Ten Days in Doily Heaven

I'm just back from a family vacation - my extended family (including my best friend and her family) took a nine-day bus tour through Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. We spent a day meeting some distant Slovakian relatives in the wee town of Trstene Pri Hornade - distant? Well, from my generation we all have the same great, great grandma.

Here's the bunch of us tromping through the cemetery outside the church where my grandpa was baptised to see the tombstones of our wayback kinfolk. There's a jillion Yuhases on the tombstones (well, Juhases), but none of them are related to us - Yuhas is a Slovak word for shepherd (or apparently, the shepherd's helper), and there's lots of them. Mostly I picked this photo for the blog 'cause it's gorgeous - it was in the 90s but really bright and clear. The mountains in the background are the border with Hungary.

And here's my dad with his arm around his third cousin Ladislav - family resemblance? At least in the belly. And the eyebrows, too!