When I am not walking up and down the hills of central Slovakia, I spend the better part of my day surrounded by groups of Ellen’s – see ending regarding name change – relatives. They must think I'm peculiar as I sit for three, sometimes four hours smiling with them and listening to them. They know that I speak no Slovak. What they don’t know is that it's because I’m on an entirely different plane, not really listening.  Their words take me to a place sort of like where the kid in the movie Pan’s Labyrinth went. They enable me to create my own characters in my very own fantasy, using common Slovak words and phrases.

   In the Slovak language, the letter Č produces a 'ch’ sound: (English translations in brackets)

   Čo (what) is pronounced cho, sounding like Joe. 

Fúkať (blow) — feel free to make your own pronunciation with this one.

All of this is really just a play on sounds, so try and hang on for a bit: Čo Fúkať, in essence, translates to Joe Blow.

   Nech sa páči (if you please) is the Italian tough-guy character, Nick Sapaci. He's also a womanizer.

   Len Dobre (only good) is a tall dumbish, but good hearted sort of fellow, who doesn’t require a name spelling change.

  The fourth and final player is veľmi dobre (very good). With a couple of slight changes, these words can be easily converted to Velma Dobre, Len’s unfaithful, and not so very good, wife. 

   Imagine how the womanizer Nick, dopey Len and Velma, (the Princess of Promiscuity), along with Joe Blow interact with one another.  

As Ellen and the relatives perhaps seek cures for the planet, my globe isn’t even in the same universe.

   Last night, as we were walking out to the car after I'd had a remarkably fruitful three hour flight of fantasy, I looked up to the sky and said, “Čo chceš.” Zdenka, Ellen’s non-English speaking cousin looked at me in wide-eyed shock. 

   "Čo chceš  doesn't mean, I want to sleep with your mother, does it?" I whispered nervously to Ellen.

   “No, it means, What do you want?,” she replied, too weary at having to concentrate on her seldomly used second language to wonder why I'd asked such a question. 

   Whether Zdenka, who was still looking at me oddly, thought I was doing a one on one with the Almighty or simply losing my marbles, I do not know. I just smiled, raised my hands and said, “There you are,” in explanation. 

   During this visit to Slovakia I managed to learn three new Slovak words. And believe it or not I learned them completely independent of one another. 

   They are:  

zaitra – tomorrow     

idem – I go   

zachod – toilet

“Tomorrow, I go toilet.”

   The sentence isn’t quite right grammatically, but it did make the hair on the back of my neck stand. 

                                                                     *** 

   All of Ellen’s relatives call her Elenka. I found further proof of this pleasant sounding modification in the form of a postcard that was written by her father when she was young. I’ve come to embrace the change. Henceforth, Elenka she will be.