These articles were published in the Spectacular Slovakia travel guide, published annually by The Slovak Spectator since 1996. The latest editions can be obtained from our online shop.


Lučenec

Up from the ashes

By Matthew J. Reynolds

    
 
 photo: Ján Svrček

Walking through the Lučenec city centre, sociologist and activist Tibor Papp turns his talk to the city's robust civil spirit, a quality which he says has resulted in Lučenec rebounding from adversity time and again during its rocky 750-year history.

"The city was burned to the ground during the 1848 revolt against the Habsburgs, but was rebuilt within 10 years," says Papp. "It's no easy thing to rebuild a whole city."

Papp, 42, emigrated in 1984 to the West, where he first found employment as a car mechanic and ended up a sociology professor at Columbia University in the US. He has returned to help rebuild his hometown, this time after a century of Communism and two World Wars. Lučenec was a thriving commercial centre at the turn of the 19th century (its industrial output was more than half the size of Bratislava's, and larger than any other town in present-day Slovakia). Today, it's a quiet city of 30,000 inhabitants, with 14% unemployment in a region where the number peaks at 30%.

Lučenec is making a comeback with Papp, his language skills and contacts abroad, as one of the driving forces. The Avant Investment and Design company, which Papp joined in 1994, refurbished the town's central commercial building, Reduta, then added an eight-story Best Western on top. The hotel is now full of businessmen travelling from Košice to Bratislava.

"Ten years after the fall of Communism, Lučenec has renewed its spirit and begun to rebuild its town," says Papp.

A few blocks away, Papp remembers picking rocks with other children in 1962 in an empty lot that was to be turned into a swimming pool. The project failed when financing from the central government dried up. In 1995, the lot was developed by Avant into a business centre and basketball gym, which is expected to become the training centre for the Slovak national men's team in the summer of 2001.

But the project that may have the greatest impact on Lučenec is just beginning. When Europe rose from the ocean 12 million years ago, salt water was trapped underground in the Lučenec area, then the site of dense volcanic activity. A study in the early 1990s revealed that this geological quirk had deposited a vein of silicates unrivalled in central Europe.

A host of investors interested in mining sorbents, ceramics and basalt fibres have committed to investing in a Lučenec industrial park, with ground-break scheduled for the summer of 2001. Five other industrial plants are also being planned in and around Lučenec.

"Were talking about huge investments," says Papp. "A basalt-fibre factory alone requires a $100 million investment."

Papp's interest in Lučenec has spread into myriad areas. Miroslav Drobný teamed up with the sociologist when the two became incensed by the government's proposed public administration reform, which was to have divided the country into 12 rather than the existing eight regions (the eight region model was passed by parliament in July, 2001). The government appeared intent on naming Rimavská Sobota the capital of one of the new regions instead of Lučenec. In September 2000, the two organised a protest in which 30 activists forced 150 chickens through a fence at the government office in Bratislava, to symbolise that the state officials responsible for the decision had 'chicken brains'.

When several of the animals died in the protest, animal rights groups were appalled. But Papp says his mission was accomplished. "Lučenec - historically and practically speaking the clear choice for the new capital - was being passed over and no one was talking about it. It was nearly a done deal, but the question was re-opened."

The chicken incident got Papp and Lučenec into the national papers, but Papp says a different bird, the phoenix, found on the town's crest, best represents the city. In classical mythology, the phoenix was burned to ashes on a funeral pyre, always to rise again.

These articles and related information were published in Spectacular Slovakia 2001.


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