A couple of interesting observations I’ve made are regarding Gargoyles and Chocolate. The gargoyles on St. Elizabeth are really cool drainage troughs for the melted snow ❄️ and rain 🌧. It looks like the water runs right out of their mouths — and that’s the only place where water actually drips from the cathedral roof heights.

Gargoyles and Chocolate

Easter celebrations, as I’ve heard, are very traditional here – and not so nice for girls and women. I was told by both Bibiana and Elena’s mom: The girls don’t get any chocolate on Easter. Only boys get chocolate—chocolate eggs, hens or bunnies. Girls get cold water thrown on them, either a glass on the face, or a bucket 🪣 on the body. Girls also get hit or beaten on their bottom with a stick. (I bought such an Easter hitting stick as a souvenir.) Even Mrs. Sedlakova gets water 💦 thrown on her, and gets beaten with a stick, (and she gets) no chocolate.

Bibiana said that, if a girl was ready to marry and hadn’t, then a boy would come to the house with a ribbon tree for her. (I need to get more details on this.)

But it’s very strict, and according to Mrs. Sedlakova, the chocolate part never varies: No chocolate for the girls. So all those little chocolate bunnies lining the grocery shelves will go home to boys??

 

This is an excerpt from my Kosice Journal, documenting my exodus from a (relatively happy) bustling life in beautiful San Diego, to (voluntarily) take a post teaching English in the newly independent eastern capital of Slovakia  during a very cold winter 1999.