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TREES AND WOOD VITAL TO HISTORIES OF EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
It should not surprise long-time readers of this column that I have an appreciation for trees and wood.
On a recent trip to Hungary, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic, I was impressed each day of our tour by the important roles trees and wood played in the histories of these four eastern European countries.
Here are some of the "wood highlights" scratched on the pages of my 16-day notebook.
In the late 1800s, the Budapest Opera Hall in Hungary burned during a performance and many people perished because they couldn't escape through wood doors that opened to the inside. When a new opera hall was built, the architects made sure all doors opened to the outside.
As a former farm kid, my eye was drawn to a wooden farm gate at an outdoor museum in Szentendre, Hungary. Homes and farm buildings had been reconstructed or moved here to authentically depict country life from earlier centuries. The massive gate employed the trunk section of a tree as a counterweight so the heavy wood gate could be opened and closed with minimal effort.
Travel through much of eastern Europe today could easily be mistaken for the wooded countryside of southeastern Minnesota or much of Wisconsin. In fact, the city of Vienna, the capitol of Austria, literally means "river to the woods."
In Krakow, Poland, the ceilings of Wawel Castle were built many centuries ago of larch wood. In the castle's throne room, the ceiling is divided into 2-foot squares and at the center of each square, staring down at visitors, are dozens of carved wood heads of prominent Krakow merchants.
One of the most practical uses of wood I observed was at Wieliczka, Poland, site of the oldest operational salt mine in Europe which has been working for over 700 years. The mine is listed by UNESCO as one of the top 12 attractions in the world. We were told that in 1400, salt was a more valuable currency than gold.
The mine includes 7.5 million square meters of post-excavation space on nine levels, each between 64 and 327 meters. Our tour descended to a depth of 135 meters and passed through 30 chambers. The total mine contains more then 320 km. of passages and 2,148 chambers.
The infrastructure of the mine is constructed of oak and pine wood because wood, more than any other building material, is suited to the mine's microclimate that remains 52 degrees year-round. Steel, on the other hand, becomes useless in two years due to corrosion.
Since the job of mining was extremely dangerous, miners prayed often and, for this reason, beautiful chapels were carved deep in the mine out of the salt walls. In the most spacious chapel, measuring 50 meters long, 15 meters wide and 12 meters high, an alter was constructed of pine wood and appears as strong and functional today as when it was built 320 years ago.
In a Jewish cemetery in Prague, I noticed a pinecone carved on a Jewish headstone. The pinecone, I learned, is a Jewish symbol for wisdom. This cemetery, by the way, was the only burial site permitted to Jews in Prague for over 300 years and, as a result, the dead are buried on top of each other, up to 12 layers deep. Today one can observe more than 12,000 gravestones crammed into the tiny space where an estimated 100,000 Jews are buried.
October is not a good time to visit gardens but I did visit the Royal Gardens in Prague and learned that tulips were imported by royalty from Turkey in the 16th century. At the time, there was not yet a tulip growing in Holland, the country we most often associate with tulip culture. The first tulips in Prague were so valuable that one tulip bulb, we were told, had the same monetary value as a horse.
From a horticultural perspective, the most interesting display I saw on the trip was a xyloteka. Now don't fret if you've never heard of a xyloteka because the word cannot be found in my 5-inch thick, 2,622-page Webster's Dictionary.
A xyloteka, in this case, is a set of books carved and fabricated by an anonymous monk in 1825 entirely from wood. In fact, each volume in the 68-volume set is made from the 68 different tree species growing in the Czech Republic in the early 1800s.
The books were encased behind glass doors so I couldn't get a close-up look, but it appeared that the 2-inch spines for the books were carved from stout branches and the covers were attached using flat sheets of wood. The hollow chamber inside each book contained a leaf from the tree, a very dry sample of the fruit, and a twig showing the tree's bud structure.
I've been pondering the challenge of making a modern xyloteka from Minnesota trees as a nifty winter project "when I have plenty time on my hands." If the project appeals to you - since I never seem to have spare time - give me a call at 466-2288.
One final observation about the wood and trees of eastern Europe. Wood was used in far more architectural and art projects than I could observe on this trip. These examples are lost forever, unfortunately, due to the one weakness of wood over the millennia - fire. Every time our tour guides told us about an important structure, the explanation always seemed to include a chronology of each of the years the structure had burned and been rebuilt.
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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