I took a vacation; there will be no slides

Last month Kathleen and I joined her sibs, Linda and Paul Capcara, and their spouses for a trip to the Capcara homeland in the hinterlands of northern Slovakia and Poland. Friends have urged me to post an account, and though I am skeptical of your interest, here it is.  

Before the homeland we treated ourselves to Budapest, Vienna, and Prague.

In order, Budapest was very agreeable. We toured the massive Dohany Street Synagogue (second-largest in the world), the Parliament, and the central market, which was full of sausages and hams and paprika. We arrived to tour St. Stephen's Cathedral just as the last Pentecost morning Mass was ending, with incense permeating the place and an organ sounding with vibrations you could feel through the soles of your feet. 

Vienna was, of course, elegant and charming, though as imposing as the Habsburg palaces are, they are plainly meant for large formal occasions, and it is difficult to imagine human beings actually living in them. The Staatsoper was gorgeous, and the Viennese know how to produce an opera, with musicians from the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit, elaborate sets, and crowds of extras swarming over the stage. The opera, regrettably, was, Rosenkavalier, but the performance was first rate. (If it had been Nozze di Figaro, I would have happily died on the spot.)

Prague captured my heart, in part because the pilsner was the finest I've ever drunk. Outside the opera house, which we weren't able to enter, there is a small memorial to the premiere of Don Giovanni there. In the tour of Prague Castle, we were at one point in the room where the Third Denefestration of Prague occurred, and I was able to touch the frame of the window through which the Bohemians flung the Catholic Austrian delegates and started the Thirty Years' War. We toured St. Nicholas Church, a Baroque beauty acquired by the Hussite Church; they observe the seven sacraments, deny the authority of the Vatican, and ordain women and bishops. Close to Anglican. 

The Capcara homeland in the Carpathians turned out to be more pleasant than I had expected. After marching through the daily itinerary in the cities, the lodge where we stayed in northern Slovakia was relaxing: fresh mountain air, spring-fed streams running down the hills, time to relax. 

The homeland (which included Andy Warhol's hometown) turned out to be a series of villages, some as small as a dozen houses with a Greek Catholic or Orthodox church with an iconostasis from floor to ceiling and a cemetery. We discovered, after some confusion, that the family name in those parts is actually pronounced "Sapsara." We found a couple of people with knowledge of a Capcara great-grandmother and some grave markers with family names. 

We had arranged through a cousin for a Polish tour guide, and at the end of the tour he said his mother would like to give us lunch. The six of us sat down at the table while this short, gray-haired Polish woman served soup with barley, shredded  pork, and herbs from her garden. After that, the pierogi course: eight glistening cheese-and-potato dumplings on each plate. I ate the entire serving, so as not to offend the house. Then dessert: an apple-walnut cake with chocolate and orange flavoring. I ate three slices, to be polite. 

Many little things remain in memory. The pilsner. The convenience of train travel between European cities. The trams crisscrossing each city. Boats on the Danube and Vlatava. The masses of electricity-generating windmills across the Hungarian plain. The storks nesting on utility poles in Slovakia. And the pilsner.