On the way to their cottage, we drove on the Slovak highways, which Vladimir helped build. He is Director of the Slovak Road Administration. En route, we stopped to admire Tunnel Branisko. It is his current project and the first tunnel in Slovakia.
Just last Saturday, on May 1st, a ceremony was held because the east met the west in the center where they were tunnelling. One side is a geographic profile, they explained to me, and the other is actual tunnel. When they have enough money, I was told, they will finish the tunnel.
A brochure created for the project depicts St. Barbara, the patron saint of miners. Up the road a way, we stopped at a shrine on the hillside, where travellers with horse and buggy used to stop and give “Glory to God” for making it up the hill. (Now that I research it a bit online, decades later, I see that this was indeed an infamously dangerous route.)
This shrine was also the model for a cake torte at the ceremony on Saturday. It’s symbolic for the miners and is also on the brochure back. Very interesting. Vladimir took videos of it too. From up on the hill, we enjoyed a great, albeit slightly foggy view of Spisky Hrad.
I learned that many Ukrainian workers came over to work on the tunnel project illegally. They are Ukrainian mafia and the Slovaks can’t say no to them. Meanwhile many Slovaks are out of work. Unemployment here is over 20% and this is the first year unemployment has gone up in March. Usually it improves after the winter months since construction slows down in January and February.
Feeling Carsick
Further on we drove. Between the curvy roads, bumpy potholes, fast driving, and looking up word translations in the dictionary, I felt more carsick than ever. When we were almost there, my face must have been green and I lost it. But I held it back down. Pretty gross, but I managed, and soon afterwards, we stepped out of the car.
Into the Future
(In the future, I looked up news about this project and found that many of the project directors on the Slovak Road Administration were suspected as stealing money from making fake invoices on the project, and depositing that money into Swiss bank accounts. Luckily, I did not see the name of my family’s father in the list of suspected criminals.)
Saturday 8 May, 1999
