Last month, I attended a conference on binary stars and planetary transits, where there was a lot of discussion about light curves, binary star physics, some great talks on planet transits and exoplanet atmospheres. The conference was hosted by the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Science in Tatranská Lomnica, Slovakia. Granted that I had never really heard of the place beforehand, I am glad I visited. It is a beautiful place with sharp mountains surrounding expansive plains. There are not too many people so it is also pretty quiet.

It is also out of the way, like completely out of the way. To get there, I flew from Cologne to Vienna, then took a bus to Bratislava, and then a five hour train to Poprad. It took about twelve hours to get there, it takes about the same amount of time to get from Cologne to Beijing. But you know, while it was a long haul, it was also a beautiful place to visit.
The area is a bit of an outdoor tourist venue with a number of walking trails. I enjoyed a pleasant walk the first morning I was there, but this was not the best part of the visit. The best part was the visit to museums and to this amazing old castle in the Spis region. The first stop was the museums and old churches. In the first place, I got to see so much history of the region. There were swords, big swords... one such sword was almost a tall as I am. In another room, there was also a long bench with shackles for arms and legs and across the waist. Apparently, the bench is designed to hold people down, lying on one’s stomach, while they get whipped. I guess they get whipped over and over again. Ah, the history of Europe.

The second stop was Spis castle, one of the largest castles in Eastern Europe, dating back to the twelfth century. It is an amazing old ruin sitting atop a small hill, a single, small peak surrounding a large expanse of flat plains. The castle is mostly in ruins, but much of it is being rebuilt into a museum. From the castle, I could look down and see afar to the nearby town, I don’t know its name, and I could almost swear I could see straight across Slovakia. But that wasn’t the highlight of the tour, at least to me.


The highlight to me was the torture chamber, it was a small dark room buried in the base of the castle. The floor of the chamber was uneven and the ceiling was pretty hight. There was only one small window to let in light. The room is effectively a prison cell. But instead of a cot, there was a cage hanging about three meters above the floor where a prisoner could languish. The cage is just large for a person to curl into a small ball or just stand all day. Strangely, directly below the cage was a torture chair, maybe you can see how it tortures in the picture above. Nails in the seat... ouch. Around the room, there was another one of the benches that I saw in the other museum, and rack to stretch prisoners. I could imagine some poor person being stretched, and their muscles tearing from the strain. It is horrendous in its simplicity. On another wall hung a number of small handheld torture devices that made me think of a dentists office :P. And... of course in another part of the room hung chains and shackles to hold the prisoners. It is remarkable how dark and violent life was in the middle ages. Of course, the truly ironic thing about the room was its location, when I walked from the torture chamber into the hall, I could see the castles chapel at the other side of the hall. Prayers and faith on one side and pain and torture on the other. Strange.