Westwards

October to December 2015 – Busy and productive months

This post will be a brief review of the last three months, giving you a chance to catch up even if you missed some blog posts. Both of us were working as tour guides through most of October. Natascha's long Pamir tour, with 24 days the longest she has ever guided, stretched from September into the beginning of October.
Back in Berlin she had only five days to clear the backlog, wash some laundry and prepare the next trip to Japan. Thanks to a wonderful group and a fantastic, very relaxed itinerary it turned out being one of the most enjoyable tours she has led. Isa also spent most of October with tour guiding work in Japan on a quite unusual trip leading from the far north in Hokkaido to Kyushu in the South, covering all of the four main islands in Japan.

For November we had planned a hiking trip in Palestine, for which we had booked a flight to Tel Aviv. Due to the political turmoil and violent outbreaks between Israelis and Palestinians (and after a lot of talking with different people) we cancelled our plans and forfeited the flight (the fourth flight in three years, but we still haven't got used to it).

Not wanting to buy another plane ticket, we were looking for a destination accessible by bus or train from Berlin and came up with Lithuania, which can be reached conveniently (!) by an 18 hour overnight bus ride. In the end we were very, very happy with this decision: Lithuania turned out as a great and in our opinion underrated travel destination.

December finally brought an extended weekend in Lienz / East Tyrol to see the spooky Krampus rally there. We will research and write a guidebook about Tyrol next summer and this was part of the preliminary research.

And as always we were working on our different guide book projects and other writing work, among them a fact check for the German edition of the National Geographic Traveller guide book "Japan" that will be published next spring. As it gets more and more difficult to publish (i.e. getting paid for) articles in newspapers and magazines we were especially delighted that the Austrian Newspaper Presse Wien published an article about Miyajima in Japan by us in October.

Whenever we are at home in Berlin, we also meet friends, try new restaurants, go to movies and exhibitions. We finally made it to the new permanent light installation of James Turrell at the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery and we went to see an extraordinary Cindy Sherman photo exhibition (until April 2016, do go!).

Summary of the last three months of blogging on WESTWARDS:

Kyrgyzstan

As Natascha visited with her tour group we thought we might bring you a post about one of the few UNESCO sights in that beautiful country.

• Salomon's throne in Osh – a spiritual mountain (UNESCO)

Japan

Isa went to some off-the-beaten-track places with her last group.

• Moss balls in Hokkaido's clear lakes – the extraordinary marimo algae in Japan
• Bears and other animals in the Shiretoko National park on Hokkaido (UNESCO)
• Naoshima – an artsy island in Japan's Inland Sea

Jordan

This post was planned as a prelude to our trip to the Middle East that did not take place eventually.

• A camel ride through the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan

Lithuania

We spent two weeks travelling this underrated country in November

• Kernave – five steep hill forts near the Neris river (UNESCO)
• Vilnius, a captivating Baltic capital city (UNESCO)
• Wonderful November days on the Curonian Spit (UNESCO)
• Some thoughts about travelling in Lithuania for two weeks

Slovakia

Raving about lesser known cities and countries in Eastern Europe we remembered another pretty town we have visited a few years ago.

• Digging for the mining history in Banska Stiavnica (UNESCO)

Austria

• Krampus rally in Osttirol (East Tyrol) – the winter demons of the Alpine valleys

Berlin

• The German Ministry of Finance – a building full of surprises (normally closed to the public; we visited during the annual open day)
• Eating out vegan in Berlin - „Let it Be“ - Try it out!

Digging for the mining history in Banska Stiavnica

In the Slovakian contryside, Banska Stiavnica is a small town that used to be rich, immensely rich even: There are several silver mines around the area, and although there is still some mining today, the town's heyday was in the Renaissance period.

We arrive around 10 am by Bus, and our first action is to study the return timetable: there's a page-long list of several dozen busses, but practically each connection is marked with tiny letters and numbers explained below. "ar2" operates on weekdays (mon-fri) during the school holidays, but not on 8 August, and so on. That leaves us with about 2 buses that may (or may not) work for us.

Banska Stiavnica itself is quite hilly (the area is also called the "Ore Mountains") and rather stretched-out. But with a town map from the tourist information, navigation is a doddle.

Elegant squares, 16^th century churches, palaces and enormous administrative buildings used by the mining agencies for centuries dot the town. A huge baroque column sporting the Holy Trinity on top commemorates the victims of a Plague that hit the town in the early 18^th century, killing more than 6000 people.

The mining museum is located a bit outside the town around the interlocking Andreas, Jan and Bartholomé Galleries, among the oldest mining tunnels here. They are not in use any more, and the guided tour includes a short film and explanation in the museum and then a walk through the mines. We are led into the changing rooms first to get helmets, extra strong headlights and rain coats. They are well used and too large for us. But only for us. At least today, most of the other tourists are bear-like Slovakian bikers. "Oh, is that XXXL? Can you give it to me?" one of them shouts delightedly when Natascha suspiciously inspects the enormous coat she had grabbed first.

The tour leads us down into tunnels, working areas and subterranean common rooms. Some show tools and scenes from the beginning of mining here in the Middle Ages, but in others, quite modern machines are displayed – this mine was given up in 1924 but others near here are still working.
The tour is in Slovakian, and the brief English leaflet we got only lists names of some items on display: "pneumatic jump-drilling hammer", or "Ingresoll Temple Drill", so we are glad for the (Slovakian) introductory video we got to see at the beginning to get a better idea what the mining routine must have been like. In the beginning, the miners were mostly after the silver deposits, but later, antimon played a larger role in Banska Stiavnica, a metalloid used in alloys.

The town of Banska Stiavnica and the surrounding technical monuments became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993.

Is it worth visiting?

The 16^th century Renaisance town center is very pretty to stroll arund. We also visited the Mining Museum to get a better understanding of the role of the mining industry in the area and we quite enjoyed the tour through the mines (although it was in Slovakian). It was a nice enough excursion but not an absolute highlight, especially if you aren't much interested in the mining part.

How to get there

Banska Stiavnica is about 4 hours by train from Bratislava. The closest larger town is Banska Bystrica, also an old copper mining town with beautiful Renaissance houses. By bus it is just over an hour away from Banska Stiavnica.

Banské múzeum: http://www.muzeumbs.sk

Did you enjoy reading about the silver mines in Banska Stiavnica? Then you might want to read our posts about the Blaenavon coal mines in Wales or the Zeche Zollverein in Essen (another disused coal mine that became a World Heritage site).

Mud à la mode

From hot spa to clammy mine shafts, we rediscover a little-known country.

(For more photos from Slovakia, click here)

 “Tsään Minuten, Nikht Rrräden!,” barks the gaunt woman in a white medical coat who brought us here, and obediently, we barely dare to whisper or move for the next ten minutes. Nearly all the staff in the Slovak spa of Pieštani speak German, for the benefit of those German and Austrian patients coming for a week or more to cure their rheumatism or arthritis. They have made up the majority of visitors since the thermal springs – which had been known since the 12^th century – were turned into a fashionable spa in the 19^th century. The dark volcanic mud scooped up from the river Váh was found to have healing qualities. Even Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) came here to take healthy mud baths.

A strong young man triumphantly breaking his crutch became the emblem of the whole town.
In the 1920s the popularity of the spa reached another peak, with European entertainment stars and Indian maharajas visiting, but WWII set an end to that and turned Pieštany into just another sanatorium. With the political opening of Eastern Europe, the health resort apparently regained some of its former splendour.  The tall Balnea Palace Hotel and the Irma Spa with its rotund bathing hall, plus some lesser resorts, vie for guests from abroad. Today, the institution displays a quirky mix of Soviet and K.u.K. retro-styles.

At the end of the mud bathing session, we are administered a strict twenty-minute rest, rolled into white linen sheets in a semi-darkened hall smelling of a great history and, yes, volcanic mud.

Thus strengthened, we take on Slovakia. In the next few days, we visit medieval castles and Renaissance marketplaces. In Vlkolinec we stroll through a wooden village that the industrial revolution would seem to have bypassed, were it not for the two Japanese cars parked in front of bonbon-coloured blockhouses and the UNESCO World heritage sign. A tall house in Banska Bystrica, we learn, used to house the trading office of the rich Fugger family, where double-entry accounting was used for the first time ever. In Banska Štiavnica we visit the old silver mine that once made this mountainous area in one of the backwaters of Europe rich enough to build several pompous churches and administration palaces. Not to mention a huge plague column.