Repository of Built and Intellectual Heritage of the Upper-Tisza Region

Tourism training in Vyshkovo

The Upper Tysa Region Multipurpose Territorial Community Association and the Transcarpathian Hungarian Tourist Board are organizing trainings (workshops) during September within the framework of the cross-border joint tourism project called ViaTisa.

In Vyshkovo, in the Fodó Sándor Community House, participants heard presentations on service management, local product development, social media communication and tour guiding basics. Attila Tóth, Assistant Professor of the Department of Earth Sciences and Tourism of the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College of Higher Education, presented how to access the teaching material on the Internet, which contains the basic knowledge of modern tourism. Enikő Karmacsi-Sass, Associate Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences and Tourism of the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College of Higher Education, presented Transcarpathia as a popular destination for active tourism.

Within the framework of the event, the Transcarpathian Hungarian Tourist Board (THTB) handed over a blacksmith’s workshop and a pavilion showing the process of flax processing in the courtyard of the Vyshkovo Village House Museum as part of the project “Repository of the Built and Intellectual Heritage of the Upper Tysa Region”.

András Mester, president of the THTB, said that the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association (THCA) and the THTB jointly participate in a European Union tender, with the Nyíregyháza Development Agency. The blacksmith’s workshop and the pavilion showing the process of flax processing were realized within the framework of the project called ‘The living village house museum’.

“We have values. It is very good that we discovered these values in the 1990s. We have tried to do everything in order to keep them,” emphasized József Sari. “Unfortunately, we lost a lot of our valuables in the same years, but we take care of what we have managed to preserve, and that’s exactly what the village house museum is for. To preserve our past, our history, our traditions, and to do everything to ensure that the children and the rising generation get to know this value and gradually make it their own,” added the president of the Middle-level Organization of the Upper Tysa Region of the THCA.

“In 2000, when we came up with the idea apply for a grant to build a village house museum, we were only thinking about a museum where we could show the old furniture, the clean room, the kitchen, the back room, where the family lived their everyday live,” explained Ida Ötvös, manager of the village house museum. She added that over the years it has been renovated by the locals themselves, who have always added something. “When tourists started to visit the museum, we placed a small box in one of the rooms where everyone could put a small amount of money. And with the money we developed something. It was not easy, but the opportunity was given, we persistently trusted that this would have a future, and it was not in vain, as we were able to make both the house and the yard very beautiful.”

“Where did you get the idea to create a blacksmith’s workshop and a pavilion showing flax processing from?”

“We decided with the president of the THTB that we would open a blacksmith's workshop in Vyshkovo, since blacksmithing has the greatest history here. The flax processing pavilion, however, was my idea, because when visitors enter the village house museum, they can see a lot of things made of linen – sheets, outerwear – whose tradition can also be linked to Vyshkovo. I felt that this should also be presented to the visitors here.