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Sunday |
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is a small farming village, so it was kind of surprising when
our friends from the strawberry patch invited us on
an outing to the Kacina villa just 5 km from our door, tucked away in a small
forest that used to be the local lord's hunting grounds. It turns out that
every village had one of these, some grander, most humbler. Many have fallen
into disrepair or altogether disappeared, but Kacina has been restored and
serves as both testament to the high living of nobility as well as a museum
to the local agricultural heritage. It's an interesting mix. In the basement
and sub-basement there are models,
dioramas, stuffed livestock,
and tools relating
the entire history of farming in this area, including an exquisite collection
of elaborate beehives carved
from tree trunks, most of them depicting religious scenes as honey gathering
was typically the province of the clergy, who devoted much of the harvest
to the production of mead. Upstairs, 6 meter high ceilings, intricate jigsaw cut hardwood floors, hand carved trim, and monumental ceramic stoves which were stoked from behind by unseen servants in hidden passageways with camouflaged doors. This was the trophy home of the local noble who owned all the surrounding land, village, and people in it. Europeans like to remind Americans how much more history they have, but it was these centuries of feudalism which people fled to start afresh in America with its promise of equal opportunity. (And not to be outdone by Old World ex- cesses, Americans created their own dubious history of Indian genocide, African en- slavement, & class warfare.) |
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