EPISODE 335: BILL Z…. A Canadian-Slovak response to Al’s 1993 nostalgic trip to Bratislava (Thom N.)

alan skeoch

May 2021

Artwork by Bill Z done during a 1979 visit to his Slovak relatives

Thom N—-, friend from the deep past, sent MY Slovak Episodes to his close friend Bill Z—– who responded with some

interesting comments and a series of his artistic interpretation of Slovak life about the same time

as we visited Slovakia.    Most of the readers of my episodes are not Slovaks.  But I bet dollars to do-nuts

everyone has seen Fiddler on the Roof !  Similar set designs.   Bill Z and Thom N are real persons but I have not included

their full names.

By the way, Thom, I had a nice long discussion with Bill…complimented him on his art…perhaps you can

forward this note to Bill.

 

Al,

Bill Z, a best buddy is an incredible artist and was the Media Consultant for the Etobicoke Board of Education.

He was a docent at  the Dali Art museum in Sarasota for over a decade when wintering at his condo in St. Petersburg.

He continues to study art around the world. I sent Bill your last missive about Slovakia and his response deserved forwarding to you and your son .His sketches tell a story themselves.

Enjoy the memories.

Stay safe,

Thom

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

From: Bill Z
Sent: May 5, 2021 5:52 PM
To: Thomas N
Subject: Re: follow up / My response to Al’s 1993 nostalgic trip to Bratislava

 

Thom, Feel free to forward to Al and his son.  Be forewarned, the photos may scramble from the original aligned format.  – Bill

 

Dobrý deň Tomas,

 

Thank you for forwarding yesterday the fascinating accounts and nostalgic photos of your friend Al Skeoch’s 1993 trip to Bratislava to visit his son teaching English there! … I happen to have been a student there in Grade 9 for the beginning of the 1953-4 school year before switching to Vaughan Road C.I when our family ‘moved on up’ to the suburbs. 

 

Considering my background, Al’s vivid emailed accounts easily teleported me to Bratislava and the rural countryside of my thirty two plus relatives of all stripes in central Slovakia. Most were labourers, farmers, field hands, homemakers, a couple of doctors, educators and politicians, each hard-working. All those memories of the year I lived and studied making connections there with relatives and fellow classmates in 1974 came rushing back to mind as if yesterday.

 

I also went back a couple of times, once in 1979 to participate in the international Detva Folkloric Festival with a contingent of Slovak dancers from a Toronto cultural club representing Canada. A real blast!  Another time, after the fall of Communism, to include more time with my academically educated cousins, those professionals who prospered regionally and beyond, now living in the cities of Bratislava, Prague and Vienna. Some also visited me in Toronto. A true pleasure! I regularly exchange emails with my closest cousin Marta, who studied the Queen’s English for two years in London. Speaks fluently, and with a cultured British accent to boot. 

 

The history of Czechoslovakia’s breakup as referenced is a most interesting one. Particularly the ’stolen’ flag shenanigan by the Czech Republic (which I subsequently googled out of curiosity). And I easily related to, or experienced, many of his same personal eye-opening real life adventures. The episode of the secretive party in a wine cellar of a distant darkened village. The ruins, dilapidated shacks, abandoned farmers’  homes unlit at night, and dirt roads along the way as the country transitions from one generation to another. The outdoor markets selling handmade wooden crafts, corn husk dolls, embroidered items. The refreshing panoramic views from the peaks of the scenic Tatra Mountains, the lively music, the local food, delicious dumplings smothered in gravy, and home-made wine or slivovice, and as you and Cathy regretfully experienced in a Prague tram, the scourge of Roma pickpockets, once surprisingly denounced on Canadian T.V. by an international Czechoslovak beauty contestant. The initial cultural shock and language divide. Curious stares of locals turning into smiles and then as strangers turning into friends. It sure helped that I understood and spoke the dialect, admittedly with a lot of hand gestures. Unlike Al, I did get a personal tour of a large scale, well run collective farm while I was there that year. Super clean. Healthy animals. Very impressive!

 

Not sure if you have seen these quick, plein-air sketches of things large and small created in ’74 while hanging out that year most weekends in my home village of Dojç located an hour or so north of Bratislava.       I had great fun in attempting to capture images of authentic Slovakia at the time, and to this day they bring back some of my life’s most precious memories!

 

Again, thank you and Al for sharing.

 

Be well.       – Bill

 

 

  

     The village church:  functioning communal well in the centre of Dojç:  inside my uncle’s barn with wheelbarrow and wagon wheels:  my aunt’s cooking utensils, pots, pans, pails and lids in her kitchen.

                     

 

 

       Stripping feather for down for comforters: detail of my uncle Villo’s workshop: a wedding parade marching down the street: my uncles, aunt and a cousin making sausage after having slaughtered a pig they raised.

           

 

 

    My niece Pavlinka watches uncles Villo and Stefan washing and butchering the pig: choice cuts hanging on the ladder ready to be smoked for winter: Aunt Paula washing the natural casings for sausage-making.

                              

 

 

  The last sketch was done in December in the village cemetery. The stone marker has a portrait of my long-deceased grandmother, her name Vincentia Zilinkova can be seen carved in the gray granite below. 

                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

      “Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world. “     – Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

 

 

     

 

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