Time Traveler – First Visit to Muranska Lehota

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It started with a walk in the Carpathian Mountains from my living room sofa.  Late one night, I typed “Muran Lehota, Slovakia” into Google maps.  Having recently discovered the many cool features of Google maps, I had been meaning to check out the village that my Grandma Pauline had once quizzed me on how to spell.  Muranska Lehota first appeared as a pink raindrop upon a green and sparse landscape.   A closer zoom showed a lonely highway.  Another click revealed a long access road leading to a village of two streets.  With a swipe of my finger, I found myself in the village via “street view”.  I started a virtual stroll down the street and a house caught my eye.  It resembled a house in a photo I had scanned to digital format at a family reunion.  The story is that Grandma Pauline had snapped that picture of house 29 in 1981 during her first and only visit to her parents’ village.  I pulled up my electronic copy of the photo, and except for a new roof and peeling stucco, it was a perfect match with the house on Google maps.

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Travel to Transylvania

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I’m happy to see that Transylvania, a place my husband and I first traveled to in 1999, is now considered to be “the world’s best region to travel in 2016” by Lonely Planet.  We knew it back then.  Dracula legends and connotations aside, Transylvania is a mountainous wonderland of history and nature.

In the Transylvanian villages of Mera, Buza, Szaszcsavas, Parajd, and Szek, warm, friendly people opened their homes and fed us like kings.  We hiked, danced, drank wine under a full moon, swam in a salt lake, enjoyed a folk concert in a salt mine, hunted for snails with our hosts, and explored the ruins of the Bonchida castle, which has since undergone restoration.  We even attended a village christening, carefully dressed in traditional garb by the family who hosted us.

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I was forever touched by my first journey to Transylvania.  My yet-to-be published novel “Circle of the Silver Birch Trees” draws heavily on my experience exploring this unique European destination.  It makes me smile that this special place is gaining recognition in the wider world.