Save the ruins of a Slovak monastery - Katarinka

At the beginning of each year, the ruins of Church and Monastery of St Catherine are usually still covered in snow and this beautiful location hidden in the forests looks totally calm.
But on the 6th of January 2019 the situation was different – instead of being all quiet, the whole area around the church ruins was bursting with life. This was due to the fact that our volunteers decided to organize a special public event – the so-called Epiphany Day Tour. Normally, it is not possible to go up the stairs to the top of the tower during winter season, as it is closed for the whole time. This year, for the first time in its history we made an exception and opened the sightseeing tower of the church to the visitors for one day during winter months.
As this was an official public event which was also presented on our webpage, there were large groups of tourists walking up the forest path on Sunday morning and huge number of visitors heading to the historical ruins also from the nearby parking. The visitors varied – you could see traditional winter tourists, cross-country skiers, teenagers, old people and families with kids on sleighs – but all of them had one thing in common: they were excited to spend the day at Katarinka, enter the opened tower and enjoy the look from its sightseeing platform on its top.
Thanks to our dedicated volunteers, which were trained as tower tour guides, more than 13 groups (each of them consisting of 16 people) could visit the tower, hear interesting facts about the history of the church and also enjoy the breathtaking view on the mountains from the top of the tower. Meanwhile, there were constantly new curious visitors gathering at the entrance to the tower – these tourists, who stayed on ground waiting for the tour, had the possibility to enjoy a cup of hot tea, which was also prepared and offered by our young volunteers. We were very positively surprised by the number of the visitors, who came to spend the Epiphany Day at Katarinka despite the cold weather – we estimate that the total number of tourists reached 300 people and more than 200 out of them took part in the guided tour in the tower. Due to this success and positive feedback from the visitors, we would like to set up a new tradition and start organizing the winter tower tour every winter.
Apart from this new event, we also continued the tradition of helping our colleagues at the Hrušov castle. Like every winter, a small group of volunteers from our NGO Katarinka visits Hrušov – a castle ruin located near Zlate Moravce - and helps the local volunteers with the necessary winter maintenance work on the castle grounds. Due to the extraordinary warm weather, in some areas around the castle there was more water than snow – so instead of snow shovels our volunteers had to use water buckets
So we are slowly, but surely approaching the official opening date of the new season – 28th April 2019. This year marks an extraordinary anniversary, as we are celebrating 25 years of existence of our voluntary project at Katarinka – and therefore there are many activities and additional events planned in order to commemorate this special milestone – so there is plenty to happen this year!