relentlessly forced to learn the impossible and Util the last fifty years one could speak of a peasant race with some Justification.
Poprad
From Zilina, a railway follows some picturesque scenery to Poprad which is situated at the foot of the high Tatras. The hundred-odd mile is accomplished by an express train in about two and a half hours, and on a clear day is one of the most delightful train journeys in Europe, with narrow valleys, rapids and ruins marking every turn.
As the train negotiates the low-lying Tatra mountains, tunnels lead to the dramatic defile of Strecno before reaching RU20mberok, a town situated prettily above several mineral springs. It is a quiet place, perfect for excursions to the Matras, the next tier of Carpathians, between the Fatras and the Tatras.
Two miles south of here is the Liptovsky kriz, an eighteenth-century church made of wood, capable of holding more than 600 worshippers, although not a single nail seems to have been used during its construction.
Beyond Rutomberok, the railway suddenly offers a fine view of the chief summits of the Carpathians. The line crosses the watershed here between the Baltic and the Black Sea before descending to Strba, from where a dramatic view can be had of the highest of the Tatras, once named after the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef and then after the first president of the Czechoslovak republic, Masaryk, but now simply called the Great Tatra, or Vysoke Tatry.
Strba Station
Strba is the highest station on the main line and is connected to a number of smaller resorts by funiculars and cog-wheel railways. The station here is invariably crowded with East German, Russian and Czech walkers. Rucksacks and maps are brandished, Thermos flasks waved, and anyone not wearing regulation walking boots is subjected to rigorous and bemused scrutiny.
One of the small railways with its bright red carriages runs from here to the lake of Strbske Pleso, a desolate haunting place in the shadow of the Tatras whose peaks, rising sheer almost from the trees, have even in the heat of summer a menacing aspect.
A typically styleless modern hotel with a reasonable restaurant on one side of the lake in no way detracts from the overwhelming sense of isolation. Thunderstorms occur here with terrifying force.
From Strbske Pleso, which, unless its melancholy beauty seizes the traveller, can be enjoyed quite fruitfully for a couple of hours, another narrow-gauge line runs through the dark pine forests to Star y Smokovec, an old Saxon settlement but since the end of the war inhabited exclusively by Slovaks.
This is the Tatras dressed in the spa-cum-resort facades seen in Bohemia. Large wood-panelled hotels, all in that style of Neo-Baroque-Alpine which was de rigueur in 1912 are still in evidence. Some have been given art-deco interiors and the others have been more recently restored.
In contrast to Carlsbad t lrues,and Marienbad there is a lively atmosphere here and there are no urban developments of the sixties to mar the views. This is the place to put up for a few nights. The Grand Hotel, which should be booked in advance, is with its faded parquetry, still the most luxurious establishment in the Tatras.
From here professional climbers can be hired as guides for more difficult ascents, while the local office of the Carpathian tourist club will provide maps should expeditions be contemplated beyond those suggested by the finger-posts.
A narrow-gauge railway ascends in five minutes (on foot it takes forty-five minutes) to the picturesque Hrebienok, from where signs unpromisingly marked Sliezkydom can be followed for a pleasant afternoon's walk underneath the very highest peaks. Behind us rise the mountains and their lakes, once thought to be the 'eyes' of some sea. In front, below, the valleys fall away towards Kdmarok and Hungary.
Another railway runs from Stary Smokovec to Tatranska Lomnica also essentially a nineteenth-century settlement made up of villas and hotels, although behind some green hedges near the station lie some curious coloured buildings; elegance neglected, with red facings and richly carved wooden pavilions.
At first sight these give the impression of a Himalayan railway station, but an open door, at the time of writing easily penetrated, leads to dusty rooms with encaustic tiles lit from above - clearly once the steam baths of some grand duke on holiday in the Tatras.
Although lower than Smokovec, Tatranska Lomnica has great charm and offers a number of finger-posted walks which, if less dramatic than those described above, offer calm and the almost intoxicating smell of pine.
The days when months were free to spend aimlessly wandering among this, nature's greatest gift to Central Europe, are long past, and no one but the most committed walker will wish to dwell longer than a few days here. Some will question even that amount of time, especially if they are used to the superior comforts of Switzerland or even the Tyrol.
Society and fashion have passed the Tatras by, but the mountains retain their majesty and those who seek unspoilt forests and peaks off the beaten track will find these grey castles of rock a welcome escape.
Excursions to Kezmarok
In the flat lands below, a most interesting excursion can be made for a few hours to Kezmarok, the Kesmark of the Saxons, a sleepy little town with sweet-shops selling pastilles as hard as granite. It is one of the oldest towns in Slovakia, having been granted a royal charter in 1380.
Near the imposing red Protestant church designed by Hansen, the architect of the Vienna Parliament, is an eighteenth-century wooden church. It has quaint wooden spiral columns and is an elegant counterpoise to Hansen's rather overpowering design paid for by some wealthy merchants.
The town itself also possesses an older church with some crude but none the less attractive Baroque carvings strangely at ease inside the building's rude fifteenth-century masonry. Many of the houses which make up the main street and square are from the eighteenth century, and while not one boasts the decorative and architectural quality of such houses in Moravia, taken as a whole the ensemble is attractive. Restaurants are few, but the odd cafe along the main street leading to the station will offer a glass of delicious Slovak red wine, at its best as good as anything in Hungary.
Labels: Excursions to Kezmarok, Poprad, Strba Station
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