May .29 - Part 2

Last thing that happened when Liz visited her father's birthplace was that she claimed a souvenir, with the current owner's permission.  While clambering around the terraces behind the house, she came across a pile of tiles that had fallen from the roof.  We are now the proud owners of one and a half of them.

These are old-fashioned roof tiles that are formed into shape over the maker's thigh.  The shape of the thigh is larger near the body and smaller near the knee.  This difference in size makes the tiles fit together on the roof.  The first tiles are laid small end at the bottom of the roof slope - facing up so they form channels from gable to peak.  Than another layer is placed over them (large end at the bottom) so water is directed into the channels.  They lock together and get tighter as the roof is covered.  Similar tiles have been used for many centuries and millennia, but not in the last hundred years or so.  Mass-produced, perfectly shaped tiles won out over individual craftsmanship.

When we left the house, Brother Lamb suggested we look for the local graveyard.  We had seen a sign for it while wandering around the village.  After a false start, we located this beautiful cemetery on wooded slopes at the southeast of the village.

The cemetery is full of Benacs, Blazinas, Polics and many other family names.  We spent a happy hour wandering around looking for familiar ones.  Liz located the grave of her great-grandmother, which brought forth tears.  We photographed many of them, but then Brother Lamb suggested we use an app called Billion Graves, to register them all.  With that app, someone goes to a cemetery and photographs each gravestone as the app records the GPS location of each photograph.  If there is internet service there, the photographs get uploaded as you go and then is available to genealogists the World over.  We didn't have time to do it that day, but we decided to request Mission approval to go back and photograph every one.

Liz's great-grandmother Katerina Blazina is in section B, near number 84, if I remember correctly.  We hoped there would be a list showing the names of people in each grave, but we didn't locate it.  It looks like there are approximately 700-800 graves, and there can be up to five people per grave crypt.  The oldest graves are in the sections shown at the bottom of the photo.  At the top is a new section with only a few graves marked.
   An interesting thing about this cemetery, is that it is clearly held in high esteem locally.  Many graves had fresh flowers adorning them.  Many more had long-lasting artificial flowers.  And the graves and crypts are obviously dusted and washed regularly.
 [Sunday, we received official approval to spend a day at the cemetery recording all the graves.  We can enlist the help of the senior couple, the Lambs, too.]