A List of Obstacles a Romanian Bus Driver Had to Avoid in February 2010

Chickens
Playing children
Horse-drawn carts
Gypsy pedestrians
A very old man on a bicycle
A very fat man on a bicycle

An Incomplete List of Beers I Consumed in Europe from January through April 2010

From Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

Ukraine:
Chernihivske
Львівське (Lvivske)

Romania:
Becks
Guinness
Heineken
Silva Blonde
Silva Dark
Skol
Stella
Timişoreana (and this)
Ursus (and this)

Hungary:
Arany Ászok
Borsodi
Pécsi
Soproni
Szalon
Zlaty Bažant

Croatia:
Budweiser Budvar
Karlovačko
Ožujsko
Pan
Pan Zlatni

Serbia:
Jelen Pivo

Austria:
Edelweiss

Slovenia:
Human Fish Brewery (HFB) Ale
Laško
Union

Travel and Time Travel in Celje, Slovenia

From Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

Memory does not work in linear fashion. Leave home to visit the Balkans and it will not be a struggle to recall how to drive to your favorite cafe when you return to your neighborhood three months later. The mind picks up right where it left off. The contrast of two very different places promotes this separation of the memories. A weekend in Rome, Italy feels nothing like one in Rome, Georgia, and so memories from both places will be sharply partitioned and stand in high relief, occupying their own islands which await your return should you ever revisit them.

My father spent a lot of time in England in the 1950s. While we strolled around a small English town in 1992, he stopped at a seemingly random spot and said, "I think I remember a little footpath off of this street." He then stepped through a gap in the hedge and, sure enough, the path he remembered was still there. For him, it had been about 40 years since he had stood on that spot. It must have been a head-swimming moment for him.

The thing is, unlike the west side of Atlanta, cities in Europe don't change much. Nobody is going to demolish the old town section of Krakow, Poland and replace the St. Mary's Basilica with condos. If you visit Krakow today, you can expect to return to a very similar Krakow anytime in the future.

A few weeks ago I experienced the pleasure of time travel for myself. The place was Celje, Slovenia, which I had originally visited in January 2006. At that time it was a gray-skied, snowy mess, with rain falling on my last day there. That did not spoil the city's magic: Roman columns poking out of the snow by the Savinja River, a lively crowd at Branibor Pub, and a photogenic castle perched high on a mountain overlooking the town.

The train trip from Maribor to Celje takes only an hour. In Lonely Planet's Croatia guide, towns an hour away from Zagreb are treated as day trips, whereas in the Slovenia guide towns an hour away from one another are treated as separate entities. Truthfully, everything in Slovenia is a day trip from anywhere else, but everything in the Balkans is relative, including town rivalries.

High school girls passed time on the train working on various types of puzzles, which included word searches, "regular" crossword puzzles, and a very popular variation of crossword puzzles where clues are embedded within the puzzle itself (a Romanian example is here). Celje seems to boast a large number of commuting students.

The sunny, blue-skied and verdant Celje I encountered in April stood in sharp contrast to the snowy one I saw in 2006. Despite the change in the weather, every step I took triggered old memories. These memories were more than mere recollections of things I had seen before. The visit rekindled recollections of how it felt to be a younger traveler seeing things with fresh eyes. It's highly ironic that such a feeling can be stirred by returning to a place, but in 2006 I was younger and less knowledgeable than I am today, and walking down those familiar streets after a four-year hiatus allowed me to emotionally pick up right where I had left off. In short, I felt four years younger. I suspect my dad felt 40 years younger when he found that footpath.

I returned to the Maverick Pub, a place where I once sipped coffee while gazing through the window at a college girl outside who sported pink and purple streaked hair and wore a complimentary pink and purple shaggy coat. Today they are still playing electronic dance music mixed with pop tunes new and old. (This reminds me; the origin of a stellar drum and bass remix of Daft Punk's "One More Time" I heard back in 2006 remains a mystery.) Branibor Pub, where I spent a night scribbling down the titles of pop songs I heard (Robbie Williams' "Angels," Roxette's "Joyride," and Kenny Loggins' "Footloose") continues to entertain. And in one square of this small town I sipped coffee under the auspices of a plague memorial: a golden woman standing on a pillar with a halo of stars around her head (plague memorials are as popular in Slovenian towns as Romulus and Remus statues are in Romanian ones; Austria also has plague memorials).

Among new Celje experiences to append to the old, I discovered, near the museums, a nice little pub called TamkoUciri, which offered a cozy, outdoor setting for sipping one's Lasko beer. Taking advantage of the nice weather, students lounged near and beside the river, some drinking beers. And there was an abundance of Mohawk/mullet hybrid cuts on Celje's teenage boys, apparently inspired, I was told in Maribor, by a now-defunct David Beckham style. The cut is not limited to Celje; I saw it sported in Austria and Germany as well. Imagine how amazed I was when I saw similar Mohawks in Atlanta last week. Clearly I missed the international memo.

You get travel points for visiting new places, not revisiting old ones, but sometimes coming back to a town a few years later can offer great pleasures.

Slovenia and Balkan Rivalry

From Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

A record store employee in Graz, Austria asked me how long I was staying in his country.

"This is just a day trip," I said. "I'm staying in Maribor, Slovenia."

"Slovenia? Isn't that where stuff from the movie Hostel happens?"

"Hahahaha. Actually, Slovenia is gorgeous. And Hostel was set in Slovakia, incidentally. Have you ever been to Slovenia?"

"I've driven across the border to get cheaper gas," he told me.

The trip by train from Maribor, Slovenia to Graz takes only an hour, but I had found one Austrian who had no interest in his neighbors to the immediate south of him. As it turns out, Austrians and Slovenians, at least according to the people I chatted with, are not particularly chummy. It is true that Slovenians love to shop in Austria (there are many, many more stores in Graz than in Maribor). This might explain why Slovenians, I am told, are more likely to vacation in Vienna than Viennese are to vacation in Slovenia.

Like Graz, Maribor enjoys "second biggest" status in its country. But Graz's population is about three times larger than Maribor's. Slovenia is a country of only 2 million, so it is of little surprise that the number of Maribor residents lies in the neighborhood of 120,000. One can walk up and down every street there in half a day.

Maribor has a single hostel, the naughty-sounding "Lollipop Hostel," which in fact is an excellently-run place managed by a British woman named June who is appealingly always up for a beer. June told me that there is an intense political rivalry between Ljubljana and Maribor. She said the two cities "hate" one another, due to the funneling of Maribor money into Ljubljana (naturally, Maribor wants to keep more for itself).

As one would expect, there is also a large sports rivalry between the two cities. Emir, a bartender at the Metelkova club complex, bragged about how fans of the Olimpija Ljubljana football team showed up for a match in Maribor and proceeded not only to cheer the out-of-towners to victory against the home team, but to tear the Maribor stadium to pieces in the aftermath.

In terms of contrasts between Maribor and Ljubljana, I was told by a gay student that Maribor has a bigger—or at least more open—gay and lesbian community than does Ljubljana (in this sense Maribor reminded me of a tiny variation of my own city, Atlanta). In Maribor I was also introduced to a form of toasting that was met with puzzlement in Ljubljana (crying, "OHHHHHH-PA!!!!!!" while raising glasses, clinking them, bringing them down to the table with a clunk, then raising them to the lips).

There is a fierce rivalry between Slovenia's two flagship beers, Lasko and Union. Both beers recently updated their logos; ironically they seem designed to perfectly compliment one another, one boasting a burgundy-colored sticker on its bottles and the other featuring a tasteful forest-green sticker. A table full of Lasko and Union bottles is quite photogenic.

Distrust of one's neighbors is a common affliction in the Balkans, even between countries that did not wage war against one another. Slovenians and Croatians are wary of one another, a cultural divide due in part to a language barrier (Slovenians all learned Serbo-Croatian in school, but Croatians did not study Slovenian, which has led to such situations as the popularity of Croatian music in Slovenia without reciprocated appreciation of Slovenian music in Croatia).

Some Slovenians think that Croatians understand Slovenian but pretend not to (like snooty French pretending not to know English when confronted by tourists), but most people I spoke with seemed to feel that the incomprehension was due to honest ignorance.

Slovenia has a more overt hippie culture than Croatia. In Ljubljana I saw lots of dreads, one guy walking down the street in bare feet, and numerous instances of hippie-ish dress; I saw none of this in Croatia. Croatians, on the other hand, struck me as more fashionable, with more women in sleek, tight clothes and men in sunglasses. I might say that Croatia seemed more "hip" whereas Slovenia seemed more "cool."

Finally, for a long time Croatian and Slovenia have been embroiled in a border dispute, with both sides claiming historic precedence for their territorial claims, the result being that EU member Slovenia has used its vote to block Croatia's own accession into the EU (EU membership must be met with unanimous approval by the member-states).

All the Slovenians I spoke with who had an opinion about Serbia said that Serbians were friendlier than Croatians.

As an American, I find the rivalry between Croatia and Slovenia absurd, as both are Catholic countries who fought former Yugoslavia for their independence (if not together, at least soon after one another, reflecting a shared distaste for the government in Belgrade). Croatia boasts a beautiful coastline any Slovenian would enjoy; Slovenia has gorgeous Alpine mountains worthy of exploration by adventurous Croatians, and the people in both countries were extremely friendly to this outsider.

But the rivalries inside of Slovenia, a country where any city is a day trip from any other city, strike me as being even more amusing—perhaps even troubling. It seems that even a country of two million people needs to find ways to divide itself into rival camps. It suggests that conflict is a deep-seated human attribute.

But perhaps it is also a virtue. After all, innovation is spurred by rivalry.


ADDENDUM (added 23 May 2010):

Tension between Croatia and Slovenia was exacerbated during the Balkan Wars. This quote from a 1991 piece by Slavenka Drakulić, which was reprinted in her collection of essays The Balkan Express, captures that tension well:

"When I told [the Ljubljana professor] I was from Croatia his tone of voice changed instantly. 'I've read in the newspapers that you refugees are getting more money per month from the state than we retired people do, and I worked hard for forty years as a university professor for my pension. Aren't we Slovenes nice to you?' The irony in his voice was already triggering a sense of anger in me. I felt an almost physical need to explain my position to him, that I am not 'we' and the 'we' are not getting money anyway."

and from the same collection of essays:

"Slovenia has put real border posts along the border with Croatia and has a different currency. This lends another tint to the Slovenian hills, the colour of sadness. Or bitterness. Or anger. If we three [sharing the train compartment] strike up a conversation about the green woods passing us by, someone might sigh and say, 'Only yesterday this was my country too.' Perhaps then the other two would start in about independence and how the Slovenes were clever while the Croats were not, while the Serbs, those bastards..."

Philosophy of Travel/Childbirth

One thing no male writer is qualified to do, but he does anyway, is compare the difficulty of certain tasks to giving birth. The presumption he makes--one made out of respect to all women--is that giving birth is very painful. I do not pretend to know how painful it is, but I hear it is the single most challenging thing people go through on a regular basis. Writers are always looking for such superlatives to liven-up their writing.

To further trivialize this tremendous human miracle, I will say that I have found two things to be like giving birth. One is recording DJ sets (like this one), which involves about three months of pruning and planning followed by two weeks of strenuous labor. The other is traveling.

When I say traveling, I mean the travel days in particular. When an animal gives birth it is at its most vulnerable. Half-way through delivery an antelope cannot easily flee a lion. And so it is on travel days, where one must carry all one's possessions--passport, credit cards, laptop, everything--and haul the whole lot to every country's number one pickpocket/panhandling zones in order to move on to the next place.

Also like birth days, travel days begin with a mixture of excitement, fear, eagerness, trepidation, and then some life-changing epiphany. No city is ever what you think it will be when you roll into it, and no city looks very good during that first minute of seeing it. That's because train and bus stations are usually situated on the margins of towns; airports are located even further out, and so usually the ugliest side of the city, like a newborn baby covered in goo, is the first one sees. But every city I have visited has transformed into something beautiful.

So I propose a toast to travel days, travel stress, and doubtful first impressions overturned by joyful experiences.

Easter in Zagreb

From Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

After Friday night's sins and an early bed on Saturday night by consequence, I was ready to atone and to attend an 8 AM Easter service at the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Zagreb. I am not a believer, but I enjoy ceremony and I find other people's faith calming*.

Croatia is a predominantly Catholic country, so they're not into silly American Easter things like bunnies and baby chicks**. They are into eggs. Giant eggs, decorated in naive folk art style, have appeared in cities all over Croatia. Here in Zagreb an impressively realistic life-sized sculpture of Jesus and his Disciples (should "disciples" be capitalized?) at the Last Supper (also capitalized?) is in the main square; you can pull a seat up to the table yourself if you feel cheeky.

I feared my blue jeans would render me under-dressed on an Easter Sunday in a cathedral that houses a triptych by famous bunny-painter Albrecht Dürer, but clothes ran the gamut from casual to "Sunday best." The 8 AM service was attended mostly by gray-haired men and their dyed-haired wives, making me wonder about the future of the church in Croatia. The cathedral was not packed. In fact, attendance-wise it looked as I imagine a regular Sunday service would. Perhaps later services were more heavily-attended.

(That night I asked a group of four young women enjoying drinks if they had attended church that morning. Two had gone, the other two had not, but they all assured me that religion was important to them and still had a strong hold on Croatian youth in general. The two who went had also attended 8 AM ceremonies, but did not go to the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On the other hand, musician Joe Pandur, who I bumped into at a bar later on that evening, was more dubious about the future of faith in Croatia.)

Many women and a few men carried baskets, the contents of which were concealed under linen. I suppose these are bread baskets connected to the ritual of the Eucharist?

I have a bad cold, at least partially attributable to the bad behavior I've documented previously in this blog, so during half the ceremony I was painfully self-conscious of my coughing and runny nose, but fortunately several others present seemed to be just as sick as myself, so I blended right in. During the second half of the ceremony I pulled myself together and was relatively free of outward signs of sickness. It was a minor Easter miracle.

I liked best the part of the ceremony where everybody turns and shakes hands with the people around them. Of course, I did not know the Croatian line everyone says to one another as they do this, so I muttered random syllables as I made eye-contact and desperately hoped I did not offend anybody. They should extend that part of the ceremony and turn it into a sort of speed-dating thing, except it would be a speed getting-to-know-your-random-Croatian-neighbors-in-church-on-Easter-Sunday thing. After all, considering how many wars have resulted in the Balkans and everywhere else at least partially as a result of religious division, wouldn't a greater emphasis on community over sermonizing help smooth things out a bit? OK, I've been drinking beers all evening, but that feeds into an earlier point, which is that no amount of beer interaction compares to the warm sincerity I felt looking into the eyes of those church-goers as we shook hands with one another at the Easter service, none of us sober, but drunk on something else. I'm beginning to understand the powerful social draw of religion.

At 8:45 sharp the ceremony ended, allowing for a fifteen minute transition between the exiting of the attendees and the entrance of the next batch of faithful eager for their own 9 AM injection of faith.



* Usually. But during my exodus from Hungary I was terribly irritated by the guy manically whispering his prayers as he read aloud from his Bible in the seat across from mine. In fact, I will be crude enough to say that he was really fucking annoying.

** Cristina, my girlfriend who was born in Orthodox Romania, is currently in the U.S. and was surprised by how little Americans celebrate Easter. For the benefit of Americans, I should explain that in addition to bunnies, Easter marks the time Jesus triumphed over death, thus trumping Adam and Eve's original sin and saving humanity.

Backdated Entry: Not Recommended

(found on laptop and posted on 18 August 2010)

1) Drink at Club Fuego in Dubrovnik, Croatia until 3 AM; walk one hour back to hostel.

2) Pack things from 4 to 5 AM, then vegetate. Lose consciousness during vegetation.

3) Fucking awake to fucking 6 AM fucking alarm fucking.

4) Walk with three heavy pieces of luggage from hostel to bus station, because of uncertainty regarding buses.

5) Take wrong turn, find yourself at a dead end. It takes ten minutes to reverse direction and try again.

6) Shuffle along the Dubrovnik harbor with your several tons of luggage and your hang-over worrying you will miss your 7:30 AM bus.

7) Reach bus station at 6:55 AM. Load luggage and board bus. Discover that bus was leaving at 7 AM, not 7:30.

8) Count yourself one lucky dumb fuck, then pass out.

9) Oh wait, so it worked! Never mind, then: change title of blog entry to "Recommended!" ;-D