Author: Rich McClear

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Rovinj, Croatia

Rich McClear

October 1, 2011 Belgrade, Serbia Dear Friends, A week ago in Rovinji, Croatia, I went to sleep and woke up to the sounds of waves lapping at the sea wall three floors below our apartment window.  As the morning progressed I could hear gulls calling, flocking around the boats that had been seining all night for sardines, now coming into port, their wakes made the slap against the sea wall more pronounced.  At 7 AM the church bells at St. Eufemia called the city to wake. If you go to the window, just then, you can see the sun rise … Continue reading Rovinj, Croatia

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Vukovar, Croatia

Rich McClear

Note, Vukovar was the first major victim in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.  It is a border town on the Danube, in Croatia but, before the wars, with a slight Serbian majority.  The Serbs finally took the town over but after the Dayton Accords the town was administered by the UN before being turned over to the Croats, 13 days before we arrived.  Our job was to work with the Serbian radio stations in the region to make sure they got licenses from the Croatian government and to help assure that the rights of the Serbian, Roma and Hungarian … Continue reading Vukovar, Croatia

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Zagreb, 1997, Operetta at the Presidential Palace

Rich McClear

This is from 1997.  I threw in the picture of the necktie shop in this tranche of photos, just because it seemed to go with the uniforms. May 11, 1997 Zagreb, Croatia Dear Friends, We’re in our eleventh week of wandering Europe after the evacuation.  We had planned to be gone two.   We’ll be in Zagreb another week before traveling to Vienna to get visas and then to Serbia as IREX plans our alternative lives for us. I still enjoy being awakened by church bells at 6:00 AM.  Since it’s summer they seem louder with the windows open. Earlier in … Continue reading Zagreb, 1997, Operetta at the Presidential Palace

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Zagreb, Croatia

Rich McClear

This letter included my first impressions of Zagreb. I took the pictures in this post in 2001 and 2011.  We had been evacuated from Tirana and had been traveling for two months on only the carryon bags we got out with.  We were working TDY jobs for our IREX as needed.  We had just come from Prague. Zagreb, Croatia April 25, 1997 Dear Friends, Sometimes something you learn in the first hours visiting a place can prejudice you against it before you have a chance to really get to appreciate it.  That could have happened to me in Croatia.  According … Continue reading Zagreb, Croatia

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Mali Ston and Ston, Croatia

Rich McClear

May 23, 2004 Mali Ston, Croatia, Dear Friends, Mali Ston is on a cove, not spectacularly beautiful, but restfully pretty.  Mali Ston is not distinctive compared with other historic towns along the coast.  The reason to go to Mali Stone is to eat.  Big busses bring eating tours to Mali Ston.  This weekend a busload of French Tourists came to sample local seafood and wines.  The cove has oysters and mussels and the local wine is from the next valley.  The town makes much of its income from seafood wedding feasts.  I’m allergic to seafood but everyone assured me that … Continue reading Mali Ston and Ston, Croatia

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Croatia

Rich McClear

Some of my Croat friends will take exception with putting Croatia in the Balkans.  Driving to Zagreb from Slovakia I once said to a friend “It is good to be back in the Balkans.”  He scowled and said, Zagreb is not in the Balkans, the Balkans are south of the Sava.  He than thought a minute and said “So Zagreb’s airport is in the Balkans, but Zagreb isn’t.”   Metternich is supposed to have said: “The Balkans begin at the Rennweg.”  More commonly the Viennese aphorism is “The Balkans begin in the third district.”  I will take Metternich’s definition. We have … Continue reading Croatia

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1000 years of Hungary

Rich McClear

August 20, 2000 Budapest, Hungary Dear Friends, One thousand years ago today Hungary was established when King Stephen was granted the crown by Pope Sylvester.  Today there’s a party going on.  One week ago Suzi and I were sitting on the beach at Milocar in Montenegro, with no idea we would be here.  Since then I’ve been in Bosnia, Croatia, and Italy.  Today Suzi goes back to Podgorica while tomorrow I go to Bosnia, Austria and Romania.  Don’t ask. At the end of the week I was feeling pretty punk.  When I got back from a meeting with an ambassador … Continue reading 1000 years of Hungary

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Szabor (Statue) Park, Budapest

Rich McClear

These are paragraphs from a 2003 letter: In Hungary the Internationale is best represented in Szabor (or Statue) park, a collection of Socialist Realism artifacts outside Budapest.  While the park is not difficult to get to it’s sometimes difficult to find.  I asked the Concierge to mark it on a map.  She couldn’t find it and wondered why it was not in the center of town.  I said; “Well, I don’t suppose you would put it in the middle of Hero’s Square,” which is where some of the original work really did sit.  She laughed.  Finding the road is not … Continue reading Szabor (Statue) Park, Budapest

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Budapest

Rich McClear

This is an excerpt from a 2003 letter. Budapest has always been a “comfort city.”  The first place hit after our first sojourn in Albania was Budapest and it seemed like Disneyland, even though it was only four years out of Communism itself.  We had water, we had heat.  We put them together and had long hot showers.  During Milosevic it is the place we went to for refuge when things got too hot in Montenegro.  We maintained a flat here for four months, and that was a comfort.  But the food was the real part of the comfort.  The … Continue reading Budapest

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Hungary

Rich McClear

Suzi and I had a flat in Budapest for, perhaps, 100 days in 2000.  We had a flat there because that is where USAID was coordinating aid to Serbian independent media and civil society during the election that unseated Milosevic.  I spent only 22 nights in that flat, Suzi a few more.  During that time I was using Budapest airport to travel between Kosovo, Montenegro, Romania, Bosnia and who knows where else.  Suzi was traveling too.  At several points one of us arranged to get to the airport early because that was the best way for us to see each … Continue reading Hungary

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Sarajevo, BiH

Rich McClear

This is from a May 2004 lettet. Suzi was not sure she wanted to go back to Sarajevo.  We had been there before the war and had pleasant memories.  I’ve been back since but Suzi has not.  It didn’t help that two weeks ago a woman we both know who had been in Sarajevo before the war and who recently went back says she cried for three days.  But I had been to Sarajevo several times in 2000.  Things were not so bad.  The war in Bosnia has been over almost nine years. You can tell there has been a … Continue reading Sarajevo, BiH

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Sarajevo at Night

Rich McClear

This is from a Sept. 2000 letter. In the evening I walked through Sarajevo’s old town.  It had not changed much since I was last there in 1972.  The Habsburg section is now a big walking street, and the old town, still has its Turkish style shop houses and covered bazaar.  The streets were lively with thousands of people getting out of their hot houses and into the evening cool that was still in the high eighties. A Serb I was walking with noticed bullet holes in the walls of some of the buildings right down to the ground floor.  … Continue reading Sarajevo at Night

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Tracking an Old Memory, Dobrun, BiH

Rich McClear

This is from a June, 2010 letter: Thirty Eight years ago, (in 1972) Suzi and I fleetingly encountered a narrow gauge steam powered train while driving the back roads of Bosnia.  Last week, near the same place, we saw that train again.  The rail company is just re-opening the narrow gauge line into Bosnia after closing it in the 70s.  This time we chased the train to get a better look, driving onto side roads and catching up with it at a siding where the engine could un-hook its cars, shuffle around to the other side of the train, and … Continue reading Tracking an Old Memory, Dobrun, BiH

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Mostar, Herzegovina

Rich McClear

This is from a May 2004 letter. Mostar is the second largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the “capital” of Herzegovina.  We visited it before the war.  It’s in worse shape now than Sarajevo was four years ago.  Many of the buildings have warning signs proclaiming them a “Dangerous ruin” and advising you not to enter or park your car too close.  Much of the old town around the Stari Most, Old Bridge, from which the town gets its name is still badly damaged.  In Mostar there has been some rebuilding of the main monuments.  The ancient Turkish bridge’s … Continue reading Mostar, Herzegovina

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Visegrad, BiH

Rich McClear

This is from a June 2009 letter: During one of the mid afternoon breaks Suzi and I drove the 20 km to Visegrad, the setting for the novel “Bridge on the Drina” by Ivo Andric for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1961.  The novel helped me understand the historic context of Yugoslavia better than most non-fiction books.  The main character is the bridge itself, built by the Turks about 450 years ago.  The bridge has 11 stone arches.  At the end of the novel, during the First World War, the Austrians blow up two of the arch spans. … Continue reading Visegrad, BiH

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Wooden Churches in Eastern Slovakia

Rich McClear

This is from a letter written in October 1998: Eastern Slovakia is an area crossed in trade and fought over by Tartars, Lithuanians, Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Russians and Slovaks.  It’s where cultures meet.  Kosice boasts the eastern-most gothic cathedral in Europe, and while it is VERY gothic, the clock tower has a very un-gothic gilded dome.  This region is a borderland, a krajina in Slavic languages.  We drove “along the borderland,” U krajina, the origin of the name Ukraine, which sits just a few kilometers to the east. More than a dozen wooden churches, built between the fifteen and seventeen … Continue reading Wooden Churches in Eastern Slovakia

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Andy Warhol’s Nowhere, Medzilaborce, Slovakia

Rich McClear

This is from a letter in the early 2000s Friday afternoon we drove to Medzilaborce on the border with Poland and the Ukraine.  Medzilaborce is the ancestral home of the Warhol family (as in pop artist Andy.)  It’s easy to identify the town when driving through because of two huge Campbell’s Soup Cans that sit in front of the “Dom Kultura.”  The Andy Warhol Foundation donated 14 works to the town, including “Red Lenin” and the town has set up the Warhol Museum of Modern Art.  Warhol is probably one of the two best-known Slovak Americans.  The other is Jesse … Continue reading Andy Warhol’s Nowhere, Medzilaborce, Slovakia

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Vlkolinec, Slovakia

Rich McClear

Vlkolinec, is a Carpathian mountain village.  It is a UN world heritage site. It has remained authentic, I think, because it is accessible only by a one lane serpentine road up a mountain with turnouts for cars to pass.  The only stone buildings are the church, its “parish hall” which is now an art gallery, and the public restrooms.  It is a working village, and while tourists have to park outside the town and walk a very little way up the mountain, residents can bring their cars in.  The buildings are squared logs painted in pastel colors or white and … Continue reading Vlkolinec, Slovakia