On The Fringes – The Strange Existence of Sturovo (The Lost Lands #25)

Sturovo (Parkany) was an afterthought until it became part of the lost lands beyond Hungary’s borders. This Slovakian town of 10,500 people, two-thirds of whom are ethnic Hungarian, is situated on the northern bank of Europe’s most famous river. It is the next stop on my lost lands itinerary. Tourists traveling down the Danube hardly give Sturovo much of a thought. Many have seen Sturovo, but few have visited the southernmost town in Slovakia. It has led a second-class existence throughout its long and overlooked history. The Danube serves as its connection to Hungary and the city of Esztergom just across the water.?

Sturovo is much closer in spirit to Hungary, then it is to Slovakia. The divide between Sturovo and Esztergom became more than the Danube when the Treaty of Trianon went into effect in 1920. That divide expanded further when the Maria Valeria Bridge which connected the town and city was destroyed in 1944. The communist period widened that division. In 2001, a reconstructed bridge opened and allowed Sturovo to reconnect with its hinterland. Today, the town has a strange bipolar existence with an eye on Hungary, but both feet firmly planted in the soil of Slovakia.

Family Ties – A Sense of Grievance

Have you ever been to one of those family gatherings filled with underlying tensions? The kind of get togethers that were supposed to be about love and unity. Instead, they end up hijacked by passive aggressive behavior that threatens to blow up the best intentions of well-meaning family members. Anyone who has ever had this experience knows that logic and rationale are in short supply. Suppressed emotions seethe just beneath the surface. Everyone knows what is happening, but no one dares confront the sources of tension. That could lead to opening a pandora’s box of past grievances. Open conflict is a terrifying thought because everyone realizes that resolution is impossible. Maintaining an uneasy peace is the preferred option. Thus, a state of perpetual tension ensues.

The genesis of family issues are usually real or perceived slights that happened years ago. Rather than time healing the wounds, it has served to harden them. The inability to move beyond the past can turn a family reunion into a prison from which there is no escape. To an outsider, the sources of tension can seem absurd. Without context they make no sense at all. Even with context, they can still seem rather ridiculous. This is the price families pay for taking things personally. That is certainly the case in Eastern Europe, which often seems like one big unhappy family. Every nation has some other nation it nurses a grievance against. The Bulgarians against the Turks, the Lithuanians against the Poles, everyone with the Russians, the Romanians with the Hungarians, the Hungarians and Serbs with too many nations to mention, including each other. The grievances manifest themselves in historical events.

Facing Up - Sources of Inspiration

There is no greater source of family tension in certain parts of Eastern Europe than the Treaty of Trianon. Tensions still simmer between Hungarians and the majority ethnic groups (Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Ukrainians) that rule over the lands Hungary lost due to the treaty. Relations have improved dramatically over the last 30 years, but tensions exist. It is likely that they always will. To an outside observer such as myself, these tensions can seem scary, confusing, and ridiculous. The tensions between Hungarians and Slovaks have always baffled me. I know they speak totally different languages and come from different ethnic groups, but to me the countries seem more alike than different. Both countries are small and beautiful. the people are intelligent and enterprising. Their security relies as much on each other as themselves. Both are members of the European Union and NATO. The one big difference is that Hungarians have a long history of ruling over Slovaks. The latter’s history is much humbler. In my experience so are the Slovak people. These differences can be seen on either side of the Danube with Sturovo quiet and modest, Esztergom bold and spectacular. One acts like a mannequin, the other poses as a super model.

Anyone who has visited areas of Hungary outside of Budapest is likely to have found their way to Esztergom. Just an hour north of Budapest by car, train, or bus, Esztergom is where Hungary’s largest church, the Primatial Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Adalbert can be found not far from the spot where Stephen I (976 – 1025), was crowned Hungary’s first Christian king, turning the Magyars decisively towards western Christendom. The crypt in the Basilica holds the remains for one of Hungary’s greatest national heroes, Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty. Mindszenty’s unwavering opposition to communism was a source of inspiration for Hungary throughout much of the Cold War. This makes Esztergom more than a city; it is a symbol of the Hungarian nation. The city is inseparable from the nation’s self-image, both spiritually and politically. If Budapest is the body of Hungary, then Esztergom is its beating heart. The Danube below the city’s banks is the blood that flows through the heart and onward to the rest of the nation.

Parting of The Ways - A Trial Separation

Because Esztergom is viewed as such an integral part of the Hungarian nation, it is unimaginable for it to be anything else other than that. The first time I visited the city, I found myself standing on coronation hill high above the Danube, gazing at the long, wide ribbon of river that demarcates a long stretch of the border between Hungary and Slovakia. I found it hard to believe that on the northern side of the Danube was another country. Intellectually, I knew it was Slovakia, but it did not feel that way. Esztergom has such a reputation for being at the core of Hungary’s existence that its geographical location on the fringes of the country is hard to believe. What is now southern Slovakia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary until the end of World War I.

It had been that way for a millennium. Just because the Treaty of Trianon said it was now in Czechoslovakia did not make it so in a demographic or spiritual sense. The legacy from a thousand years of history was not going to change overnight due to a few signatures by statesmen a thousand kilometers away in Paris. It would take another world war and more ethnic friction to bring about a greater assimilation of the region into Czechoslovakia. That process is still ongoing in Slovakia and far from complete.