Orava

This is the castle where my great great maternal grandmother was raised. According to the story, she was knocked up by the gardener and disinherited. She moved to Canada where she worked as a hat maker to provide for herself and her infant son. She eventually married and raised a family. When she passed away her husband remarried, and his jealous new wife burned all of her things, including journals, clothes, and photographs—which is heartbreaking, because those would have been fascinating to look through. This castle, however, still stands as a historic landmark in Slovakia.

It is a dream of mine to visit there someday and experience in person this beautiful remnant of my family history.