A visit to Silky Soul’s homeland among the hills and deep forests of the Carpathian Mountains in the easternmost corner of Slovakia near borders with Ukraine and Poland, where you can still run into wolves, European bison, or a bear…
This bear representing the Carpathian Mountains is one of the symbols of the local ethnic minority called the Rusyns or Rusnaks or Carpatho-Russians or Ruthenians. One of the most well-known Rusyns was Andy Warhol whose mother came from near the town of Medzilaborce in this area, now the seat of the Andy Warhol Museum with the second largest collection of his works.
Rusyns are of Greek Catholic or Russian Orthodox confession and built purely wooden churches in the past without metal nails because they refused to use the same tool that nailed Christ to the cross. Some of these churches have been preserved and now are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
As always, I was on the lookout for cats and small gardens:
Feeling healed by beauty, on our way back we carried along with luggage also this picture by a Ukrainian artist that now hangs in Silky Soul’s consulting room, hopefully contributing to the therapeutic processes taking place there…
Yuri Behas, Thirteen Poplars
That was both fascinating and eye candy. Never knew about Andy Warhol's roots.
ReplyDeleteHello there Chamomilla !
ReplyDeleteThank you for visiting my blog !
This is amazing information .. I had no idea about the churches or the method of not using nails because of that. The wee garden is gorgeous as are the cats : )
I did not know about Andy Warhol like Diane either .. the painting is beautiful, simple but very affective!
Joy : )
Welcome, Joy, and hello Diana, and thank you both for leaving a message, it's always so nice to get some response...
ReplyDeleteHi, Chamomilla! I've just learnt it here that the great Warhol is related somehow to Medzilaborce where I spent two weeks in a pioneers' camp in my childhood. I remember the beautiful landscape there.
ReplyDeleteI had also been gardening without a garden for a long time and for a few years I'm really happy with my little garden we share with three cats.
Welcome Művelt Kert, I am glad to hear that someone knows this area and has fond memories of it... Congratulations to your new cat-inhabited garden... I wish I could create a garden for my cats one day, too!
ReplyDeleteThanx you! Hopefully, you will soon.
ReplyDeleteI add your blog to my blogroll as found it interesting.
Hi, Chamomilla, Sorry I haven't visited lately ... I was in England with no connection to the world-wide web. Glad to return to such an interesting post. You always have some great cat pictures. Pam
ReplyDeleteHello Pam, thank you for stopping by and leaving a nice comment... It is increasingly rare and precious to be disconnected from the www. I hope you enjoyed your stay in England!
ReplyDeleteI just dropped in to share my new idea inspired by you to post a cats-as-pieces-of-art-in-the-garden series sometime.
ReplyDeleteThat red cat is beautiful above (my favourite colour in cats if it makes sense)!
That's a great idea, I think we should do a contest - with no winners, no losers, just to share our best pieces of art (plant&cat combo)!
ReplyDeleteThank you, I think that color in cats is called ginger in English, we also call them "red" in Czech. They are also my favorite and they seem to have the sweetest character, at least this one does :-)
A cat frenzy? Great!
ReplyDeleteIn Hungarian that cat colour is not really red (piros) - I just say it that way 'cause it's funny (and sometimes use "blond" or "blondy" that is "szöszi" in my language) - we have a word for hair, wine and revolution :-) when they're that colour: vörös. Is there a difference in Czech?
Some say, there's correlation between the coulour of the cat's fur and his/her character. Gigners are usually lovely :-)
Happy to hear you favour them, too! That cute pink nose :-)
Yes, we also have different reds for different objects :-) For example, the red in this instance is not really the same as the common color red, but rather "rusty" (it's hard to explain in a different language) - a color we use only to denote read-headed people and cats. Red wine is just regular red as opposed to white, but we also have "wine red", which I think is called "burgundy" in English (maybe some of our English-speaking fellow bloggers will help us). In contrast, the red for the Red Army is a specific term, too :-)
ReplyDeleteAbout the correlation - my other cat is calico (we call them simply "three-colored" in Czech) and I have noticed in more cats of this combination that their character may be a bit difficult - in my opinion, the three colors "fight" among each other and the poor cat sometimes doesn't know which direction to choose :-)