There’s something deeply likable about that nation. No, it’s not just their traditions on Dyngus Day. I have met quite a few people of Slovak background, and all have been hail fellows, well met. Warm, funny, faithful, salt of the earth.
But I think the thing I like most is that word above, nation. They strike me as a people less likely to subsume their identity in the anomie of modernism. They also have a quirky sense of timing: they are issuing a coin for the 1150th anniversary of the efforts of Saints Cyril and Methodius to bring Orthodox Christianity to the Slavs.
Behold the coin:
Now, that wicked, anti-Christian bureaucracy known as the EU has required its alteration: apparently the Saints originally had halos atop their heads, a step too far for some other member states. So you will see no halos in that picture. Of course, there is an Orthodox cross, and a three-humped little mountain that it rests upon (wonder what that could be?), but those are permitted: they are the coat of arms of the Slovak nation.
