Eastern Europe Trip Log Part 1

[mark.r.leeper]

Eastern Europe Trip Log Part 1
by Mark R. Leeper

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Eastern Europe
A travelogue by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper

Index of days:
June 1 - Leaving the United States
June 2 - Arrival in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, walking the streets
June 3 - Museum-going and walking in Zagreb
June 4 - Zagreb--Ljubljana--Postojna
June 5 - Postojna--Bled--Salzburg, Austria
June 6 - Salzburg
June 7 - Salzburg--Prague, Czechoslovakia
June 8 - Prague
June 9 - Prague--Vienna, Austria
June 10 - Vienna
June 11 - Vienna--Budapest, Hungary
June 12 - Budapest
June 13 - Budapest--Cluj, Romania
June 14 - Cluj--Brasov
June 15 - Brasov--Bucharest
June 16 - Bucharest
June 17 - Bucharest--Sofia, Bulgaria
June 18 - Sofia
June 19 - Sofia--Belgrade, Yugoslavia
June 20 - Belgrade--Sarajevo
June 21 - Sarajevo--Dubrovnik
June 22 - Dubrovnik
June 23 - Exploring Dubrovnik on our own
June 24 - The flight home

June 1, 1991: So the travels begin again. First things first: who
are we? Well, since this is a guided tour, there will be more later but
for now there are four of us. (Well, five if you count the limo driver,
but I did not get his name and I expect he will not be coming much of
the way with us.) First there is me. You can call me Ishmael. That's
not my name, of course, but it does give a nice literary feel to the
log. Then there is my wife Evelyn. Together we are two innocents
abroad with great expectations. We each keep a log as a remembrance of
things past. Presumably you will not get too distorted a view of
Eastern Europe through the looking glass of our observations. Anyway,
you can call us Ishmael and Evelyn. Well, enough of this literary stuff.
Also along is Steve Goldsmith and Mary Syseskey. Steve is Evelyn's ex-
supervisor. He was with us in Southeast Asia and it looks like somebody
didn't learn their lesson! Mary is a new friend of Steve's.

In the van I accidentally fell asleep, luckily not for long. I
find on a long trip I can use all the exhaustion and fatigue I can
muster. Last night while Evelyn slept, I watched two films. One was
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER the other was a weak horror film called

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MIDNIGHT. I fell asleep two or three times but probably not for more
than an hour total. If I let myself, I can fall asleep now, but I will
keep myself awake until I am airborne. That is about the only way I can
sleep on the plane. So far that has always been a pretty good way to
avoid jet lag.

The driver had never heard of JAT airlines. Funny, I would have
thought it was the *premiere* airline of Yugoslavia. I wonder which
side will get it if civil war breaks out.

Oh, yes, I say didn't anything about civil war in Yugoslavia, did
I? Well, it seems that the Croats and the Slovenes have declared
independence from the Serbs starting June 30. Hopefully we will be gone
a week before that. But it still gives a person pause that he might be
caught in the middle of an insurrection. Supposedly both sides like the
Americans (lucky us), but when you have a civil war, who knows? It adds
some interest to the trip. Back in school, everybody thought of old
weird Ishmael as a sort of a simp. How many of them would be surprised
to see old Ishmael caught up in an Eastern European civil war?

There was some confusion at check-in. Our bags were apparently
ticketed for Belgrade, where we have a stop-over, when they should have
been ticketed for Zagreb. The attendant had to go running after the
bags to change the destination tickets, presumably from Belgrade to
Sarajevo.

We came up to the gate floor after a hard time with a stubborn
elevator. (It should be mentioned that Mary is arthritic and often
needs a wheelchair hence the need for the elevator.) (Incidentally, she
is also diabetic.)

We decided to wait for things to settle down so sat in the snack
bar. One of the things that needed settling is the monitor that said
our gate was #33, but our tickets said it was #32. Eventually the
tickets won. JAT has a reputation for confusion.

June 2, 1991 (destination time): We boarded the plane pretty much
on time but spent a half-hour taxiing on the ground. Meanwhile the baby
in the seat right in front of me expressed clear disapproval of the
situation at a decibel level inversely proportional to his size.

There is a dispute with one of the passengers who insists on
smoking in a non-smoking area. She claims she requested a smoking seat.
The stewardess offered her a seat in the smoking area toward the back of
the plane, but she doesn't want to sit back there. She's foolish. The
further back you sit, the safer the seat. Airplanes rarely back into
*anything*. Of course, that is just short-term safety. You have to
take into account the cloud of smog at that end of the plane. I guess
all things even out.

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They handed out earphones but I think they won't do me any good.
It looks as if the whole electrical system in my armrest has broken free
of its moorings and has sunk into the armrest. Some people appear to
get music but nobody in our row does and the switch that is supposed to
control the light is a no-op.

As most airlines do with international flights, JAT--the Yugoslav
airline--has really packed the seats in and although I have heard it
claimed the plane is only half full, there are very few empty seats to
be seen, so we are in for an uncomfortable time.

They brought around drinks before. I had the worst orange juice I
have ever had on a plane. My guess is that it was made from a powder.
It tastes like bitter Tang.

Shortly afterward dinner came, a choice of lasagna or turkey. I
had the turkey and it wasn't too bad. There was a nice shrimp cocktail.

After dinner, Mary had the good sense to ask if there were empty
seats someplace. It turns out there was a whole business class section
that was totally empty. I moved up and found the section nicely
comfortable. The earphones worked and everything. The in-flight movie
was HOME ALONE. I had some curiosity to see it, but I saw only the
opening credits and a scene or two toward the middle; the rest I slept
through. I woke up a little after 7 AM.

Breakfast was mediocre but passable. After a while Evelyn came
forward. She pointed out the Alps (?) as we flew over them and I took
some pictures. Mary and Steve claimed problems with a babushka'ed woman
who claimed their travel bag was hers and continued to claim it after
the contents were revealed to her. I am not sure what she hoped to gain
once she'd been discovered.

I made up twenty-four flashcards and taught myself some of the
basic Yugoslav pleasantries and basic words.

We had a two-hour layover in Belgrade. Originally this was
supposed to be a single flight with a stop. We were supposed to get a
new plane, but it was still considered a single flight. While we were
stopped we were supposed to clear customs, according to the pilot of the
first leg. When we got off the plane we were motioned to a line for
people going on to Zagreb. It took about ten minutes to get to the head
of the line. Then a Yugoslav pushed to the head of the line ahead of us
and it took another few minutes for him. Now they got to us. It turns
out they turned out one flight into two flights, requiring two tickets.
They took the first ticket in New York; where was out second ticket?
Well, our stub said we were going to Zagreb and we had given up the one
ticket we had been issued in New York. They had to think about this
one. They told us we would have to come back in half an hour. Didn't
we have to clear customs? No, we would do that in Zagreb. Oh, okay.
Come back in half an hour. She would hold the tickets. This worried

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me. I asked for the name of the woman who had helped us. She wrote her
name down but said it was okay--she was always there.

Well, we went away for half an hour, waiting in the lounge. We
came back to find that the woman who was always there was gone. A man
at the front of the line was picking up his tickets. The woman at the
front of his line handed him a pile of tickets. He started leafing
through them to his. We found ours. I am glad the guy at the front of
the line did not just take the pack. We could have been in real
trouble. It took Steve and Mary a good ten minutes of red tape before
they could get their tickets.

Mary is diabetic so she had to get some protein. The airport
restaurant was a dim affair. Without much light there was a somber pall
over all. It took a long time to get menus and longer to be served.
Mary got ham and eggs and the other three (Evelyn, Mary, and Steve) got
coffee. I got nothing because I was not really hungry. Also I was not
sure I wanted to trust the restaurant. Sure enough, the bill came to $9
American. The coffees were about $1.98 each. They had served the eggs
with bread unordered and charged for it. Steve concluded we had our
first taste of the Yugoslav cheating that the tour book warned of. It
is certainly true that the Yugoslavs we have seen are fairly somber and
dour when they work. Not at all like, say, the Dutch.

After I published my Holland trip log in which I talked about this
rather nice feature of the Dutch, a Dutch reader said he liked Americans
better. The Dutch seemed to be friendly but were insincere. My
response was that is much better than New Yorkers who seemed to be
unfriendly and *were* sincere.

I guess more and more I consider the acid test of a nation's
character is how they behaved in the Holocaust. The Dutch and some
Scandinavian countries had a better record than the United States did.
On the other hand, in my grandfather's land of the Ukraine the locals
rounded up so many Jews so fast that Germany sent out orders to slow
things. The degree of compliance and resistance in the countries we are
visiting is well-known and I will not go into it at this point. Another
measure is how often people of that nationality cut in lines. Of
course, there are good and bad people of all nationalities, but the
Dutch are doing something right so that the percentage of inconsiderate
people is low.

Well, getting on the flight to Zagreb was disorganized. One
Yugoslav did not have his proper papers. I think he was mixed up
somehow in our transaction and his ticket information was with Steve's.
I spent a little more of my precious fatigue to pass time waiting for
the plane to take off. I will probably use most of the rest up sleeping
tonight. The flight itself was about thirty-five minutes. Customs was
fairly quick. Then it happened. There was simply nobody to meet us at
the airport. We are supposed to be met and transferred to the hotel and
it just didn't happen. We saw a bus that had the name Globus on a

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newspaper in the window. Now the so-called tour company is Brendan, but
it is also known as Globus. This turned out to be a false lead. The
driver was simply reading a newspaper called Globus.

After we waited for nearly an hour and we'd called the travel agent
(who did not answer on a Sunday), we gave up and took a taxi to the
hotel. The outskirts of Zagreb look surprisingly like Denver. The town
is sort of flat and spread out. There are tall hills in the distance
much like Denver also. The graffiti is not as bad as in New York, but
it certainly is present. Also, there was a sort of glassed-in bus stop
in which somebody had apparently smashed all the glass, which lay in a
pile on the ground.

As you get to the interior of the city, it looks more like what you
would expect of a European city. Buildings have sculpture and statuary.
There are streetcars for mass transit.

The cab let us off at the Intercontinental and presented us with a
whopping 800-dinar charge. That's more than $36. We will try and
charge it back to the tour company, whose fault it was.

We checked into our rooms. Steve and Mary wanted to rest. Evelyn
and I decided to see the city rather than resting, so we went out
walking. This was not the greatest city in the world, but it does have
some charm. I got some binocular views and a few photos of the nicer
stuff. There is a main street called Ilica that is sort of like a
Gothic Fifth Avenue with old-style architecture. Across the street are
big banners advertising things like the film LOOK WHO'S TALKING II and
HIGHLANDER II, both rather bad films. Something of an embarrassment.

We looked at a few restaurants, then went back to the hotel to pick
up Steve and Mary and went out to sightsee. We found a restaurant for
dinner. The Kornet is two flights downstairs and is a nice seafood
restaurant. We had red mullet and squid. Both were good but over-
priced: four mullets, some squid, two beers, and one mineral water came
to $70. I am told is that part of what is going on is that local taxis,
hotels, and restaurants have a double price standard. Tourists pay
more, on top of which the restaurants bring bread and other items
unasked and charge for them. Whether the double pricing is true or not
is perhaps irrelevant. The fact is Zagreb is a pretty expensive city
for tourists. Time will tell if it also has attractions that justify
the prices.

Since the restaurant was two flights down, we had to figure where
to leave the wheelchair while we ate. There had been a sort of a
checkroom, but there was nobody there, nor were there any checked items.
We hid the wheelchair behind the closet. At the end of the meal there
was still nobody in the checkroom and no checked items. We took the
wheelchair and on the way out the toilet attendant made signs that she
wanted to be paid for checking the wheelchair. Now I realize that her
trade is not the most lucrative in the world. I would probably be

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willing to overpay her for a small service, but she was not around to
perform any service when we needed her and we were not willing to tip
her for no service rendered at all.

After the four of us returned to the hotel. Steve and I got ice
cream and it was fairly good in spite of being soft ice cream. I got
the flavors kiwi and mango. Refreshing. We also stopped at the
National Theater. There they have plays and operas with ticket prices
like $6 American. Right now they have on a production of Moliere's
TARTUFFE. We will just miss hearing Verdi's NABUCCO. If we were in
Zagreb one more night we could have seen it.

We walked Steve and Mary to their room, returned to ours, and
worked on our logs for a while. I would find myself dozing off between
sentences so I gave up and we went out walking some more. This time we
got to see Zagreb after dark. It was darker than I expected but there
were pockets of action, particularly around the town square. Back to
the room for more writing and some sleep.

June 3, 1991: I slept curiously late today. It was about nine and
a half hours. And I think that was pretty solid sleep. There is very
little jet lag left in me. Right now it is about 2:30 PM and to me it
feels like about 1:40 PM. I guess I am jet-lagged by fifty minutes.
Maybe the secret of getting over jet lag is the same secret as
succeeding in so many other tasks: don't be so demanding. There is a
cartoon someone at work has on her door. It shows a bum saying, "I once
was rich and powerful. Then I discovered I *could* hear a difference in
sound systems."

We got together with the others at about 9 AM and went out to find
breakfast. There was not much we could find. Evelyn had heard the
self-service places were best. The food was more what I would expect
for dinner. I got something that turned out to be liver stew with
macaroni. Evelyn got beans with a sausage floating in them. Mary got
the same. Steve got tripe stew. I got to drink what turned out to be
cranberry juice cocktail.

After breakfast we walked to the local market. We are somewhat
slowed down by the wheelchair. The fruit here is of quality differing
from at home. Peaches are about an inch and a half in diameter.
Tomatoes seem large and very red, however.

You see a lot of items with the checkerboard symbol of Croatia. We
are here at a fairly interesting time. On May 31, Croatia declared its
independence from the Serbian-dominated country. About a year ago they
changed the flag from a tri-color with the red star in the center to a
tri-color with the Croatian symbol at the center. You see the new flag
flying just about everywhere and it is the symbol of the secessionist
movement. Our souvenir of Croatia is a key fob with the Croatian
symbol. The May 31 declaration was provisional. The Croats are willing
to consider a counter-proposal by the Serbs, due June 30. The Croatian

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proposal is that Yugoslavia will be a loosely federated set of countries
each with its own government. The Serbian proposal will most likely be
that Yugoslavia remain a single country without tanks rolling through
Croatia and firing.

From the market area there is a funicular railroad up to the old
city. Some of the oldest parts of Zagreb are higher up. The town had a
commanding position high on a hill, then the outlying areas were lower
as the town began to spread. At the top of the funicular is a tower
that gives a view of the entire area. Mary stayed at the bottom, then
Evelyn, Steve, and I climbed up as far as we could for free. While we
were climbing, there was a loud explosion as if a huge wooden door had
slammed shut. We started to look around and I saw bits of paper falling
and said, "Noon." The bits of paper reminded me of Chinese fireworks.
So it was. They set off some sort of explosive each day at noon. I
still haven't established if it is from a cannon or what.

Then Steve and I climbed the last hundred feet or so that required
a ticket. The open, circular stairs bothered me for a few minutes
climbing since I have a mild acrophobia acquired hanging on to the side
of a mountain once. The view at the top has nothing on the views you
can get outside Cuzco, Peru, but it was impressive.

After we climbed down we picked up Mary and toured the old city.
We went down an incline to a stone gateway that is considered a
miraculous place. There is a painting of the Madonna and Child that was
spared in a big fire in the city. The locals decided God must have
particularly liked this otherwise unexceptional painting and so they
come to this stone gate and light candles in front of it and pray to it.
It is indeed a great and willing faith that can be renewed by so prosaic
a circumstance.

We were all thirsty and went in search of a beverage but on the way
stopped at St. Mark's Church. The church has in tile on the roof huge
renderings of the coats of arms of Croatia and of Zagreb. Across the
street from the church is the President's Palace, an unpresumptuous
building you might not notice if there were not two scarlet-garbed
soldiers standing guard out front. While we were there we talked to a
friendly citizen about the history of the area and about how strongly
the Croats wanted their freedom from the better-armed but traditional-
thinking Serbs who want to keep the country socialist. While we were
standing there they were filming a children's film in front of the
church.

We stopped for some drinks before returning down the funicular.

We stopped at a grocery for mineral water. I would have gotten a
Coke but a one-and-a-half-liter bottle costs about $3 here.

We returned to the hotel and wrote for a while, then went out to
the Mimara Museum. This was a huge private collection given to Zagreb

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to be made into a museum, and indeed it would be hard to find a great
classical painter not represented. While the museum is a little sparse,
there are Rembrandts, a Van Gogh, El Grecos, and a Goya. There are also
classical Egyptian pieces, Greek pieces, Roman pieces, religious art,
etc., etc. So how can the museum be sparse? Well, it has very little
in most categories. For example, it has one samurai sword. It has
enough to show you one sword and one sword only. There are two Bosch
paintings. So the collection has breadth but not necessarily depth.
Still, it is pretty impressive. So who is Mimara who can give all these
things to Zagreb? Somebody who had them. What did he do for a living
to earn the money? Apparently nobody knows. The question has been
asked but has never really been answered. He was a sailor at some point
and apparently became a wheeler-dealer of sorts. He picked a place to
show off his "stuff" and arranged for Zagreb to treat his collection as
a museum.

Okay, so we got done at the museum and walked out the door. The
four of us. We walked out the door and there were reporters with
cameras and police and a big hubbub. They all seemed to be watching us
come out of the museum. "This can't be for us," I quickly perceived.
Actually, they were not at all looking at us, but I found myself
wondering why they were all facing us and who they expected to come
walking out of the museum. My first thought was that the Croatian
government was having some official function. Along with the reporters'
cameras, bigger cameras were being set up. We thought we would stick
around and see what was happening. One guy seemed to be talking to
several others. He looked like a Yugoslavian Theodore Bikel. He had
sort of the same face but he had a port-wine birthmark covering most of
his face and he walked with a crutch. Steve said he looked like someone
and I said yes, he looked like Theodore Bikel, but it wasn't. Steve had
to admit Bikel was whom he had thought of. So we started walking away
and I added to Evelyn, "... but that is Omar Sharif being made up over
there." She thought I was kidding, But as we walked closer to the bench
Evelyn became more convinced it really was Omar Sharif. Then I realized
what was going on. The equipment I was seeing was all cinema cameras.
They were setting up to shoot a scene. The reason Bikel had the crutch
and the birthmark was that he was made up for a scene.

Evelyn said, "Well, if that really was Omar Sharif, why didn't you
take his picture?" "I felt funny making him a spectacle." But I did
try to get some distant pictures of him and Bikel. Then I started to
notice that the police all had empty holsters. Just about everyone I
had seen by the door was an actor. As they shot the scene, Bikel and
Sharif both walked out of the museum, the same door we had, into the
same crowd, walked to a car followed by the press, and started to drive
away, moving the car only a foot or two as the press ran back to the
door. Steve ran back to the hotel to get his telephoto lens. The
filmmakers filmed the scene twice. The actors signed autographs and
Evelyn got one from each. Bikel said the film was MEMORIES OF MIDNIGHT.
Then Sharif went back to the bench we had sat on while they set up the
scene. Mary, who cannot stand for long, sat down beside him and he

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apparently struck up a conversation with her and Evelyn joined in. I
drifted in also. Steve showed up with his telephoto lens only to
realize he could get close up and personal shots without it. He joined
Omar Sharif and the rest of us and we talked for about twenty minutes
about how Eastern Europe was changing and about travel. Then more
people started crowding and asking for autographs. I asked if anyone
ever asked him to sign as one of his characters. He said no. It
strikes me, however, that if you ask thirty people honestly to visualize
Raskalnikov from CRIME AND PUNISHMENT you will get thirty different
Raskalnikovs. If you ask for visualizations of the Mad Hatter you will
get only one. You will get the Tenniel illustrations of the Mad Hatter.
Tenniel and Carroll are dead now probably longer than they were alive.
Ask thirty people to visualize Zhivago and they will see Sharif and this
will probably be true long after the people who worked on the film are
dead. When an actor plays a classic character in a definitive film
version, for a short time the actor becomes the character. For very
much longer the character becomes the actor.

Sharif signed an autograph for a cute young girl and he told us he
had longed for a daughter. He had a son and his son had a son, but he
would have liked to see a daughter grow up. Eventually we had to leave
and Sharif shook hands with each of us and kissed Mary. We left and
returned to the hotel.

There were signs up that we were to meet our guide in the lobby at
7:30 PM. We wrote for a while, still bubbling from our experiences. At
7:30 we went down to the lobby to meet our tour director, Mojca. She is
a younger woman resembling the actress Tovah Feldshah. As we stood
there someone resembling the actress Jane Seymour walked by. Only in
this case it really was Jane Seymour. She is apparently also in
MEMORIES OF MIDNIGHT. As I think about it, I think I know what that
film is. I think it is a sequel to THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT, a sort
of glitzy, sexy murder story by Sydney Sheldon.

Apparently Mojca had made arrangements for us to eat in the fancy
Opera Restaurant at the top floor of the hotel. There are eight of us
on the tour. The four I described, Mrs. Ada Hale from Argentina, and a
woman named Noami from Uruguay. Mrs. Hale is a very forward and willful
woman with very strong opinions. There are a lot of religious
references in her language. When the guide said there were eight of us,
she said, "One more than the sacraments, two less than the
commandments." At dinner she pointedly asked us what religion we were.
Evelyn told her we were Jewish. She responded that it really doesn't
matter (!), that the religions are getting more and more similar. She
heard that near New York they have something called Messianic Jews.
(Somehow it is very hard to get people to realize that "Messianic Jews"
and "Jews for Jesus" are contradictions in terms. It raises the same
emotion as if Catholics who converted to Judaism were called "Catholics
above Christ." It would not happen, hopefully, because the vast
majority of Jews do not have the pomposity to try to go out and win
converts. "Jews for Jesus" is an advertising ploy for Christianity. I

Eastern Europe Travel Log 1991 Page 10

think the goal is not to get beliefs to come together, perhaps not even
to respect each other's beliefs--on a trip like this there is plenty in
Christianity that can be kidded--but for people to respect each other
and treat each other justly and ignore each other's mystical beliefs.
They never make sense to anyone else anyway.) At a later point,
Mrs. Hale pointedly asked me what my "Christian name" was.

But this is getting a little ahead of myself. Mrs. Hale was very
angry because the airline had lost her luggage. Mojca asked Steve and
me if we had jackets and ties along on the trip. We each had a tie but
neither had a jacket. Evelyn told Steve she would lend him her corduroy
jacket. I wore an Izod cardigan sweater. I am sorry now I didn't get a
picture of Steve wearing Evelyn's jacket. It was a size or two too
small and the wrong style entirely. At the restaurant they pretended to
ignore the jacket and my sweater since there were just two other people
eating and they seemed not to complain too bitterly. (There was a sound
of laughter in the kitchen and the first thing each new waiter did when
he came out was look peripherally at Steve in Evelyn's jacket.)

We sat there trying not to be embarrassed and making conversation
with the new traveling companions. All of a sudden I heard a
boisterous, "Hello! How are you?" I thought at first it was the
manager talking to Mojca, but her eyes just went wide. I looked around
and it was Omar Sharif saying hello to us. We said hello to him and he
said he hoped we enjoyed the meal. We wished him the same. Mojca
whispered to the two Latin American women, "Do you know who that was?
That was Omar Sharif the actor!" After she was worried we didn't have
enough class we got this big greeting from Mr. Sharif. Unfortunately,
life has too many of the little embarrassing moments and not enough of
the moments like that. When you come down to it, Mr. Sharif didn't do
that much. He chatted with us for about twenty minutes when he had time
to pass. He said hello when he saw us again. But it was nice of him
just to do that much.

We talked about opera at the table and Mrs. Hale talked about opera
and religion (Mrs. Hale's favorite subject) and how much Mrs. Hale
dislikes the Germans and thinks reunifying Germany will start World War
III.

Dinner was a sort of cheese puff followed by a veal cutlet. I do
hope European veal is not raised like United States veal.

Evelyn mentioned when we got back to the room that it must be a
posh hotel--the name of the hotel was woven into the sheets. I told her
that did not impress me. I would only be impressed if they had *my* name
woven into the sheets. On that note the day ended.

June 4, 1991: I woke up early and wrote. We had our luggage out
at 7:15 AM and in the hallway met Sam and Susan, the last two people on
the tour. They have been touring the world for the last six months and
they will be for the next three months. Pretty much non-stop. He is in

Eastern Europe Travel Log 1991 Page 11

real estate. I think I want to find out if he needs a partner.
Breakfast which we could have (and should have) gotten free the first
day was a nice buffet. I particularly liked the sweet cherries in
syrup. I also had my first fried eggs of 1991.

Evelyn sat with Sam and Susan. I sat with Ada, Steve, Mary, and
Noami. Oh, a comment on Sam. He may be excessively affluent, being
able to take nine months of world tour, but he and Susan both seem like
nice people. Sam is very helpful with Mary and very considerate of
everyone on the trip. I am not sure where Sam is from but he has some
sort of odd accent. He is not a native-born American.

After two days of nice weather, Tuesday turned rainy and cold. May
was rainy and cold which is very unusual. I suspect that June will be
also. The weather today conjures up memories of Spain where we had
solid cold rain and the worst flooding in fifty years in a month that
was supposed to be warm and dry. I carry ugly weather with me. Mojca
says she carries warm sunshine where she goes. She doesn't know whom
she is dealing with. My magic is stronger than her magic.

Our first activity was the city tour of Zagreb, This is the second
largest city in the country. Nobody is really sure how old Zagreb is
because there is no record of the founding known. The oldest known
record is from 1093 when it was made the see of a bishop and hence it
must have already been a reasonably important community. The central
square is Jelacic Square, a triangular square ruled over by a statue of
Ban Jelacic, a former ruler and the most popular. The statue was so
beloved that the Communists removed it quietly one night. They also
turned an art gallery into a Museum of the Revolution. More recently
the Communists were removed and the statue restored. Presumably the
Museum of the Revolution will soon be an art gallery again. The capital
of Croatia has had it with Communism. We covered much of the upper city
territory we'd seen the day before but learned a little more. The guard
we saw outside the Presidential Palace was not really a very old custom.
It was four days old. It had started the previous Friday. It was one
more show of Croatian nationalism and thumbing the nation's nose at the
Marxist Serbs.

We got an explanation of the elements of the Croatian coat of arms.
The checkerboard in the upper left represents the early principalities;
the lion heads in the upper right are the lions of Dalmatia. The lower
part of the coat of arms is the coat of arms of Slovonia.

We also passed by a church with a statue of St. Catherine with a
little wheel by her feet. This is because she was stretched on a wheel
as part of her martyrdom. This tiny wheel could not have stretched her
much. I take it she had a much larger wheel. In any case, Catholic
artists do seem to have a morbid desire to associate saints with images
of how they were martyred, If you started listing all the Jews who were
martyred for their religion in Eastern Europe through the ages it would
make a very long and gruesome list. If Jews commemorated martyrs one at

Eastern Europe Travel Log 1991 Page 12

a time by name there would be no time to do anything else and the vast
majority would be forgotten. I guess Jews have one modern martyr to
stand for six million and it is a toss-up if she is commemorated more by
the Jews or the Dutch. Did I mention I respect the Dutch?

Our last stop on the city tour was St. Stephen's Cathedral with its
two 104-meter spires. Inside, it is cavernous like many cathedrals,
with columns twenty meters high holding up an arched ceiling. There is
a marble pulpit from Carrara. There is a statue of the Virgin Mother
that was also spared from the great fire. I asked the local guide what
the locals thought was different about this statue that made it
especially beloved and hence was spared. She didn't think it was
different from statues that were burned. Just a little more beloved.

At one point I used to think that when you see tours listed in tour
books, some committee someplace decided what were the important sites to
see and then a tour guide was found to take people to those sites. That
may be partially true, but to some extent it is not. To some extent, it
may just be where it is convenient to take people. Once Mojca has the
travel vouchers from people, she has to drop the vouchers off at her
office in Ljubljana, so all the brochures say that next you visit lovely
Ljubljana. [P.S. This turned out to be a good place to have visited.
Within a month it would be making headline news.]

Except for a castle overlooking the city, there is little notable
we saw in Ljubljana that is not in most towns. It has a river with
three bridges, one under repair. Another bridge has a nice statue of a
dragon. A dragon is the town symbol since it was built on dragon-
infested marshland. There are some shops, but nothing all that quaint
or interesting. It was raining fairly heavily when we stopped. Evelyn
and I helped Steve and Mary get to a restaurant, then went looking for a
self-serve for ourselves. We found one and had some working-class food.
I had chicken paprikash (one drumstick with most of the meat fallen
off); Evelyn had tripe stew. We shared off. After lunch we shopped for
an umbrella for Evelyn. No go. They actually were fairly expensive.

From Ljubljana we went northwest to Postojna. This may well be the
biggest stalactite/stalagmite cavern known. There are fourteen miles of
the limestone formations. With fourteen miles they can afford to
squander some and they do. They have put in two and a half miles of
railway and an open train that travels it at fifteen miles per hour.
Perhaps it is an optical illusion, but it appears as if the head
clearance is so little that if the passenger does not duck, he will be
leaving hair and red and gray paste stains on the rock. The ride,
however, is quite bracing since the air in the cavern is a constant 46
degrees Fahrenheit. It was even more bracing for us since by the time
we had been installed in our hotel it had started to rain fairly hard
and when we walked to the cave entrance we got fairly wet. So riding
the cavern train was chilling in more ways than one. The feel is almost
that of a funhouse ride.

Eastern Europe Travel Log 1991 Page 13

Supposedly this is the second-largest cavern known, second only to
Mammoth Cave in the United States, so there is plenty of room to get
lost. Once you get off the train there is a mile-long loop you follow
and see one impressive chamber after another. Apparently there are
prehistoric cave paintings somewhere, indicating that prehistoric man
knew of the caves, but not being too bright forgot about them. They
were rediscovered in the early 1800s. This meant that anyone could
visit the caves whenever they wanted and could just walk in. Then in
the 1920s they say the caverns were "opened to the public" which means
people were told when they could and couldn't get in and had to pay an
admission fee.

Also you see a kind of amphibian found in the caves. It has red
spots for eyes and is light-sensitive, but is blind. It has gills to
breathe, swims like a fish, lays eggs, has lungs to breathe air, has
arms and legs to walk on dry land, and occasionally it gives birth to
live babies. Scientists place it in the nebulous area between a fish
and a punk rocker.

Dinner was grilled meats, continuing the tour of the great
cholesterol sources of Eastern Europe. Dessert was ice cream. Each
person got two scoops of two different flavors of ice cream. The
flavors were unidentifiable.

June 5, 1991: More rain this morning. Breakfast was cheese, cold
cuts, cream puffs, yogurt, and everything else unhealthy they could find
in the kitchen.

On the road I got Mojca talking a little about politics. I'd asked
her the day before what form Serbian oppression had taken. It seems
there are six republics. They fall into two camps. There is Croatia,
Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina in one camp and Serbia and
Montenegro in the other camp. [P.S. This was something of a lie.
Macedonia and Bosnia were really more fence-sitters, not allies of
Croatia and Slovenia.] The first camp is more for free enterprise; the
other camp is Marxist. For important matters each republic gets one
vote. The powerful Serbia does not want to lose, so it has claimed it
is really three republics. There is the main Serbia, a separate
republic of Albanian descent (Kosovo), and a third republic whose
definition I do not remember (Vojvodina). That went okay for Serbia for
a while, then the Serbian sub-republics started to disagree so Serbia
took away their right to independent voting. So essentially Serbia has
three votes, so you end up with a lot of four-to-four stalemates. Each
republic supplies the president of Yugoslavia one year in six. The last
president was Serbian; next it was a Croat's turn but the Serb would not
give up the office. Four republics voted to remove him as president.
Four opposed the motion. Stalemate and the Serbian president remains.

Serbs are given the best positions in the military, the best in
business, the best in schools. Now even the allied republics don't see
eye-to-eye on everything. Slovenes think the Croats are too

Eastern Europe Travel Log 1991 Page 14

nationalistic. [P.S. About a month after all this was over and Serbia
had invaded Slovenia, the republics voted for the national army to
withdraw from Slovenia. Croatia cast the sole vote against because if
the troops were in Slovenia, they could not be invading Croatia.] Now
things seem to be coming to a head. The four allied republics are now
unanimous that they want to dissolve Yugoslavia. They want to be six
countries with a single currency and a single military. This had been
proposed by Croatia but now all four allied republics are behind the
proposal. [P.S. Not quite true.] Mojca is hoping this is the beginning
of the end of the crisis. She expects she may never return to
Yugoslavia, but will return to the Republic of Serbia first, then to the
Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and finally to the Republic of Croatia.
This is either a very good or a very bad time to visit Yugoslavia. Time
will tell.

The day was mostly a travel day. We stopped at Bled, a nice
Slovenian town with a lake, cliffs coming out of the lake, and a castle
on the cliffs. It also has a church on an island on the lake. The town
became a spa. President Tito had a mansion built for himself which is
now a hotel. We stopped for pictures and also to visit some shops.
From there we went higher into the Alps. They were impressive, but not
as good as they could have been without a lot of low-lying clouds so we
could see only the nearest mountains.

Customs into Austria was nearly a wave-through.

We stopped to change money and have lunch in Klagenfurt, just
across the Drava River. This is kind of a pretty little town built
around a town square. At the center of the square is a large statue of
a dragon looking much like the creature in the film REPTILICUS. It is a
winged serpent with a fountain pouring from its mouth. This is the
Lindwurm.

We decided not to eat lunch when we could be sightseeing, so we
bought some crackers and cheese at a grocery (also a book by Jules
Verne, in German). We then went to the Cathedral (Domkirche), a
building that dates back to 1578. It had a lavish pulpit that seemed of
many materials such as marble and gold, but on close examination it
turned out to be cleverly painted wood. I took a picture of a plaque
that bore a picture of a lion who looked incredibly exhausted.

We walked around town for a while. There was a sign up to tell
patrons about seven movies playing. All were from the United States. I
remember ALICE and DANCES WITH WOLVES. The market had black
watermelons. At least they were a very dark green. My Zeiss field
glasses would cost nearly twice as much here, as we saw from window
shopping.

Next stop was Salzburg Airport to pick up Mrs. Hale's bag. The
countryside on the way was reminiscent of Norway, with its small towns
at the foot of high mountains. I used up a lot of film going from one

Eastern Europe Travel Log 1991 Page 15

spectacular scene to the next.

The airport is an education in itself. You go in and there are ads
for opera CDs and classical music albums. The newsstands sell classical
music CDs. Also albums of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, the official movie of
Salzburg.

We continued to the hotel, the Winkler. After we unpacked, Evelyn
and I decided to take a walk before dinner. We headed out to the old
part of the city because the new part is a lot like everywhere else in
the world. Cities all seem to be converging on a standard of having
store after store looking like Macy's. One of the aspects of Communism
is that it slowed the Macy-ization of the world. Its stores were poorly
stocked and had suits that were out of style. Macy ran against Marx and
the people voted. Macy won. That is the true tide of history.

We headed for a pre-Macy section of the town. There is a castle on
a hill overlooking the city that gives things a sort of storybook feel
(or perhaps a feudal feel, which amounts to the same thing). Around the
hill at the base are shops and statues. Basically this is the section
maintained for tourists. There are many small shops, there is Mozart
memorabilia such as statues, there are buildings listed as the house he
was born in (at least one or two), there are houses advertised as where
he lived--that sort of thing. There was also graffiti such as "Tourists
are Terrorists" (curious logic, that) and "Tourists, go back where you
are from."

There are also people playing chess with wooden pieces up to a
meter high. Evelyn thinks that it is always the same two guys playing
chess and they are paid by the town to make it look quaint. Hard to
say, but perhaps the graffiti artist missed the point. Tourists are
*not* terrorists. They are just poor slobs coming to have a good time
with money in their hands. It is competition for that money that causes
people to do stupid things. The town wants to see money come in so they
can tax it. They decide to portray the city as one in which people
choose to play chess with twenty-pound pieces. They'd play tiddly-winks
with manhole covers if it would bring in revenue. As it is, their chief
cash cows are the fact that Mozart was born here and THE SOUND OF MUSIC
was set here. You see references to each almost everywhere. (There is
less ballyhoo about Doppler and Paracelsus being born here--though both
were less commercial.) They've used THE SOUND OF MUSIC to create a
Tourist Trapp. THE SOUND OF MUSIC was a truly sugary fairy tale oh-so-
loosely based on the experience of the von Trapp family. Wholesome
Julie Andrews dancing around the Alps and joyfully singing to her little
charges is greatly appealing to Mary. It is sugary and sugarized, but
people love so happy a story of happy people escaping Nazis told with
such pretty scenery. I am not sure how many people think in terms that
Salzburg is Austria and Austria was Nazi during the war. Nazi was the
government and there was little notable resistance. Yugoslavia calls
its siding with the Nazis a national disgrace and points with pride to
the Partisan resistance. Until the accusations against Kurt Waldheim,

Eastern Europe Travel Log 1991 Page 16

little was said about Austria's part in those times. Austria has a
teflon coating when it comes to issues about the war. It is a little
ironic to have Salzburg capitalizing on THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Salzburg is
the pretty city the von Trapps had to flee from. Salzburg *was* and/or
*sided with* the bad guys.

Salzburg's other tourist treasure is Mozart's birth. In Mozart's
time and now, Salzburg loved Mozart. Mozart hated Salzburg. Mozart
loved Vienna. Vienna hated Mozart. Mozart's ego was built on
Salzburg's adoration. He took that adoration to Vienna and was chewed
up in court politics. Salzburg has every right to capitalize on Mozart
because it treated him pretty well and a lot better than Vienna did.
But it should be remembered that Mozart was not all that keen on
Salzburg.

Well, after this preliminary visit to the old city we returned to
the hotel for dinner. Dinner at the hotel was cream of garlic soup,
pork cutlet, and something akin to fruit cocktail a la mode. Steve,
Mary, Sam, and Susan elected to go to an optional chamber music concert
so had to leave early. I did not choose to go because, as I told Steve,
I find most chamber music dull. (My usual explanation is that I once
went to a classical chamber music concert, but as soon as I was seated
in the classical chamber, they slammed the door and piped in "Classical
Gas." Of course when I told this to Steve, he had never heard of
"Classical Gas." What can I say? I was just too subtle.) My tastes
run more to the Romantic period, which much of Mozart seems to presage
and much does not. Mozart's "Jupiter Symphony" is certainly what I
would consider of the romantic style. Most of his opera music is sort
of there and sort of not. Anyway, Steve asked if we were going and I
said apart from the expense (nearly $50 for two tickets, 500 AS), I
suspected it would be dull. Steve, perhaps kidding, later said he
almost fell asleep. I think Sam and Susan left early. Ironically, it
might have been the most worthwhile for Evelyn and me, but certainly not
$50 worth of while. Log-writing of course prevailed.

June 6, 1991: Buffet breakfast at the Winkler Hotel was decent.
It was the ubiquitous cold cuts and cheese, plus bread, butter, cereal,
and juice. We sat with Steve and Mary, mostly discussing the concert.
At 9 AM we went out for a walking city tour. First stop was the garden
of the Mirabell Palace. Wolfgang Dietrich, a prince as well as a very
pious archbishop built this palace in 1606 for his mistress and the
mother of his many children, Salome Alt. The mansion and its gardens
were beautiful and well-dedicated to conspicuous consumption as befitted
the mistress of a father of the church. In 1818 the mansion burned but
has been rebuilt if not actually restored. At one end of the garden is
a court with four statues from Greek mythology that also represented the
four elements. Air was represented by Hercules holding a giant in the
air so he would not come in contact with the earth. Another showed
Paris stealing Helen across the water. Another there was Aeneas fleeing
from Troy in flames. Finally there is Pluto stealing Persephone to make
the fourth statue.