Our beautiful memorable day continued. The ride to Shirava took forever and I did my best, better than before. One stretch of new road was smooth between Prešov and the next town. Maria’s family live near Prešov. We had to drive around Kosice to get to Shirava, only 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

On the way we stopped quickly to take pictures at and of the pretty yellow flower fields at Spišky Hrad. It was so neat driving through villages and seeing trees decorated with colorful ribbons! It’s a May Day tradition for boys to trim the trees of the girls house who they love. It was adorable to see!

A Singing Family

Maria, Vlado, and Christina sang a song about it… “Mai, Mai, Mai…” It was incredibly good!!! They are such a neat and nice musical family.

Finally we made it to Shirava where Elena and four of her friends were waiting. On our way there, she had called us on the cellphone. One of her girlfriends had her 17th birthday and so they had a party. No parents, no boys, and no alcohol. The other girls were spending the night there. Elena said that sometimes lately there are robbers there going into holiday homes.

On the way home, they all were singing beautiful songs about Mai, Mai, Mai; something about getting married, and about the rain. I loved it hearing them sing our way to Košice. Even the dad did a solo!

Not the End

Well that was not the end. They invited me to come to their house. Christina or Elena said, “You will come to our house?” “I wanted it to be a question, but it wasn’t. I am sorry.”

They have a very comfortable inviting home. Apparently they had cleaned up for me, as the girls said their room was “never this clean!”

Maria is quite an artist. She showed me all of her paintings, which I would love to have one of Košice. Impressively, she does very nice and talented work. She used to go to university but had problems and had to quit under Communism since she was religious.  Both girls play piano and Elena plays guitar, violin, and clarinet (or flute-a -phone).

Vlado excitedly showed me his plate collection of the many cities he’s been to. From Berlin, Athens, Crete, Ukrania (Cossacks his family name is Kosak and comes from the same region.) Russia, Paris, Italy, Roma, Oslo… Very impressive. The family travelled together to Italy and Croatia!

A Beautiful Memorable Day

Vlado played us the video he took of our day together, and of Friday night. All of us totally laughed our way through it. They said that I was the first American woman to visit the Tunnel. I think the first American.

They showed me the video of the tunnel ceremony and a video of Elenka’s school talent show type-thing. The American teacher at her school Dan Leman, sang a song on the guitar called Brynsy Haluzsky to the tune of “La Bomba.” Pretty good.

And we watched the girls piano recitals. They are quite good, especially Elena is a bit more advanced. Christina however was number four out of 100 (students) in her tests at school and will study in a special tract for technicians. By the way, there is (currently in 1999) only one veterinarian school in all of Slovakia and it’s here in Košice.

All of us were pretty tired, wishing each other a pleasant sleep and sweet dreams. Maria and Vlado drove me home. Getting out of the car, they told me good night very nicely, watched me walk inside, and drove off. The end of a beautiful memorable day!

Saturday, 8 May 1999