{"id":163,"date":"2023-05-06T17:46:08","date_gmt":"2023-05-06T17:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mappabianca.com\/?page_id=163"},"modified":"2023-10-16T12:40:46","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T12:40:46","slug":"vlkolinec","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mappabianca.com\/en\/vlkolinec\/","title":{"rendered":"Vlkol\u00ednec"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I hope you have experienced at least once in your life the feeling of estrangement<\/i> that one can live by exploring. Let me explain\nstarting in Vlkolinec, a Slovakian UNESCO heritage village of about 60\nhouses. Estrangement is a feeling I felt immediately when the bonnet of the\ncar turned onto the crossroads from Jazierce to Vlkolinec, because there were\nsnow-covered forests and peaks whose names I did not know. Beside the road was\na surprising number of ditches from which the water rushed with a sound\nas of chattering, and was then lost in the moss. The village stood on a\nsunny plateau at the end of a branch of the valley. There was no one there,\nnot even the leaves on the trees. No cars, no noise, just wooden houses\nand an atmosphere of mystery and solitude.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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That's the estrangement I'm talking about: it's that principled feeling we experience when exploring a place that is foreign to us. At first we think it is foreign to everyone, even the locals. We don't know them or their habits. That boulder in the middle of the forest seems covered in mystery rather than moss. We are unfamiliar with the slopes, the abandoned mountain ridges, as if no one had ever lived there. We do not know, so nobody knows. We are the first, and the road generates a little further ahead, around every bend, so that we cannot see it. The whole valley seems foreign, to us and to everyone. I believe that this is one of the most beautiful feelings associated with exploration, the ultimate sense of estrangement: not knowing the place, nor the people who live there, and instinctively believing that everything we see is universally unknown.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Vlkolinec seen from the meadows on the plateau<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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One of the buildings in Vlkolinec. In the background the snow-capped peaks. Everything is very old, but it is not a museum.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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