Sunday, August 27th, Bratislava, Slovakia

 

Greetings!

Last night, our hotel host provided a tour of his deep cave wine cellar, and then followed it up with a wine-paired meal accompanied by local popular guitarists.  The owner, Pavel, is clearly a major collector of wines.  His hotel sits atop an extensive multi-level of caves under the town, and he has 3,000 wines spanning almost 70 years stored in it.  Nearby, he has 25,000 more, covering over 200 individual wine varieties.  

Our desert tonight was partly prepared by our travelers, who completed parts of the prune cake preparation during the meal, and then eagerly awaited the finished result.  Our host shared the printed recipe, and even included a personal hotline for those with questions.

Today was a transit day, and our destination was Bratislava in Slovakia.  After breakfast, we drove to the ancient Moravian city of Trebic to visit its Jewish ghetto - a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Strolling through its narrow alleyways, we stopped to recognize small "stumble stones"  placed in front of doors to memoralize those from the town who had died at the end of WWII.  Many were sent to the concentration camp we visit in the Czech Republic last week.

We then stopped to visit the Jewish Synagogue, and hear a briefing from its visitor staff.  Restored over the past thirty years, the structure contains donated materials from the 1800's, and a large diorama of the town as it would have looked with 1,000 residents at its peak.  Finally, we saw displayed three sculptures donated in her will by a resident artist (Margie Subak Elsohn).

Our next stop was the Lednice Castle,  It made the UNESCO World Heritage List because of its unique mix of Baroque, Neo-Classic, and Neo-Gothic architecture, and its history as a cultural landscape designed intentionally by a single family.  Owned by the House of Liechtenstein since 1249, the family transformed the property into one large private park during the 17th to 20th centuries.  Seized by the Nazis in WWII, and by Czechoslovakia after the war, the family has been trying to regain the property after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Sunday, August 27th, Bratislava, Slovakia.




  


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