One More Time

Just a quick note.. we went and saw the Sufi ceremony known as the Whirling Dervishes tonight... wow. Before the ceremony, we got to talk to one of the Sufis,who explained the purpose of the dance -- to recognize the oneness of God, and to seek focus and union and spiritual maturity. And then, to return to regular existence with a sense of service to others. There's more to it of course, but it was moving and solemn and quite, quite beautiful. It started with music.. two stringed instruments and a flute and a drum. Then three singers sang the words that invoked the proper spirit and attitudes. Then the dancers very quietly and with great dignity entered, bowed, greeted one another and then began the dance.

It was awesome.... Sufis are Muslims who seek a mystical experience, but as our Sufi guide told us, "we are all the same, Muslims,Christians, Jews, we all seek the same God."

Then we sought dinner.... one last meal in a Turkish restaurant... much laughter, a bit of sadness at breaking up our happy little group. Five of us board a bus at 3 am to go to the airport, the others follow in waves.

Next time I write it'll be from 10 time zones away..and home.

Yay.

I'm posting a pair of Sufi pictures (hint, look closely at the feet of the single dancer) and one last kedi. By the way, I love my new camera.. the pictures of the Dervishes were taken without any flash in a darkened theater.

One Last Day in Istanbul

It feels very familiar here.. kind of like "my neighborhood." After breakfast and our group morning meeting I went for coffee with a friend --Turkish coffee in a Turkish coffee house, sekerli (sugared) with a tiny little cookie the size of an American nickel. I did the last minute shopping (you know, the things I meant to buy and didn't the first time round!) Then I just walked, said good bye to the familiar kitties, admired the architecture.

I'm pretty much all packed... hopefully no overweight charges, but if there are, there are. I was pretty disciplined about not buying too many books, though I did order some from Amazon and Don says they are all waiting at home. :)

Tonight we are booked to go see a performance of the whirling dervishes... supposedly authentic. Last night some of the crew went to see a belly dance/traditional music performance, and it was highly touristic. Except for sadistic taxi drivers who booted them out blocks from the hotel they had fun, but I'm okay with not having gone.... when we lived here we saw many belly dance performers and it is a neat art form, but I really wanted to get packed and just rest up. The trip home will be grueling.

I still need to process a lot of what I have seen. Compared to 25 years ago there are many changes in Turkey. It is cleaner; the drivers are not quite as terrifying, except taxi drivers. By the way, my advice, should you come to Istanbul.... pick the oldest taxi driver you can find. My theory is that they have learned survival skills, have earned their stripes and thus have less to prove. AND, they are more likely to know where they are going. The driver Lisa and I had yesterday coming home from the bazaar had to stop and ask directions to get us back here and we certainly came a circuitous route. He was a young driver. Back to the old guys!

On this trip we have been in the developing world and in highly developed, modern areas. Turkey has made great strides. Probably the least developed places were Montenegro and Albania. I won't dare tell you what we overheard the Albanian bus driver saying to the Albanian guide about Montenegro, but it was both profane and possibly accurate. Yet people everywhere have been kind to us and hospitable. At no time whatever did we have any experiences that felt anti-American. Quite the opposite in many ways. At times, when we were with educated people, they delicately indicated a distaste for some of our governmental policies over the last decade, but all expressed a feeling that things would now improve.

What stands out though, in the background, is a sense that we're all alike in most important ways. Family matters, friends matter, following dreams matters. Every time we got to know someone we found that our values meshed in most ways. There is great respect here for education and most of the people we met saw education as a necessity and something for which to struggle and be thankful. I worry that many are losing that at home. That may be a societal thing we need to grapple with.

If anything I saw worried me it was the bumps here and there of resurgent nationalistic extremism. Patriotism is one thing,and a good one, but it would appear that everywhere there are those who for their own purposes are fanning the nasty flames of nationalistic passions. One example in the Balkans. The Serbo-Croatian language is mutually intelligible with minor pronunciation differences and some minor vocab substitutions thru Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. It can be written in both our alphabet and in Cyrillic. In Serbia we saw many signs that were in both; as we moved into Bosnia it was in both but on the borders toward Serbia, the bi-alphabet signs had the Western spellings crossed out with spray paint, etc. As we approached Croatia, the Cyrillic was defaced. Subtle but maybe alarming in the impact.

There was humor everywhere, too... sometimes black humor, sometimes raucous. Sometimes for survival. There were smiles and hospitality but different approaches. In Turkey there is much customer service. Our luggage miraculously appeared in our hotel rooms. That did NOT happen in the Balkan nations! Breakfasts showed a difference.. throughout Turkey the spreads were generous and open but in other countries the selection and quantity were very limited. Yet, I had the sense of being given their best. In one Balkan hotel the first cup of coffee was free.. then you had to pay for additional cups, even though we had paid full board for breakfast. In Turkey it was very laissez faire.. when we came to breakfast it was there, but in the hotels in some of the other countries, it was made clear we all had to be there at a certain time and eat together. No worries... we did as we were told.

And more... but not now. I will put up one more kitty picture...and one last cup of Turkish coffee!


I am homesick and ready to come home. I miss Don, my friends, my colleagues, the swamp, the cats, the dog and my own bed. I feel like I've been gone too long but I wouldn't have missed it for anything and I am grateful for the new friends, the new learning and insights and the incredible memories. I am particularly appreciative that Don so unselfishly urged me to apply and supported this whole project. I do have the world's best husband. I know that! He has even patted the cats for me.

Edirne and the bus dancers!

One last day on the road

We're back in Istanbul.... back at the Bristol Hotel, back with internet at a speed higher than 1 Mbps (really, that is what it was in Edirne). It was a good day and a bit nostalgic... we've grown to be a close little group with sharing illnesses, joys, ideas, excitement, new experiences. But we are all old enough to appreciate that the next fifteen hour travel day will be NOT on a bus, not on Albanian roads.... and with home at the end of it.

But enough of that. Let's talk about Edirne. We got up in the caravansary. Some of us were a little sleep deprived from the wedding festivities last night.. but the band and singers did shut off at midnight. After breakfast (olives, bread, cheese, hot hard boiled egg, apricot juice in a box, and nescafe instant) we went off to see two of Edirne's remarkable mosques. The old one dates till 15th century and was incredibly beautiful....among its features are a wide variety of calligraphy styles that decorate the interior... and much beautiful decoration in the domes. Then we went to see the "new" mosque.. designed by Sinan, the famous Ottoman architect who didn't start designing till he began his second career (he started out building military fortifications till he was in his late 40's if I remember right). Edirne's mosque is one of his many masterpieces.. it dominates the skyline and is graceful and symetrical. Under it is a bazaar, on what could be considered its first story, and it rises above that with lovely grounds and plantings.

Then we went to what may be one of my favorite things of the trip.. a museum on the site of an Ottoman hospital/medical madrassah (school) built in the reign of Bayezid II in 1484 after the Ottoman capital had moved on to Istanbul (1453). The rather large complex was remarkably sophisticated for its time. Its centerpiece was a teaching hospital with innovative treatment methods. There were also guest houses for travelers or the families of patients, a soup kitchen and bakery for the poor, a mosque, workshops for artisans, a water mill, and a public bath (hamam)

The hospital existed to help people but also to train medical students. It treated all manners of illness, but was particularly noted for its treatment of psychiatric illnesses such as manias, melancholy, epilepsy (which was seen as a mental affliction) and much more. The hospital had a 10 piece orchestra in residence, for the belief was that music could treat many of these disorders. They also had a significant program of aromatherapy and herbal medicines that were used in a variety of contexts. Today the museum has used mannequins and excellent reconstruction of the rooms to give a very lifelike look at how things were done. The hospital actually continued to function until 1916. Many of the medical books and diagrams of care exist today. Amazing stuff, for its time especially... but cutting edge today in many ways.

After that we headed out to cover the 220 kilometers to Istanbul.. fields of sunflowers, more corn... glimpses of water, but lots of sunshine.

About an hour out of Istanbul, our lovely guide Arzu decided to stir things up. First she sang for us, then she put on a cd of traditional Turkish music.. and danced in the aisle of the bus. Pretty soon there were five orsix others helping learn the dances.... it was very strange and quite wonderful. I kept thinking that in the US someone would have been screaming for everyone to sit down!

Life is good. I am now beset with mental whiplash as I try to organize all that I have learned. Tomorrow we have a morning meeting to talk about lesson plans; then free time for the rest of the weekend, to do last minute stuff, to work on lesson plans, to do this and that. I will no doubt post at least one more of these as my mind jells.

Thrace and Edirne's Caravansaray

The panoramic city view is of Thessaloniki, taken from the fortifications on the hill above it; the coastline is just as one approaches Thessaloniki from the west.

The rest of the views are of our caravansaray lodgings... the room, the view of the courtyard, and the kitty in the courtyard. We are back to cats, I guess!

Back "Home" to Turkey

Today we began in Thessaloniki, quite a big and modern city on the Aegaen coast of Greece. It reminds me very much of Izmir, with a large port for both commercial and tourist traffic, beautiful sea shore residences, hotels, restaurants, and a fortress on the hill above. This particular fortress dates to the Byzantine times, and was co opted by the Ottomans who liked Thessaloniki (Thess-a-loan-ee-key) so well they made it a provincial capital. It bears remnants of the Ottoman presence in some neighborhoods and buildings; and in a mosque now converted to a church. But believe me, this group knows a mosque when we see one!

We then continued out of Thessaloniki on modern superhighway... you cannot imagine how welcome THAT was. We were not bruised and battered from bouncing around the windy twisty up and down narrow roads. Our bus driver is a gifted man, but it was hard.

The landscape gradually flattened out... we were in the outer reaches of Macedonia at first. It is really easy to imagine Alexander or his dad, Philip, traveling those mountains off on conquest. Still rugged, but as we entered Western Thrace and then proceded into Eastern Thrace it became wider, more expansive plains. Still fertile, from the presence of farms, but dry. The fields were filled with corn, sunflowers, various grain and grass crops, and some veggies... hard to tell what some of them were, but some looked like mustard greens or similar things. Since that shows up on a lot of menus, as does chard, chances are good.

We flirted with the Aegean coastline along the way with some lovely vistas... there is no beach along here, but the rocks tumble straight down to water's edge. Occasionally it appears that a beach has been constructed or coaxed out of little bits of level land, but not much. It makes for splendid views, but bad sand castles, I guess. Building in the towns and cities goes right to water's edge.. the high rises on the water front in cities like Thessaloniki and Kavala, where we stopped for lunch, are multi purpose.. cafes and businesses on the ground floor, and then generally apartments on the upper floors. Lovely views.

We stopped in Kavala for lunch. Today it is a large city with modern amenities and a flourishing tourist trade. In Roman days it was the port for Philippi, to whose residents Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians after his visits there. It was a nice surprise for us... we were driving, as I said, on the modern superhighway... but said superhighway is so new it has no rest stops or services at least in this part of Greece. So we left it and drove straight down to the sea. We wandered about, ate at a seaside cafe (the food was all Italian... great canneloni for me!) and then bought kourabiedes, a local cookie specialty that is very similar to Mexican wedding cakes, except made with almonds. Very tasty.

Back on the road. It took over an hour to pass from Greece to Turkey. The border is very heavily fortified and guarded. As our guide said, this is Turkey's cold war. Both Greece and Turkey have large large military installations on their respective sides of the border, and they are taken seriously... many soldiers, all about 19 years old, all carrying machine guns very conspicuously. The road between the two border stations has barbed wire concertina on the top of the fences and there are posters that photography is forbidden. I obeyed the rules, not wanting to spend time in either a Greek or a Turkish prison, natuarlly. The Turkish side is also guarded by some very sleepy dogs and flocks of geese and peacocks. Really. Go figure. But we weren't asking questions. Our Turkish guide from earlier in the trip, Arzu, had met us in Thessaloniki and we were grateful since she speaks Greek fluently as well as her native Turkish. She guided us through the rather intimidating process... of course, it may have not helped that we were on an Albanian bus with an Albanian driver who did not speak Turkish, though he did speak Greek, Italian, and German.
We had to get out of the bus on the Greek side, show our passports, smile, wait till they returned them about 30 minutes later (we amused ourselves in the duty free shop and the FREE toilets). Back on bus, drive to the Turkish checkpoint, where Arzu worked miracles explaining 14 crazy American tourists, most of whom had a weird assortment of stamps in our passports. They did not make us unload luggage, for which we all were grateful since our small suitcases (most of our stuff is in Istanbul waiting for us to arrive tomorrow) have gotten overstuffed with souvenirs and dirty laundry. ((Everyone knows that dirty laundry takes up more room..... but there's been no time to wash things with 6 one-night hotel stays in a row.)

We drove just another 40 minutes or so to find one of the nicest surprises of the trip. We are in the frontier town of Edirne, noted as an early Ottoman capital and for its lovely 16th century mosque (lots of walking tomorrow). Our hotel is a converted 16th century caravansaray.. it is converted in the sense that it has electricity, internet, phones, air conditioning, but the rooms are probably not all that different and the courtyard is probably not all that different from when camels etc. were safely held in it. The only animal down there tonight was a kitty, however. I'llpost that picture, but possibly not tonight since the internet connection is very very very slow....

They carried our bags up the horrendously winding stairway and then led us a few blocks thru the city walking street to a "Balkan Chicken Restaurant" for a very acceptable dinner . Now we are back... unfortunately for us there is a rocking out wedding in the courtyard. Live music. Loud live music. Dancing. We would probably be welcome to join the party but on the other hand, we aren't all that up to it at this point. So... there is heavy traffic in earplugs.

But we get to sleep in till 7:30 tomorrow and then a walking tour of the Ottoman sites and then on to Istanbul.

So much more I want to tell you but my thoughts are jumbled. The two days we have in Istanbul before we leave are unscheduled so I hope to collect those thoughts there in addition to working on lesson plans and doing last minute explorations. I am going to bed! Pictures in the morning or tomorrow, depending on the internet gods.

pictures July 22

From Albania to Greece

What a contrast today has brought. We woke up in the developing world and have plunged back into the developed world.

Albania is a lovely place in terms of wild country side and nice people... but it is definitely facing challenges as it attempts to work within a democratic framework. The economy is fragile, the infrastructure is developing but inadequate, and the overall feeling you have is the one you might have had traveling in a southwestern border town (either side of the border) in the 1950's.

We entered Greece at about 11 today. The change was almost instantaneous... it was still exceptionally rural and mountainous, but the roads had shoulders and were smoothly paved. (Incidentally I may have mentioned that Albania was mountainous... apparently Greece decided to just plain omit flat spaces, at least in its northern reaches.) As we got out of the wilderness of the far northwest, we began to see other differences. Even though it was still farming, the individual fields were much larger, there was evidence of farm machinery as opposed to a very unmechanized way of farming, and there was irrigation evident, with big sprayers on all the fields.

The land we were going thru initially was what Greece calls Macedonia, once the powerful kingdom of Philip of Macedonia and then his son, Alexander the Great. The mountains are beautiful beyond measure, just as the ones in Albania were; high, rocky, piney at times, and very sheer. The roads were up and down, round and about.... not good for those of our group who have motion sickness issues, but then we got a -- gasp -- superhighway complete with multiple lanes, limited access, smooth surfaces, and a long series of tunnels that went right through the mountains instead of up, around, and over them. It made travel much faster.

Even so, it took us about 7 hours to get from the border to where we are now....

But that 7 hours included what many of us thought was the best meal of the whole trip. By about 2:30 or so we were all hungry, hit a little Greek village (not really even village, but more like three small cafes and a gas station.) We picked one...oh my..... run by two generations of Greek women with the third generation daughter home from being a lawyer in Athens. It was so good.... started with a homemade liqueur of some sort, kind of like a cherry/apple cordial, very mild, but tasting of sunshine and breeze. (No the driver, didn't have any!). Then there was a big basket of warm bread... just plain real bread. Then plates of freshly made feta cheese in olive oil with fresh herbs. Then plates to share of fresh green beans in olive oil with thyme and other seasonings. That is what green beans should taste like.. they told us they picked them this morning. Then Greek salad... tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, all home grown. Then plates of cold dandelion greens (we think) with a light mustard seed dressing... then braised veal with french fries (also home grown). None of the portions were huge, but there was plenty, served family style, with the sun warming the patio and bees and butterflies flitting about in the flowers. It may sound humble, but it was the perfect meal. We finished up with candied zucchini... an interesting concept, and not bad, but not as spectacular as those green beans!

We left reluctantly and drove on to Thessaloniki, a big city in Greece's northeastern coast. It is quite large and very European. Our hotel is pleasant, small, but the air conditioning works, the bathroom was findable and the only fly in the ointment is a broken elevator. But we can deal with it.

And so... I will put in more academic content tomorrow when my brain has acquired some more... Greece is significant in the Ottoman Empire and Thessaloniki (once called Salonika) was a regional capital. We are going to see ruins, etc., tomorrow on the way back to Turkey.

Albania pictures

Pictures: a melon stand... everywhere. No one ever seemed to be buying melons, however.

The castle/fortifications with the "watchman" I mentioned in the previous post.

Bunkers

The mad sheep.

catching up on Montenegro and Albania

Hi.. I am writing this from Albania, in an attempt to catch up...lots of adventures over the last two days, and all has turned out well, but it's been challenging.

On Sunday night we were in Montenegro. It had been a very long day on very rough roads, with multiple border crossings. We finally got to our hotel at about 9 or 10 p.m. and hadn't had lunch, so we just ordered pizzas from the desk clerk's suggestion.

The pizza may not have been the reason, but 9 of the 14 of us had rough nights.... all the classic symptoms of food borne illness... luckily my roommate wasn't ill so I didn't have to share the facilities, but for those where both roommates were ill, I guess the picture was not a pretty one.

In any case, the next morning found a dreary crew. One of the healthy young guys was so sick and dehydrated, we decided he needed to stop at a clinic and get checked out. Sigh. Three hours or more.... Montenegro has clinics, but no sense of urgency, for anything. Finally Lisa was reduced to shouting at them that if an American died in their country, it would be their fault and .... they responded by shutting the curtains and taking a break. Finally a doctor saw him, put him on an iv drip, suggested hospitalization and started using the word salmonella. She wanted to move him to another clinic, hospitalize him, etc. (Lisa is scary when angry). Our guide, on the other hand, a delightful man named Lekko, was strongly urging we get him iv'd up, then move on to Albania where he could get better care.

Did you read that last sentence? I never in my life thought I would hear of someone suggesting that a move to Albania might be the key to higher standards of medical care.

Nevertheless we gave the invalid the deciding vote and practically had to race him to the bus. Meanwhile we had spent over 3 hours sitting in front of the clinic.

A command decision was made to truncate the day's educational sightseeing and head for Shkoder, the second largest city in Albania, "just over the border." Our driver drove, we swayed, occasionally the code word for potty stop "bush" was used and we stopped. It took many hours and much fortitude, but we made it. Lots of phone calls to the travel agency had rearranged our accommodations and when we got to Shkoder at about 4 we had hotel rooms, beds.... those of us who were still sick collapsed for a three hour nap before dinner (barf, it did not sound like a good idea). The hotel air conditioning didn't work, but I for one did not care. I was not nearly as sick as some of the crew, but it was not my finest hour. I didn't even take my shoes off before I was asleep.

I did straggle to go to dinner. Our guide took us about 20 minutes out of town to a noted little traditional restaurant where we discovered that the traditional menu of Albania always includes spaghetti. It was very good. Then veal chops, which were a mistake. But then melon, which is wonderful.

A little about Albania to refresh your knowledge. It has been invaded by lots of people... Romans, Ottomans, Nazis, Italians.. to name only a few. It is a mountainous nation (if you ironed it out flat it would be the size of Canada, but no one has thought of doing that) It was very Communist during the cold war years. According to Lekko, it broke away from the USSR in 1967 because the USSR had lost its ideological purity. From 1970-75 it allied itself with China and China pumped in billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, but in '75 they broke with them (you got it, ideological corruption) and pretty much went it alone till 1991 or so. It was desperately poor and isolated. About 1 million of its 5 million population left, most of them becoming illegal immigrants into Greece and Italy... you can see lots of evidence of it.. the country is full of half finished houses.. remittance money sent home from overseas workers comes and allows building by stages.

Student protests began in the 80's and caused the change to a form of democracy. It would appear that they are succeeding in some ways, but it is a poor nation still. Very rural, very dirty, very polluted. Since there was no private property ownership "in the socialist years" (as Lekko would say) and since people were pretty much moved around at governmental whim, when the chains came off, there was chaotic building and settlement and only a few years ago did they get around to some sort of formalization of property rights, etc.

One interesting building custom dates back to earliest times. We passed an old fortress near Shkoder and were told that there were countless disasters when it was built. Finally a wise old sage told the family of princes building it that they needed serious magic, sort of a night watchman to avoid the evil eye. The only way to get it was to bury someone significant on the premises to watch over it. There was discussion and chicanery and when the time came only one of the wives was left to be the burial victim. She consented, as long as her hand could be buried outside of the castle so she could continue to feed her child. Sigh.

Today the buildings under construction also have a way to avoid the evil eye, but it's not a human victim. Instead, almost every building under construction has lashed to it somewhere a baby doll or a large stuffed animal... it stays out on the framework as long as the building is under construction and is there until the building is finished. It can look a little grizzly after a while, kind of like an effigy. So far I've seen dolls, teddy bears, and then stuffed everythings.. monkeys, horses, dogs, cats, etc., etc. Our guide told us it is generally only among the Muslims, but they are a large segment of the population.


We left Shkoder a bit healthier yesterday and had a very long day. Two stops for exploring fortifications, museums, etc. Mostly vertical climbs in high heat. I opted out of one, but did the rest. Our last stop was a beautiful old musem in a church in a little village.... amazing art works from teh 15th century that somehow survived the communist era, when all religious expression was forbidden. Lekko tells us that during that time if you made an idle comment like "Oh, God, I'm tired!" you could be turned in and punished. Among the treasures of this church are some beautiful old icons and altar pieces, and a fifth century codex. Pretty amazing.

We also passed a much more contemporary wonder.. the George W. Bush Bar. Apparently Bush visited here during the last years of his presidency and was taken to a showplace old village and was entertained at said bar. Thus they named it after him.

Among the random observations.... Albania has two basic job fields... car washing and selling watermelons. There is an incredible number of little car washes... most of them a hose and a canopy. Our guide says it is because of the old cars and bad roads....

Another anomaly.. during the depths of the Cold War, Albania's leader became convinced the US was going to attack....so he ordered the construction of something like 700,000 concrete bunkers; they are shaped like short mushrooms and are EVERYWHERE-- they only stand a few feet above the ground and are about 8 feet in diameter. When they were ordered, the order was that they must be indestructible. The military fortifications guy who designed them (many tons of concrete in each) was put to the supreme test by being put in one of them and then attacked by a tank. He survived. One of the guidebooks said that a more modern use was as a place of assignation by young people seeking privacy for interpersonal relations.. love will triumph, I guess.

Many sheep, goats, mountains. I was sitting peacefully on a hillside yesterday when I was inundated by a flock of the sheep.. they paid me no attention. I was glad they weren't a herd of buffalo or something!

Last night at after 11 we arrived in Gjirocastra where we spent the night in an interesting hotel...the elevator only goes to the fifth floor, but the rooms are on the 2nd, 3d and 4th floors. When we hauled our stuff up, one woman came out saying there was no bathroom... turns out half the rooms have located the bathrooms on the former balconies.. interesting concept. The air conditioning worked, but not the internet except in the lobby. And not the hot water. No hair dryer but a tv.. and about 3 square feet of space. Breakfast was a lovely basket of fresh bread, goat cheese, sour cherry jam, and coffee or tea. We can still see hints of authoritarianism.. we were told we all had to have breakfast at the same time...

Albanian is a language related to ancient Illyrian, so not at all similar to the other Balkan languages, though it has a rhythm like Italian and occasional borrowed words from Italian, French, Turkish, etc. I found it was almost possible to follow the museum lectures before they were translated.


While I write this, the rest of the group is doing another vertical hike and my knees are not up to it. I am sitting in the hotel lobby where the internet works and kind of enjoying the down time. They should be back in a little bit.. though it is hard to tell. When Lekko says 10 minutes, it's more like 30; an hour's drive is more like 2 and a half.. so when he told me this morning it was a 2 hour hike, I opted out.

I will probably wait to down load the pictures for this till tonight when we are in Greece. It's going to be another long bus drive, I think. The roads here are one lane but accommodate two lanes of cars. They have ditches on either side where I would have put a shoulder instead, and many of them are on mountain sides. While the mountains are not super high by Rockies standards, they are still very obvious and lie in between everything and everything else. Our driver is steady and cheerful and I am still wearing my blue bead.

I'll no doubt learn more about Albania... it is lovely countryside but clearly there are challenges. But then, it's a welcome refuge after Montenegro. (By the time we got here, our sick young man opted out of more medical care. I can't imagine why!!

Pictures for the long day

Pictures wouldn't load before I went to sleep last night. Or what passed for it. Say what you will about cats, they do not bark all night under one's hotel window!

Three Countries and Four Border Crossings in 15 hours

Long day, so short post. There was not as much academic content today but we covered lots of miles. We started the day in lovely little Mostar, one of the Bosnian cities damaged so badly in "the last war." I'll post a picture of its rebuilt bridge.. truly a lovely location. One of the reasons the Croats blew it up is to separate the Muslims from the Catholic population (the Croats being the Catholics.) Just to confuse matters, we were in the Herzegovina region of Bosnia. I am told Herzegovina was not ever an independent entity but is kind of the "Texas of Bosnia" -- independent minded and larger than life.

Then the road trip began. It would have been infinitely better to spend 15 or so hours in the bus (minus one sightseeing stop and a couple of potty stops) had the air conditioning been REALLY working! It's a good thing our group all smelled alike...

Border crossings.. we crossed from Bosnia into Croatia.. then from Croatia back into another section of Bosnia; then back into Croatia and finally into Montenegro, or more properly, Crno Gora. (R can be a vowel depending on how it is used. Yahooo.)
Each border crossing was a two part process... leaving the first country required passport inspection, time, etc.. then entering the next. It was slow.

We made it to Dubrovnik in Croatia about 1 and were turned loose for 2 hours of exploring the old walled city, admiring the Adriatic, buying souvenirs, eating lunch, whatever we wanted. I explored mostly.. it's a beautiful place, lost in antiquity at one hand and totally the modern beach resort on the other. You heard a million languages, there were sunburned tourists off of the cruise ships and tons and tons of tour buses. It was a really neat experience, but I'm not sure I'd want to live there.

The Adriatic was our companion much of the day, either skirting the coast on its own level or high above it on GULP roads... or crossing a small part of it on a ferry, or just admiring it from where ever we could. Most the water is bright bright Buena blue, except for the shallowest near the shore, which was turquoise.

We drove. Not much more to say. We did some amazing hair pin roads with steep climbs and 7-9% downgrades. Our driver (new today) drove with elan and a determination to do it all quickly. I mostly prayed they'd had brakes and tires checked out recently.

And so it went. We got in to Podgorica (pod-gore-eet-sa), the capital of Montenegro/Crno Gora about 10 o'clock tonight. We ordered pizza, ate it in the breakfast room of the hotel and I am so ready to go to bed.

Tomorrow at 8 we take off for Albania in a new (bigger) bus with our Albanian tour guide after a brief meeting with the travel agency owner, who is named Elvis. How can we miss?

Tomorrow we have more academic content, so I will be back at work.. today was ---- laughingly -- described as a "rest" day... tomorrow haw a lot more miles and more content.

I shall add some scenic pictures and the kitties of the day.. the sleeping one is sleeping in a shop on top of some sandals. Even after I patted him, he just rolled over and went back to sleep. A good choice on a 90 degree day in Dubrovnik!

Pictures for Day 21

Sort of from top to bottom:

The bridge blown up by Nazi forces in WWII. There is a museum nearby with tribute to Tito for his bravery and determination to leave no wounded behind.

Just some walls... like most of the walls in this area, there are bullet marks, damage from shrapnel and shelling.This is a land of shattered buildings and cemeteries. I have NEVER seen as many cemeteries as one does here. Not anywhere.

The lunch kitty.. blind in one eye and a bit skittish, but he did like trout. Cooked.

This is where we ate... lovely, huh?

Just random mountains. There were many more where these came from. Horrendous winds as we drove thru, with a storm brewing. Our driver told us that is common.

The map of Sarajevo.. at the Tunel Museum they overlaid a 1984 Winter Olympics map with the outlines of fighting and artillery emplacements during "the last war" (1992-1995) The narrow part is where the tunnel was under the runways of the airport.

More burned out hulks.. they are everywhere, in ever little village, every neighborhood of the towns... a constant reminder.

Edo, our bus driver. I am sure I have left many consonants out of his name. He prefers to be called Ed and is a joy.

Bosnian coffee. The difference, I think, was that sugar was in the cup but not cooked with the coffee. Maybe. It was very very good.

Ottoman fortifications above our lunch place. I took it from my place at the table.

One of the rebuilt bridges, still in Ottoman style. This was reconstructed with the assistance of the Turkish government, and announced with a huge billboard and flags flying.

Bridges and Nailing Jelly to the Wall Day 21

Today we left Sarajevo after exploring a bit more. The nailing jelly reference is that every time I think I understand the underlying problems in the area, it becomes nebulous and fuzzy again. But I will keep trying.

Background....in 1991, following the breakup of the USSR, Slovenia declared its independence.. quite honestly, no one but the Slovenians cared. They speak a language no one else does, they;re just tucked up there next to Austria, and so there was no big flap. However, when Croatia followed soon after, there was a lot more concern. Serbia, the Bosnians, almost everyone saw it as a major step in the dissolution of Yugoslavia and for various reasons, there were many who did not want that.. fear of becoming a minority in another nation's area, fear of losing power, resources, etc., etc. It's all complex and tied up with power and the powerful. When Croatia resurrected its old checkered flag, it became inextricably tied in many minds with the flags that flew in conjunction with the Nazis in WWII (The Balkans have a long memory and concentration camps make hindsight all the more keen). Best guess is that about 100,000 Serbs died in Nazi concentration camps... so they were particularly revolted and stricken by seeing that flag fly.

Then there's Bosnia in the middle.... look at a map (I'll post one on here) and you can see that Croatia needs its area to avoid being a very indefensible and odd shaped country. Odd shape isn't a matter of vanity, but rather an impediment to governance,to defense, and to development. So, there is more fear that Bosnia will also br4ak away.

Now it's more complicated by the multiple ethnicities.. and that's not all that clear because about 1/3 of all marriages were interethnic..so who the heck is a Muslim? An Orthodox Christian Serb? A Catholic Croat? None of the above, some of the above, all of the above. Argh.

In Serbia, we learned there hasn't been a census taken since 1991 so no one really knows either the population or the ethnic makeup. Who is going to trust any other group to take the census? Who's going to answer the questions?

In the early '90's, the best guess is that there were no majorities in the area... Muslims and Serbs were 35 to 40% each with Catholic Croatians being a smaller number. Maybe.

The Serbs' big interest and the motivation for their actions, was to keep the area intact with them more or less in charge. In April 92 an agreement was worked out with the help of international intervention, to create an independent, multinational Bosnia. However, the Serbs did not want to be a minority in this state, so they started shooting. They literally brought in the heavy artillery, particularly around Sarajevo and all hell broke loose. Every man of a soldier's age was co-opted by some group and the population suffered. Visible among the aggressors were types that hadn't been seen since WWII... double eagle flag, orthodox beards, insignias that resounded from WWII. At first it was Serbs against the Muslims. Sort of. Then, within about a year, the Catholic Croats jumped in and blew up bridges here and there, and started fighting as well. There was a lot of symbolic cultural destruction, such as the library I mentioned yesterday

It became a three way bloody conflict. Those who were controlling the conflict forced others who weren't combatant to become aggressors. For instance they would force them to participate in the slaughter of their erstwhile neighbors at gunpoint... thus spreading the hatred and deepening the fault lines The Serbs set up concentration camps and started to fill them. ALL groups committed atrocities of some sort. Those committing them were a small minority, while people of all groups suffered great loss and devastation.

We are in Mostar now... here the no man's land was dominated by what they call "Snipers' Alley." For a year and a half, the children of Mostar literally lived underground, hiding in horrendous conditions. No school, no life, just survival barely. Lisa says that occasionally people were able to commit random acts of normal living, but the concept of normal during those years was certainly now what you and I would consider normal. The famous bridge of Mostar was blown up (the word Mostar means "Place of the Bridge". ) The old Ottoman bridge that connected the parts of the town has now been rebuilt.

So.... let me share some of the places and stories.

I forgot one of yesterday's stories and it's a light hearted romp compared to some of what I've been writing. Near Sarajevo we followed a happy little one lane road (our new driver is named Ed and he's a delightfully good driver with an optimistic heart!) We found an old Ottoman era bridge (no longer accepting automotive traffic, but it looked as though it could). The story is that the bridge existed during Ottoman times and was the main entry way to the area. Given the ferocity of the mountains, most places only had one entry! The Great Suleiman had sent a new governor, Rustem Pasha, to govern Sarajevo and environs and the local dignitaries all gathered at the bridge to wait and greet him (there was generally a happy acceptance of the relatively humane Ottoman rule during this period, at least here The day was hot, the vizier was very late, and the partying began. Pretty soon, a local loony (exactly the word our guide used for this part) began diving off the bridge at dares, the potent potables flowed freely and many became inebriated. They had reached the jocose state of drunkenness by the time the late pasha appeared with his entourage.. and they were all raucously laughing at the goings on. Rustem Pasha was highly offended at the lack of appropriate ceremony, and being just a bit full of himself, decided they were laughing at him and his appearance. So he rode on by, paying little attention those city dignitaries who were still hoping to greet him.

And his first official act was to outlaw public laughter, making it a whippable offense. Our guide suggested that the Bosnians have been laughing at disaster ever since.

That was yesterday. We had dinner last night at a restaurant called (in translation) the Spiteful House. Long story, but the short version is that it is very old. A number of years ago it stood in the way of developing roads along the river that runs through Sarajevo, and they called for it to be demolished. But this happened in an enlightened period of respect for property rights and the owner refused to sell, no matter how sweet the pot. Finally, after much importuning, he agreed to sell if, and only if, they would have the building moved brick by brick and reassembled at another location. It was done and the food was worth it. We also had a kitty there,much to the annoyance of a party of otherwise very nice Italian tourists.

As we left Sarajevo this morning we first swung by the cemetery where Gavrilo Princip and his co conspirators in the death of Franz Ferdinand are buried. Princip himself was only 19, and thus was not given the death sentence, but he died in prison. Those of adult age were executed. We were told that depending on what regime was in power, there sometimes were statues in town extolling the virtues of Franz Ferdinand, then they'd come down and there'd be tributes to Princip and the Black Hand. Back and forth. Now there is only a mild plaque that is very neutral in nature.

We then went in search of the "Tunel Museum" (that's their spelling, not mine.) During the siege of 92-95, the only route in and out of Sarajevo crossed a no man's land including the runways of the local airport. The UN forces inexplicably held that air field and turned the lights on every night so that snipers and artillery on the highlands could fire on anyone out in the open. As food, water, medicine, oil, weapons, everything, became scarce, there was a desperate need to have people get out and bring back the needed items. Over 500 people were killed in the no man's land till a local group decided to dig a tunnel under the runway and out the other side. For more than four months they worked on it, round the clock, making a tunnel that was about 5 feet high (maybe a little more), a yard wide, and having a little rail track in it so they could bring carts of materials in.... during the time it was used, no one used it to escape.. it was controlled by the Bosnian forces but it as used to bring in survival goods. we saw a film of its employment and one of the items brought in was a live goat.. milk to provide for the children who were under siege. Today the entrance to the tunnel is a museum of sorts, in the home where the tunnel started. It is hard to find... we drove around the neighborhoods of that part of Sarajevo till finally someone gave us the right directions. The man who spearheaded the building is still running the museum with his sons. Fascinating stuff.

Then on to mountain roads. This is glorious country side but it reminds me of a drawing made by a 1st grader, with straight up- and down jagged mountains and narrow valleys in between filled with rivers of bright blue green water rushing through. There are layers upon layers of mountains off as far as the eye can see. It's easy to see the impact of physical geography here. The roads, by the way, are amusing little attempts to allow passage... there is certain amount of road construction going on so our driver decided to take "the old road" to avoid it. That's when I moved to a middle seat from the window. If I can't see it, we won't fall off. So far it is working. The hard part is passing another large bus on the side of a mountain. Ed, the driver, has a favorite line in English (which he actually speaks pretty well): "NO problem!" That an my blue bead and we're fine. I hear tomorrow's mountains down to the coast make the past ones look like foothills. My prayer life is rich.

We also made a visit to WWII. At one juncture as Nazi forces were subduing the Balkans, the partisans, led by Marshall Tito, who is still a great hero here, were trying to rescue a bunch of their wounded men and bring them back across a nasty little river deep in a canyon. The Nazis got a lucky hit and blew up the bridge that they would have to use. Tito announced that they would not dream of leaving any wounded behind, and organized a fast and frantic effort to build a variety of pontoon bridge, rescued every wounded man and brought them to safety, then dismantling their makeshift bridge before the Nazis caught up again. Today the WWII bridge still dangles from the hillside and it is quite spectacular.

One of the things we have noticed is that there is significant investment here by Turkey. At least one of the bridges that has been restored had a huge Turkish flag flying side by side with the Bosnian flag.

We ended the day's explorations about 10 miles from Mostar in a picnic area a lot like Sabino Canyon with more water for those of you familiar with Tucson. Gorgeous, fresh breezes, old Ottoman houses to look at, craggy cliffs, a bunch of caves in the mountains and a rock wall that had our rock climbers aching to go straight up it to the old Pre-Ottoman fortress on the top. (There were rules, however, there are rules about everything here.. the hotel rule card here says we cannot do laundry, dry cleaning or cooking in our room! I understand but have never seriously attempted dry cleaning in a hotel room!) We had a great leisurely lunch that began about 2 and ended close to 5 pm... some of us asked for Turkish coffee afterwards (everywhere else they have called it that to distinguish it from Nescafe instant, the OTHER coffee.) Our very nice waiter informed us that here it is BOSNIAN coffee. Whatever, it was good.

We are one night here, in a very nice small hotel. It has lovely amenities including a jacuzzi, more than one light in the room, internet, and air conditioning that works very well ( our air conditioning worked in Sarajevo, but turned off automatically every time the door was opened or the window opened.) The nicest gesture, too.... when we arrived hot and sweaty from the drive, the hotel management greeted us with wine glasses full of Tang. It never tasted so good!

I'll put pictures up in a minute!

Pictures of Sarajevo and a Sarajevo Cat

Finally a kitty.... lying in the entry way to a mosque. Are cats all Muslim?

The picture of me and the lovely woman in headscarf is on the spot where Gavrilo Princip stood to shoot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He was imprisoned on the top of one of the mountains and said his only regret was acidentally killing FF's wife Sophie (who was pregnant) too.

The pavement.... look closely and you'll see red paint that marks the spot of a massacre.. there were lots of red spots.

You'll see pockmarks from artillery in the building.

The little graveyard is in traditional Muslim style, with turbans to indicate rank and gender. It was surrounded on three sides on the mail tourist/shopping area by cola and coffee stands. Sarajevo is a city of graveyards, with many of the dates of death between 1992 and 1995.






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Sarajevo

I think this post will be hard to write. Most Americans, when thinking of Sarajevo, have a few stock images that come to mind, and I was no different 12 hours ago. We think of the 1984 Winter Olympics in a place we could barely pronounce. Or, if we paid attention in history class, we think of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the teenaged assassin, Gavrilo Princip, on June 28, 1914, the act that set the match to the powder kegs of Europe and became WWI. (Incidentally it was also the birthdate of my mother, who always more or less took responsibility --or credit-- for the whole war, but that is another set of stories.

Those of us who read newspapers in the 1990's remember Sarajevo as the setting for horrors of warfare that we didn't understand and certainly didn't take personally. We weren't sure who was fighting against whom, or why. Every time it seemed to make sense, the story pixilated itself and disappeared. It was easier not to worry about it.

If I could use an overblown metaphor for Sarajevo after today, it would be of a man with a gaping chest wound erupting in raucous laughter as he tried to tell the world what happened. Let me see if I can give a condensed version. Our guide today kept referring to the "black humor" of Bosnia.... and gave us frequent examples. He is a man in early 40's or late 30's, perhaps, a tour guide and journalist who writes for several regional news magazines and is on the editorial staff of one of them. His English was totally fluent and he was willing to talk about anything. His name is Amir and he is Muslim, blue eyed, just a shade darker than blond hair, and built like a high school basketball coach.

First the facts (well, sort of).... when Bosnians speak of "the last war" they are referring to the years from 1992 to 1995, when Sarajevo came under siege for 3 1/2 years. Amir told us a local radio station took notice of the fact at one point that the siege had now lasted longer than the 2 year siege of Leningrad and began playing "We Are the Champions" by Queen and then the other still functioning radio stations began doing the same thing.

There have been lots of wars of course. The Ottomans came in the 15th century and there has been warfare in these rugged mountains much of the time...and also periods of grace, with multi ethnic populations, religious toleration, great architecture and art and poetry. But the nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries left marks that are hard to eradicate. After the death of Tito, whose magnetism held much together, and after the fall of communism, our guide tells us there were pathological dictators and opportunistic dictators and both did untold damage.

When 1992 rolled round, the mountains that close in 90 percent of the periphery of Sarajevo were heavy with artillery. It is almost impossible to go anywhere in town and not see evidence of shelling, artillery fire, incendiary rounds, and so on A no man's land existed where many died; and in addition to those who died of the actual military attacks, many more died because of lack of food and water, lack of heat in the bitter winters, lack of shelter, lack of medicine, fear, and just plain evil.

Who? That's the hard part and we need definitions for it. Serbs refers to all the Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, wherever they live. Croatians are Catholics. Bosnians are Muslims and a newish term, Bosniacs, is also used to refer to them. There was also a bit of a Jewish community. The people on the mountains with the artillery were hard core Serbian nationalists/terrorists. Their victims were also Serbs, plus Muslim Bosnians, plus... and it goes on. The people under attack helped each other, no matter what their religious conviction or identification, but the shells kept raining down.

For three and one half years. Our guide very matter of factly told us that he was lucky. He ONLY lost his father, his grandmother and his cousin. ONLY. He himself served as a soldier, though he said a very ill prepared one. He learned to improvise molotov cocktails to fight back, but he said it was a long difficult time.

One of the great and intentional destructions of the time was a building that once had been a city center and now was the national library of Bosnia, holding 2 million rare books, documents, and files. It was hit with incendiary rounds and almost everything was destroyed. Today it is under reconstruction and will perhaps one day be an opera/music hall and public space. The books, manuscripts, magazines, and documents are not replaceable, a kind of cultural genocide.

We went there today and there was an exhibition of photographs taken by someone accompanying the forensic scientists who are exhuming those being found in mass graves. Numbers are staggering...more than 4000 mass graves have been found so far; in that time almost 30,000 people were listed as missing. So far the remains of about 20,000 have been found. About 85% were Muslim Boniacs. Sbrenica, a town about 75 miles from here, was established as a "safe zone" by the UN in July 1995, and about 8,373 local residents were listed there as missing during that time. 6000 of those remains have been found, at least in part. The work continues.


It is staggering in its horror. Genocide is a word that was not applied for a long time, but it fits the details now. There were so many atrocities that it is easy to become numb. Three of us wimpy ones were particularly affected by the horrors that we saw and were consoling each other in a dark alcove.. an older man who was manning the exhibit walked over, offered us these words, "This is our reality." He then offered us paper towels to wipe our eyes, told us he'd lost his brother, his father, and his son.

There's not a lot to say. There's maybe a lot to do to assure it won't happen again, but we know it has and will.

Then our guide brought us back with humor... told us that is what keeps them alive.. they sit in the coffee houses, Serbs and Croats and Bosniacs and Jews together and tell stories on each other, insult each other, and drink together. Then they tell stories about Albanians (why are Albanians the most unfortunate people in the world? Because they have Muslims and no oil!)

And he told one more Bosnian proverb.... "We have so much history we can't stand it."

Obviously what is written here is just an overview.. I need to come home and read some more and learn some more. But what is evident is that there is no simple story in the Balkans.

Traveling more than miles

We woke up in Serbia this morning, in Belgrade. If you read yesterday's entry, you'll remember it was very modern, very young...and very interesting. We saw equally interesting things today but there were some thought provoking sights as well, and some shifts in the norm.

We left the hotel in our new mini bus with a new driver. He's a young guy, but a good driver... he lives in Tuzla, (Bosnia) but is a Serb. His father owns the bus company.

We drove several hours through spectacular mountain scenery -- high, high mountains, a number of rivers, what appeared to be nice farms in the occasional mountain valleys. We saw cows, sheep, goats; crops were potatoes, corn, melons of sorts, and much grass/grain for feeding the livestock. There were haystacks everywhere... and we note that the Serbian haystacks and Bosnian haystacks were just the same.

After those hours going west, we passed out of Serbia and into Bosnia. It was relatively easy, though it took a while. First, at the Serbian border station (one fo the guards looked a lot like a Jay Leno younger brother.. but no one was smiling) they carefully scrutinized our passports and stamped them as we were leaving the nation; Then we drove 100 yards or so and had a little longer wait as the Bosnians scrutinized our passports and let us in.

There are a lot of impressions and some tangled history. First off, this is WILD landscape.. high mountains, sweeping valleys, narrow passes between the valleys, precipitous heights. My pictures are a little unsatisfactory since they were taken from a moving bus and since the day was cloudy and hazy (we had a little rain and a ferocious wind storm). WE probably drove thru 15 or 20 tunnels cut out of the rock... there wasn't enough flat real estate to build roads otherwise. Our driver said many of the tunnels were built by young, patriotic Yugoslavs under Tito (who everyone seems to miss). They are holding up well, just carved out of the granite cliffs. The road was really quite good and there were no real white knuckle moments today.

Our only sightseeing stop was a bridge over the River Drina... built in the 1570's by one of the Mehmet's (or rather at his behest). It still stands but is no longer carrying auto traffic. It is very beautiful. For those of you who have read the book about the Bridge on the Drina, this isn't the original in the book; that one is now gone. But this is its contemporary.

There are beautiful sights, but there are also sad ones... all along the way are burnt out/destroyed hulks of buildings... left over from the various rounds of fighting that have taken place here since, oh, maybe the 1300's... this has never been a peaceful place and it still has its tensions just a pin prick below the surface. The Kosovo War led to NATO bombings in Serbia in 1999, but there were other rounds of fighting throughout the centuries. Kosovo became an Ottoman possession in 1389 and stayed thus until 1912 when Serbia took it back. Now it is engaged in a shaky try at independence. Then there are the issues of ethnicity and religion. It is funny that the Ottomans never particularly tried to force their conquests to adopt Islam, though many did. They merely taxed the people they conquered, brought some of their children into the janissary corps, spread ideas, etc. There was great brutality when people opposed conquest, but in many cases those who were conquered almost volunteered for it, since the taxes under the Ottomans were less than other situations.

Nevertheless, the tide of nationalism that hit Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries also infected the Balkans... and led to the incident that seemed to precipitate WWI. The aftermath was bungled in the Balkans (as well as elsewhere, in the world's efforts to dismantle the empires as quickly as possible. Loose ends are prone to catching fire and exploding, and that is what happened.

So the lull of the Tito state, a Yugoslavia that had never really existed per se before, was fractured again after the fall of communism and once again we are seeing the struggle and frustration of the current situation. I think it's probably exacerbated by the world economic issues right now. I don't have the sense that bullets will be whizzing over our heads as we tour, but I do have the sense that there is unfinished business here and that the solutions may not be arrived at with sweetness and light.

But what most haunts me is those high mountain valleys.. they must have been relatively easy to defend.. so few mountain passes, so few alternate routes to anywhere. no wonder it's been a combative part of the world! In Sarajevo for the first time we are seeing both mosques and orthodox churches/

We got into Sarajevo about 7 tonight. Tomorrow we will have city tours, meet with a professor at the Museum to learn more, and spend another night here. I can live with that.. the room is actually big enough for two people and very pleasant.. I have laundry dripping in the bathroom and a pair of pants hanging out the window to dry (were on the back of the hotel, so no one is in line of sight with it!! There are remnants of Olympic glory here and as I look at the mountains it is easy to see it in winter with snow shoulder deep and the slopes just waiting.

I will put on a couple of pictures... the view of Belgrade this morning from breakfast, a few scenic shots.. no kitty picture today. I didn't see any, so they are missing.