Thank you for all your birthday wishes, It was quiet here. I doubt the men in my house believed I needed spoiling after my recent dream trip. I took care of myself, though, and booked a mini spa appointment as I am in serious withdrawal. Believe me, I’m not looking for sympathy.
Back in Slovakia, this fountain dispensed what was nicknamed "the cure." This was nothing like the Bobbsey Twins’ in Volcano Land, their trip to Hawaii, where they imbibed in pineapple juice from a drinking fountain. People come from all over to drink this hot, vile smelling liquid, produced naturally from underground sulphuric springs that you could smell from a mile away. So committed to the cure are the Slovaks, they haul it off in bottles. I even saw someone feeding it to a baby. It’s supposed to cure whatever ails you and the list of ailments is a page long.
Of our threesome, I was the only soul brave enough to give it a go, and once was definitely enough. From my experience I think the point of the cure is the belch. The stinky sulphuric belch. I can only imagine what might happen if you stifled it. E e-mailed me recently and said she was peeling hard boiled eggs and the smell was making her feel nostalgic.
There was a little steamy pond nearby where fish and turtles lived in the stuff. Frankly I don’t know how they survived. It seemed like a life of slow poaching; a natural source of Bouillabaisse. They looked happy enough.
One of the aspects of the high mineral content in the water was that it made you extremely buoyant. It was easy to float in the mineral pools. It’s amazing how perky we all became, like we were wearing invisible WonderBras. As E and I sat on the underwater bench along the side of mirror pool with our various floaty bits, we heard men’s voices on the other side of the wall and imagined what was floating over there. No one said we had to behave like grownups the entire time we were on this trip. Besides, being related by marriage means we missed out on sharing those all important girlhood giggles, and we seemed determined to make up for lost time.
This is another scarf completed in Slovakia, details a few posts back:
Life's a Stitch 
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