TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

10:32 PM
Posted by jodi rose

wednesday 22:15
just correcting the auto time-date stamp which is stuck in oz.
i however am stuck in sturovo. not really but had another trip to esztergom this afternoon with gyuri, who tried to persuade the border guards not to stamp my passport every time I cross - she is guarding your bridge and your jobs, he said. they remained unconvinced.
and really, one would imagine that in a small town in the slow winter that you could focus exclusively on work - but it's extraordinary how much there is to distract oneself with. and I still have mile long to do lists. crazy. did manage to tidy and clean the apartment today, unpack properly and find places for all my bits and pieces on the shelves. a lovely 60's armchair with bobbly cream cushions and warm red rug set up by the window looking out on the courtyard - which four men were raking the leaves from this morning - and I'm set. A winter of reading - started on the Danube book and it's intriguing.
Have learnt a lot about this area in the last two days - also visited the town's historic museum which is in the same building as my apartment. This place was first settled in roman times, called Avanum in around 1005. There was a (small) castle here which burned in the battles of 1598 against the Hungarian and Polish armies across the river in Esztergom. The Turks based here won that particular war even though the castle was lost. Beautiful line drawings of the battles, encampment of tents along the river making a city of soldiers, thousands of them skirmishing head on in the river - bridge straight across to the hill in those days. The basilica is built on a site where there has been a church for 1,000 years - but it was only built in the 1800's. I think from memory.
And the museum director confirmed the rumour I had heard of a secret tunnel under the danube, he said some of the older people in town had taken him to the site where it emerged and there are tiles from an ancient Turkish bridge there. But my history teacher says this tunnel is only a legend and never really existed, how would they have built it in medieval times, he asked me, with what technology?
I don't know but am sure it would have been muddy. Perhaps they had help in a time-warp from the aliens down the river :)
(see Novy Most www.groove.u-f-o.sk)
According to Magris, the danube is a river that sings, and is populated with gods and mythological creatures along its banks. Although even in Holderlin's time the modern age was crowding these out with fact and mundane rational everyday life. But I can still see those old gods and nyads, fauns and dryads in the mist.
Which is all pervading - the nights are the clearest when you can see alll the way to the stars, but during the day even when the sun attempts to shine straggling through the heavy haze, there is such lack of visibility that the sky seems to have closed in already.
Reports of snow this weekend may be greatly exaggerated. we'll see.
Maybe I can excavate the old tunnel now that would be a project.
Read stories from the townspeople in Sonja's installation, in communist times here you were searched every time you crossed the river, and in the 70's could only make two trips per year. But the remaining arch was one of the romance points for the young people.
Now it's the green pub - told it's the best in slovakia, possibly in all mitteleuropa. Which is quite a claim - but deserves investigation...