The Foreigner's Guide to Slovakia

Spring is definitely here in Slovakia. Fields have been planted with whatever it is that will be grown, and it’s possible to see many fields with sprouts or shoots already. Just outside of my small town there is a newly planted field that we pass every time we walk to visit grandpa in the next village over. The tractor marks were fresh the first time we crossed, so I knew the field had been done all at once and planted with the same crop. I therefore created an image of a single owner in my imagination, having the responsibility of being overseer. That is not the case here and probably not the case with many large pieces of land across Slovakia.

I’m not sure how old the law and tradition of land inheritance is, but in Slovakia when land gets passed down to the next generation, it is split evenly between all the children. If a family had 10 children, the property was split 10 ways. This is different in Czechia where only the eldest son inherited from the family.

The field we cross between the town and village is owned by more than a thousand people. How do I know? Because one of my in-laws was at one point interested in buying it.

A thousand? How does someone go about trying to buy a piece of land that a thousand people own? And how is it that they are so organized to grow a single crop on that land and share it? To me it was totally baffling.

Sometimes an owner doesn’t know exactly where his or her piece of land is. They only know they have x-number of square meters located in a specific parcel. But if you want to acquire that land, you’d have to approach all one thousand owners and asked about selling it. Can you imagine what a incredible undertaking that must be?

Since so many people own what in reality is their own tiny piece, local farmers rent it out for a flat fee, and probably not that much. Here it looks like they will be growing wheat, a very common staple grown in this part of western Slovakia.

My in-law who was briefly interested in this field knew this task was close to impossible to tackle and instead bought another field close by. That one had only about 350 owners and took just around 7 years to acquire. If I were involved in a process like that it would send me to therapy, no doubt.

• 2 comments