Our neighbours Csabi and Szonja came to us for help the last weekend in town. Their boiler had broken and they had a line on a cheap boiler in Slovakia and asked us if we could help them go and take a look. Honestly, our last weekend in town, we were less than enthusiastic. In the end, we finished our gardening earlier than expected and decided on the excursion. It was lucky for us we did. As fate would have it, as soon as we climbed in the car the clutch broke. The car did not break down on the highway on the way back to Budapest the next day, but just in front of the house of a mechanic. Zoli and his dad worked on the car for a couple hours trying to find the problem, which turned out to be nut supporting the clutch cable. When I tried to pay Zoli Jr. he refused payment and said it was a "free for his Jewish brother!" The back story is that a few months ago, Zoli and Attila ran up to me and asked if I could get them a copy of the Torah in Hungarian. I could not understand why roma in the middle of Borsod County would want a copy of the Torah. They want to convert and become a double-minority, or what? They said they were just interested. I was not sure it existed. In fact, it does not, but all the info is in the Old Testament and that is certainly translated.

We managed to set out late afternoon and arrived in Jasov at the end of a memorial football game dedicated to one of Szonja's relatives, a prominent murdered roma politician. We then took a look at the huge St. John the Baptist Church, the biggest monastery complex in Slovakia and one of the country's most important late-Baroque buildings. The roof and the two churches incorporated into the facade of the building have been renovated, but not the rest of the building. Even so, it was very impressive from the outside.

One also will find the entrance to the Jasov Cave here, part of the extensive Aggtelek-Slovak Karst system's 1200 caves. It is the oldest visitable cave in Slovakia. Pagoda-like stalagmites, columns, flowstone waterfalls, shields, drums, straw stalactites and other forms are very eye catching. Bones of ancient cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) and cave hyenas (Crocuta spelaea) were found in the cave. Nowadays, the Jasovská Cave is a very important bat locality. Eighteen bat species have already been found in the cave, primarily residing there in winter. The most abundant bats are the Greater Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) and Lesser Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros). The cave is one of the most important wintering places of the Greater Horseshoe bats in Slovakia. A tiny palpigrade Eukoenenia spelaea (an arachnid) represents the rare invertebrates.

Continuing on to Szonja's house, we were warned that we would see an area of abject poverty. I travelled to many poor and dilapidated areas, but I was still not prepared for this. OK, I saw a lot of bombed out buildings in Kosova, but no one was actually living in them. The buildings we passed here were still the homes for many roma families. At Szonja's home we were welcomed by her sister, given nice strong Turkish-style coffee (using a French press for years, I had forgotten what a good, strong coffee is like), some delicious bean soup, and Kata tried the "golya," or stork. Golya is a local or roma sausage specialty made with very expensive cuts of pork. The family was not able to secure a new boiler, but it was an interesting and nice trip.