When do you know if another person is a good match? When Uwe and I first got together, the answer for us was travel. I was in Europe for a few months (a time period that has now lasted 34 years….). I visited an old friend in Germany (Uwe) and we decided it would be fun to travel together in the former Eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary).
Back then, the Soviet patina hadn’t been scrubbed away yet. Things were still pretty dusty and rusty. I’ll be posting shortly about those experiences. But today I want to share a roadside Madonna with you.
I grew up in upstate New York, where bathtub Madonnas are a common sight in the North Country.
Near the border crossing into Czechoslovakia we saw this one. I made Uwe stop the car so I could get out and take a photo.
Now this, my friends, is a roadside Madonna!
NOTES: Bathtub Madonna image courtesy of Atlas Obscura © 2026 Jadi Campbell.
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I moved to Tucson for months ago, but at my home in Naco, Arizona, I had a bathtub Virgin of Guadalupe. In the southwest, it’s not the Madonna, it’s the Virgin.
That is fascinating! I had not made the connection that with some of the icons the stress is on them being the Virgin rather than the Madonna. Thanks so much for bringing this to my consciousness!
wow, I love discovering things like this!
my family used to go on bathtub Madonna hunts on long drives through the Adirondacks!
We have something similar (minus an actual tub but the same shape in plaster) in our area but I never heard them called a bathtub madonna.
also containing a Madonna?
Yes!
Such splendid insight.
Thanks! A Madonna by the side of the road (especially this one in Poland) is hard to miss