This is Old New Year’s Eve, January 13. Today and tomorrow I’m posting about this strange holiday from letters I wrote between 1996 and 2011, today 1996 – 2000. 1996: “Old New Year” sounds like an oxymoron, but in Macedonia … Continue reading Old New Year, Macedonia and Montenegro
New Year’s Eve is not my holiday. I’ve attended New Year celebrations in lots of places, but mostly as an observer, not a celebrant. The forced gaiety makes me uncomfortable. This year I observed New Year’s celebrations in Anchorage. Each … Continue reading New Year’s Eve, Albania — Anchorage
This is Albania’s National Holiday, Flag Day. On this date in 1912, 101 ago today, the Albanian Flag was raised in Vlora, Albania, marking the nation’s independence from the Ottoman Empire. Albania is one of the countries I can call … Continue reading Albanian Flag Day, 1993.
November 28 is Albania’s Flag Day, marking its declaration of independence in 1912. The Albanian Community in the US is celebrating Flag Day on November 27 so it does not conflict with Thanksgiving. This is from a letter I wrote … Continue reading Albania Flag Day, Letter from 1995
Prizren is the picture perfect Balkan town. It’s cut in two by the Drini River; a graceful Turkish arched bridge unites the two halves of the town. A 15th century Mosque dominates the riverbank. That Mosque is built on Roman foundations. At least 5 other minarets pierce the skyline. The citadel overlooking the town was first built in the 4th century BC by the Illyrians and used, in turn, by the Romans, Byzantines and Turks. Halfway up the hill sits a Byzantine monastery. Another Orthodox church sits near the main town square. Then there is the clock tower and Turkish … Continue reading Prizren, the Picture Perfect Balkan Town
These pictures are faded. We scanned them to put on this website. March 1997 There are fine monasteries, isolated in the mountains, and of only passing interest to the Turks, so they remain. We went to Rila. It is a four story arcaded and fortified place with fine frescos that have the faces of donors to the monastery depicted as saints, and demons. I don’t know if the placement has anything to do with the size of the donation. While we happily spent hours in the monastery on one fine Sunday, it is the mountains rising around it that … Continue reading Rila Monastery, Bulgaria, 1997
This is from October 2011. We drove back to Serbia by back roads. The main attraction was to be Belogradchik, an Ottoman fort built around a series of natural red rock monoliths. In pictures they look spectacular, but we had fog down to the deck so I really can’t testify to them first hand. Now I know how cruise ship passengers arriving in Sitka must feel. We also visited the Rakovishki Monastery, which was a center for Bulgarian Nationalism against the Turks. The Turks destroyed much of the monastery in 1850 but left one chapel from the 11th century unharmed. … Continue reading Rakoivishki Monastery, Bulgaria.
My Friend Lili from Sofia asked where Bulgaria was in my blog. Here are some Archive pictures from October 2011. October 30, 2011 Sofia, Bulgaria Anyone who digs a few meters under Sofia’s the streets finds layers of history ranging from Neolithic to Ottoman with Roman, Byzantine and Medieval Bulgarian layered between. In 2004 excavations started for the hotel in which we were staying, workers uncovered a Roman Amphitheater and they had to redesign the hotel to protect the ruins and incorporate them into the design, giving the hotel a striking atrium and one of the more unique health clubs … Continue reading Sofia, Bulgaria
This is part of a letter that I completed in 1994 on the Alaska Marine Highway on the way home from a trip to the Balkans. I wrote from my notes while we passed landmarks noted in the Southeast Alaska … Continue reading Turkey
My office was on this street for three years, but who carries a camera to work? When I realized I was leaving I took my camera but the light was never right. On March 30 I had a camera and good light so I took these pictures. The buildings on the street are a mix of empire style, Austrian Secession, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and modern. I love the street. Continue reading Belgrade, Krajla Petra (King Peter) St, March 2013
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
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
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
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
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
In May 1997 Suzi and I returned to Dubrovnik after 25 years. This was the first of many trips we would make. When we were posted in Montenegro there was no US Embassy or USAID office to serve Yugoslavia so … Continue reading Dubrovnik, Croatia
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
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
Suzi and I first visited Sarajevo in 1972. Suzi found some old faded photos that she scanned for this page. At the time it seemed like the most exotic place we had ever been. We still have the Turkish coffee set we bought from that tinsmith. Continue reading Sarajevo 1972
I took these photos in December 2004. The last picture is a Sarajevo Rose. cracks in the pavement made by exploding mortars and filled with red wax as a memorial. Continue reading Sarajevo in the Winter
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
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
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
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