I asked Adela’s childhood friend what she thinks about all this, and got an earful. “In the old days, on a day like today people would drop in and help each other with the knitting or whatever else needed to be done. Now nobody has time for that. Before, work in the fields was difficult, but then you also could stop and talk and eat with people under a tree. It was a different pace. Now everyone goes fast.” And don’t get her started on the privatization of gas, electricity, and water since 1991, and the corresponding leap in prices. For her, it’s not if the government will privatize the medical system, but when.

Faster and faster and faster. As one relative told me over too many glasses of homemade slivovica: “Do you know a Slovak invented the parachute? His name was Štefan Banic.” Podbiel, he intimated, could use more Štefan Banics right now.