today What a village keeps when its houses are goneČo dedine zostane, keď príde o domy

Važec today is an ordinary working village on a busy corridor, with its own station on the main line and a state-run show cave at its northern edge. There is no protected street of folk architecture here, and it is honest to say why: it burned. What the village does still have is its position — one long street on a high open valley floor with the Low Tatras at one end of the view and the High Tatras at the other — two stone churches, a cave with the bones of animals that died out ten thousand years ago, and several hundred pictures by Ján Hála that record in detail a place which no longer exists. That is a real inheritance. It is simply a different one from a village that still has its houses.Važec je dnes obyčajná pracujúca dedina na rušnom koridore, s vlastnou stanicou na hlavnej trati a so štátnou sprístupnenou jaskyňou na severnom okraji. Chránená ulica ľudovej architektúry tu nie je a treba povedať prečo: zhorela. Čo obci zostalo, je poloha — jedna dlhá ulica na vysokom otvorenom dne doliny, na jednom konci výhľadu Nízke, na druhom Vysoké Tatry — dva kamenné kostoly, jaskyňa s kosťami zvierat, ktoré vyhynuli pred desiatimi tisícmi rokov, a niekoľko stoviek obrazov Jána Hálu, ktoré do detailu zaznamenávajú miesto, čo už neexistuje. Je to skutočné dedičstvo. Len iné než to, ktoré má dedina, čo si domy udržala.