Wooden churches of Kalná Roztoka, Slovakia

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Another whirlwind day of activity in eastern Slovakia today, despite the fact that we’d have preferred to rest up after the long and exciting day yesterday getting trapped in the High Tatras mountains. But here in Humenné we only have a single day to go see one of the famous old wooden churches that dot the landscape in this part of Europe. It would take a lot of local transportation that Masayo and I had to figure out, but my blood sugars were ok while in the countryside. Too bad the delicious Slovakian dinner would wreck my body for a few hours.

But hey, a traveler has to absorb the blows. A diabetic traveler, more so. Today was a highlight of the trip any way you slice it.

Waking up in Hotel Alibaba my blood sugar was 184, almost exactly what it was last night. The breakfast buffet downstairs was exceptionally big; I had pastries, coffee, eggs, sausages, yogurt, and vegetables. Something of a diabetic challenge, but I’m getting better overall at these huge breakfasts that render lunch almost entirely unnecessary.

The view out of our room window was one of the nicest we’ve had on this trip: a sweeping panorama to a hilly Slovakian countryside with a road and a few buildings below us. Coolest of all was the train line that ran by. It was a bright and sunny day, cold air but warm sunshine. There wasn’t a single cloud up above: we couldn’t wait to get outside!

There are several wooden churches in this part of Slovakia, and in southern Poland. Some of them, collectively, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We chose a nearby one in a village called Kalná Roztoka; this church isn’t actually part of the UNESCO group for some reason but seemed nice.

The thing is, it’s in a very obscure part of the countryside. Often the best things while traveling don’t come easy, but making your own way is half of the fun anyway.

We walked down the bus station in Humenné and found our ride to a place called Snina. Once there we walked around Snina for a few minutes waiting for our connecting bus; I bought juice and chocolate at a small market and we found statues not only of Pope John Paul II but of a merry snowman, standing by himself in a little park.

Kalná Roztoka in the rolling hills

The bus to Kalná Roztoka arrived soon and we got on and paid the driver. The trip from Snina took about half an hour through lovely, hilly countryside. White smoke wafted up from houses, when there were any, and the road wound around curves amid gentle green-grass slopes. We finally hopped off at a nondescript bend in the road in front of some houses, just because we thought we saw our church on a nearby hill.

Luckily we had guessed the stop right: we were in Kalná Roztoka – a place we’d never heard of two days ago but which had become a singular goal for today.

A couple of locals had gotten off the bus and disappeared up side roads towards the quiet houses, but there wasn’t a single other tourist around. Kalná Roztoka is extremely small; it seems to consist of about thirty houses scattered among the hills, often out of view of one another.

The bus that brought us disappeared over a ridge and out of sight and left Masayo and I standing on the side of the road, no cars going by and no people in sight. We were just five kilometers from the Ukrainian border, alone under a bold and bright blue sky.

We hiked up the small hill that held our destination: The Wooden Church of St. John the Baptist. It dates from the seventeenth century, and has the characteristics that make these wooden churches so well-loved: it’s small and quirky, with funny shapes on its modest tower and a fragile but defiant look thanks to the carefully-placed wooden planks.

This particular church also has its own cemetery, neat little rows on a gentle slope to one side of the main building with lots of fresh, colorful flowers and the occasional trimmed tree or bush. We walked up and down the rows reading the names on the graves in absolute quiet: still nobody else was around and it felt like we were a thousand miles from any larger civilization than this. From the far end of the cemetery you could see miles over the distant hills, and each looked as quiet and comforting as the next.

The church itself was closed; a typewritten sign on the front door explained (in English) that you could call a phone number and someone would come let you in the church. We didn’t want to bother that person on a serene day like today, and aren’t traveling with a working phone anyway, so we just walked around the building and communed with its sturdy old architecture.

Next to the church I checked my BG – 177 after that big breakfast and the bus rides. Not too bad. I got a photo of my BG meter and I with the church behind me, a particularly nice diabetes travel photo, and then Masayo and I began to wonder what else there was to do: the return bus wasn’t coming for another two hours.

A tourist map on a board showed another church within walking distance so we decided to amble, slowly, down the road to see it. We walked along the main road, not having to worry too much about cars because there were hardly any, and found this other church past a small clutch of houses.

This church isn’t wooden, so isn’t really part of whatever tourist trail might pass through Kalná Roztoka in busier seasons, but is equally adorable and of roughly the same size as the first church. We walked around it as sunbeams slanted in from over a ridge to the southwest; it too was closed but a glass back door made it possible to glimpse the colorful altar inside. There was no cemetery here, and the main chamber inside didn’t look like it could hold many more than about twenty parishioners at a time.

This felt like authentic, unshowy Slovakia – just local life as it’s lived. That’s what you get when you leave the bigger towns and roam the countryside. Real life.

Or, the evidence of real life, anyway. We still didn’t see hardly any other people until we walked back to the bus stop/wooden church area and chanced upon the only store in the area, a place called Espresso.

Three older men were drinking beer, smoking, and chatting in a front room but the main room inside was dark and empty. The lady running it was sitting watching a TV up on the wall. When we came in she lazily got up and walked behind a little desk, behind which was a very small selection of snack foods. The afternoon TV chattered away at low volume behind us.

Masayo and I each got a cup of warm tea for 50 eurocents each and sat at a big wooden table to kill time and rest from the cold outside – in these December hills the sun sets fast and the air was getting duskier and chillier. I poured a little sugar in my tea, thinking that all the walking around might make me low.

After we each experienced the Espresso bathrooms in turn – a real wooden outhouse behind the building – Masayo and I finished our tea and went out to while away the remaining hour before the bus came. We ended up back at the original wooden church, on its hill above Espresso.

We took the opportunity to have a sort of picnic – I took a scenic Humalog shot by the church and we sat and ate snacks on a wooden bench by a bell tower. I had a Mars bar and some water. Budget traveler picnic!

(Don’t worry, I still had more chocolate and juice for low blood sugar snacks.)

When the time came we waited on the road expectantly for the bus back to Snina to show up, and it did, right on time. We breathed a sigh of relief. Like our late afternoon in the rural Åland Islands way back at the start of this trip, if we missed this bus back to Earth we had no backup plan whatsoever in the middle of nowhere.

The bus driver drove fast and we arrived in Snina about 10 minutes early. We’d planned on waiting an hour for our bus transfer in Snina and were going to use the time to find a bigger meal in town. But since we arrived early we were able to jump immediately on a bus back to Humenné. We’d probably have more dining options there. Nice luck! Thanks, impatient bus driver.

Too much food – don’t throw up!

Back in Humenné it was already dark and there was a big bright full moon overhead as we marched back to the hotel. Slovakia began with a couple of rainy days and a grumpy mood on my part over in Bratislava, but has just been getting nicer and nicer since.

Not diabetically, though: in the Hotel Alibaba room I was 225. That’s what I get for putting sugar in my tea back in Kalná Roztoka.

Dinner was down in the hotel restaurant because the prices were reasonable and they offered apparently real Slovakian food. Both Masayo and I ordered the “farmer’s plate” which included lots of sauerkraut, cheese, dumplings, bacon, and other items. Delicious but dense and very filling. We also got organic Rooibos tea from Sri Lanka.

No culinary purists, we.

In the room a couple hours later my BG was 212. At the same time, I wanted to get rid of the rest of the cereal we’d bought so I wouldn’t have to travel with it on our way to Hungary tomorrow. So I shot up some insulin and ate two good-size bowls. I also decided to have a can of beer from the minibar.

However I overestimated my capacity for food: as I finished the cereal I started to feel really bad. For about three hours I felt like I was going to throw up. I never did, though; it was probably just that my stomach was overwhelmed with food. It wasn’t like I felt ill, just bloated.

The worst part was that I scarcely touched the beer. I’d have to pay for it but most of it went down the sink drain.

By 10:30 pm I was still 250 so I took a little Humalog and went to bed. Acceptable readings at the wooden church followed by three 200+ readings in the evening. Oops.

Tomorrow we’re saying goodbye to Humenné and to Slovakia, bound for Hungary. The churches in Kalná Roztoka were a fantastic experience, unusual and quiet, and we felt like we’d earned the experience. We’ve hit our groove on this trip and have been riding it pretty consistently for a while now.

Travel really is the best!

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