travel

Does it happen to you as well these days?

Do you feel those immense amounts of energy being poured upon you from who knows where?

Me, being the child of spring, go through this high-energy phase every year – I just can’t wait until it arrives.

Spring is my legal drug (not that there are any illegal in my life… that I know of).

Now you might be asking what spring has in common with the picture of a castle placed above.

Well… in my case – quite much.

Because right now I am in the state which makes me feel like taking a picture of every single interesting thing on the face of the earth.

So why not start with history?

History is so interesting and here where I live (which is at the very heart of Europe) it lies around every corner… literally.

For example – the castle that we visited last weekend (and that I am going to give you a sneak peek of) is about one thousand years old…

One thousand years old!

That’s something, ha?

It is called Bzovik and I consider it a great place for vampires to reside in.

I can perfectly imagine their coffins placed in the basement.

Spooky…

What I really, really loved about that place was that there was no guard or keeper or whatever the name of the person should be.

You can freely come in, go anywhere you like, look into any hole you find, visit any chamber you come across inside.

Basically, what you can do is to unleash your imagination entirely and, without even noticing it yourself, start to speak to your imaginary servants, husband, lovers, children… and then your boyfriend finds you and asks whether you are foggy in your brain of what…

Anyway, this is the building which started it all – the monastery.

Monks used to live there in perfect harmony for about four hundred years.

Until… just until that day… when one guy decided to have them all murdered and change the monastery into a fortress.

The reason?

He fancied a different religion.

Things happen…

That was when these walls were built around the church.

Nice, tall, firm walls… with four towers… one in every corner.

And this is the great tower – the greatest of all four towers. It was a self-sufficient tower housing the lord and his family, which, at times, became a sturdy refuge capable of withstanding at least a brief siege.

Most chambers are situated in this part of the wall.

Hello, welcome… just sit down and enjoy the view and some gunfire…

Would you like some wine or beer with that?

Other towers were used for guarding purposes.

This is the interior or the guard tower.

Please, notice the shape of the window – it widens inwards. These early windows did not let much light in, but provided good protection from incoming missiles.

Just perfect for a gun and one wakeful eye.

Where are you hiding, ugly suckers?

In case you wondered what stairs might look like after they had been used for exactly 500 years – here is the answer.

Ghosts were really good at hiding this time… but I am not giving up… I’ll find you somewhere else… don’t you worry for a second.