Between the Clock and the Bed.

Since the contested election in Belarus, I've been riveted, as perpetually fascinated by these European locales. In watching coverage of the protests, as well as a few older documentaries, it finally occurred to me that Minsk (where I passed through during USSR times but didn't stop) retains so very much of that old Soviet feel that it's uncanny.

In short, always be suspicious of perfectly clean urban areas. They're more Disney-fied than real, and usually for all the wrong reasons (and I'm no fan of Uncle Walt, mind you).

Imagine my delight in this ...

Minsk: Owen Hatherley on the world's most complete, and most surprising Soviet city (The Calvert Journal)

Whether hostile or complimentary, all accounts of Belarus will mention the extreme Sovietness of its capital, the equally extreme cleanliness and lack of commercial pollution and/or vibrancy. This leads to some interesting errors. Historian Andrew Wilson, in his otherwise convincing critique of the Lukashenko regime, The Last European Dictatorship, describes its dominant style erroneously as Brutalist. Nothing could be further from the truth. Minsk is arguably the greatest neoclassical European city of the 20th century, with most buildings in the city centre resplendent with colonnades, baroque archways and romantic skylines of spires, obelisks and heroic sculptures, all on an axial plan integrated with landscaped parklands around the river Svisloch. This is the direct result of one of the least known episodes of the Second World War — the intensity of resistance in Soviet Belarus to the Third Reich. It deserves to be as well known as that of Poland or Yugoslavia, but isn’t, largely because it isn’t useful to anybody much, save perhaps Lukashenko’s unpleasant government.

... and by extension, this.

Melancholy of obsolete futures at (The Critic)

Alexander Adams on Soviet Brutalism and where to read about it

Brutalism has seen a surge in interest among young people keen on bold uncompromising Modernist design. Whole books of moody photographic studies of concrete buildings are snapped up by fans of urban life and retro design. A crop of new books explores the Brutalism of socialist states.

While Constructivism and avant-gardism in fine art came to prominence during the October Revolution, it was suppressed in favour of Socialist Realism by the mid-1930s. In architecture more adventurous forms and materials persisted, although in the minority. Under Stalin there was a degree of stylistic conformity and austerity, yet adventurous architecture was not seen as “bourgeois formalism” as it was in art. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, historicism receded and a greater variety of art, design and architecture (including Modernist architecture) became possible.

While supposedly for the masses, many of the showpiece constructions were moribund from the start: inverted ziggurat hotels that were barely occupied and shopping centres with few consumer goods to offer. Much of this architecture was completed less than a decade before the economic and political collapse of the Eastern Bloc.

In postcards, gargantuan apartment buildings — veritable terrestrial ocean liners — tower over public spaces, making farm-near-me/">miniatures of two-tone buses and Trabants. Third-Worldism (also called the Non-Aligned Movement) was a political position of the mid-century decades that apparently offered advantages of alliance to states that pledged to remain equidistant between socialism and democratic capitalism. In practice, most post-colonial states in Africa, South America and South Asia following Third-Worldism did turn to the two superpowers, which provided strategic assistance in return for favourable trading status or military co-operation, thus forming indirect and unstated alliances rather than outright ones.

These are the books described in the article. I can't afford to buy them all, but I wish it were possible. Come to think of it, I just might, anyway.

Consumer Culture Landscapes in Socialist Yugoslavia – Lidija Butković Mićin, Nataša Bodrožić, Saša Šimpraga
East German Modern – Hans Engels
Imagine Moscow – Deyan Sudjic, Jean-Louis Cohen, and Richard Anderson
Soviet Metro Stations – Christopher Herwig
Architecture in Global Socialism – Łukasz Stanek

BOOKS: Goran Vojnovic's novel Yugoslavia, My Fatherland is a must-read.

Marshall Tito's post-WWII Yugoslavia ("Land of the South Slavs") experiment called for the reboot of a shabby pre-war monarchy into a non-aligned socialist federal state that would take numerous nationalities professing three major religions -- Albanians, Bosnian Muslims, Macedonians, Croats, Hungarians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes -- and cast them somewhat forcibly into a melting pot, meanwhile doling out just enough regional autonomy to keep the area's numerous historical demons at bay until economic modernization (supposed worker control of economic enterprises within the socialist framework) proceeded to such an extent that these evils of the past would fade away amid a new identification as Yugoslavs.

For a while, and to an extent, this program succeeded. The second global war was particularly devastating for Yugoslavia, which was founded at the conclusion of the Great War (WWI), with little time to regroup before another period of sustained violence began. An array of Yugoslav partisan groups fought the Germans as well as each other, and in many respects a civil war raged alongside the larger international struggle.

Tito's faction emerged from the chaos, and because the Red Army was not needed to liberate Yugoslavia, Tito was given the leeway to steer his own path. Scores were settled, and by 1948 the necessary postwar rebuilding afforded an interregnum.

In retrospect, it seems clear that while the Yugoslav police state was softer than those required to maintain order in the East Bloc, the country's economic reforms never really became substantive apart from propaganda value. Tito was a gifted juggler, but after he died in 1980 economic stagnation pried the lid off the socialist contract, and federalism became a means of exiting Yugoslavia rather than the way to keep nationalism contained beneath the broader umbrella.

Serbia's Slobodan Milošević came to be blamed by the outside world for his out-sized role in the horror to follow. A more sober reading of the record doesn't absolve Milošević; rather, it places his power-mongering in proper context of similar opportunism on the part of his brethren. The victims inevitably were the powerless.

The preceding provides background for this novel by Goran Vojnovic, which I read while we were in Croatia and Slovenia, which declared independence simultaneously in 1991 and provided the pretext for civil war's renewal in obsolete Yugoslavia. Slovenia slipped away with little bloodshed, primarily because there wasn't a Serb minority for Milošević's goal of annexation. There was such a minority in Croatia, and consequently that's where the real atrocities first unfolded, later shifting to Bosnia and Kosovo.

Ultimately Vojnovic's narrative is concerned with fate. Are we as humans destined to endlessly perpetuate the worst aspects of our natures, or can we step away from them? The author has created a character, Vladan Borojevic, who learns enough to formulate this question about fate. It remains unclear whether there's an answer, for him or any of us.

I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking understanding of what happened in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For a more detailed rendering of the geopolitical factors, check out Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, by the retired American diplomat Louis Sell, which I read earlier this year.

Yugoslavia, My Fatherland by Goran Vojnovic: Balkan brilliance, by Eileen Battersby (Irish Times)

At last comes a work which will be required reading within and beyond the Balkans

Having spent years grieving for his father who went to war and never came back, Vladan Borojevic, the narrator, appears to have become an adult, estranged from Dusha, his silent mother, and life in general.

His father’s death was reduced to a curt announcement made by a widow who had already disengaged herself from her son, the narrator, and eventually married again to begin another family. Vladan, in a relationship with a bright young microbiologist, drifts along, fixing coffee machines and when he thinks of it, attending lectures for a degree he is half-interested in. One day he decides to Google his dead father and is shocked by the findings.

12 Days of Slovenia & Trieste (Part 4): In 1987, Ljubljana was an introduction to Yugoslavia.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so ... um, strike that.

Actually yesterday I recounted the story of the ill-advised evening train to Ljubljana (Slovenia, then Yugoslavia) from Trieste. Remind me to never again arrive in a strange city at 10:30 in the evening on a Friday, especially when the conscripts have gathered for their final night on the town, and all the suggested hostels are padlocked.

Now the Slovenia tale continues.

---

FINDING MY WAY OUT OF SLOVENIA, 1987

Early on a Saturday morning in Ljubljana -- now the capital of independent Slovenia, then a major regional city in Yugoslavia -- things began settling down within range of almost sensible.

The youth travel office directed me to Dom Tabor, a hostel somewhere in the center of Ljubljana that evidently remains in operation three decades later. Today's Google street view of Dom Tabor conjures no memories, but in 1987 it had available space for a Saturday night, albeit not in the cheaper dorm rooms of my preference.

Instead, I was billeted in a single room. For my second night in Yugoslavia, I'd be paying only double my daily budget for a bed, not triple like the disastrous night before. This was progress, I suppose; still, my scant notes indicate annoyance at the relatively high prices of Slovenia.

Insofar as my brief travel experiences informed me, Slovenia seemed out of place, tied to Yugoslavia and at the same time feeling far more Central European than Balkan. The hilly setting in Ljubljana reminded me of Salzburg, in Austria, and the red tiled roofs were a Mediterranean flourish resting atop imperial-era Habsburg buildings.

In fact, without belaboring the point, the Slovenes were under the dominion of the Holy Roman Empire for a millennium, then the Austrian for another 400 years. Only in 1918 did the European powers-that-be assign them to the newly created Yugoslavia. It was an uneasy marriage, and Slovenia artfully slipped away from Yugoslavia in 1991, with little blood shed.

The violence came later, to the south.

In Ljubljana in 1987, there were snarling dragons guarding the old downtown bridge and a teeming Saturday morning market in the square; tarnished copper stains on buildings with chipped columns; the widespread occurrence of chain smoking and public spitting; and a curious aroma in the air that eventually registered as coal smoke, which I hadn't experienced in metro Louisville since childhood.

In the old town, there was a little pizzeria by the river, and I splurged on a small pie accompanied by draft Union Pivo, tasty lager from the hometown brewery, which I managed to locate later while walking after the sun finally came out.

However, I'd already learned it was more cost effective to drink from the bottle -- and by my reckoning, I needed more than one beer.

On Saturday afternoon, fearing none of the stores would be open, I abruptly strolled past a line of people waiting to enter one, which was doing business with the door propped open. Emerging with three half-liter bottles of Union, it was time to sit on a park bench and gaze at the hilltop castle.

Where the suburbs began, so did the unpainted gray housing blocks, which were Yugoslavia's (and the East Bloc's) solution to warehousing its postwar population. In these neighborhoods there proved to be more examples of commerce than I'd imagined, mostly products being vended from wooden kiosks: cosmetics, street food, flowers and newspapers.

At last mildly buzzed and relaxed, it was time to reflect. Determined to meet my lodging budget, I determined to keep moving, returning to the formerly chaotic train station on Sunday afternoon to find it placid and normal, the employees no longer overwhelmed by drunkards. In retrospect, I might have chosen a smaller Slovenian city than Ljubljana and regrouped, but it was a short hop of three or so hours to Zagreb … and a fateful meeting.

---

In January, 2008, it finally occurred to me to search the Internet for some of the names I'd recalled from my travels decades earlier.

One of them was Radojko Petkovski, whose name promptly surfaced in a handful of listings, each attesting to his collaboration on fairly recent seismology studies, fully befitting an apparent post-Communist career advancement for a man whose 1987 business card identified him as an earthquake engineer working for an institute of earthquake studies in Skopje, Macedonia (Yugoslavia).

The second class cars on the Yugoslav "express" train from Ljubljana to Zagreb weren't terribly crowded. Seated opposite me was a conservatively dressed, well-groomed man probably in his late 30s, quietly reading a newspaper. When the conductor came past to check tickets, there was momentary linguistic confusion.

The man smiled, spoke to me in accented English, and answered the conductor. As the door shut, enclosing the claustrophobic old-fashioned compartment, I was handed a business card and an elemental conversation ensued.

He asked me to call him Rady. He spoke a bit of English, and naturally I spoke none of the Yugoslav languages. There were to be future implications to the fractured dialogue, but for the moment, it was quite pleasant to engage with a local.

Soon we pulled into one of the intermediate stations, and resting on a siding adjacent to us was a train filled with dazed young soldiers looking out their windows.

I'd been trying to explain the scene at the station in Ljubljana, and Rady nodded; he'd seen it, too, and proceeded to explain what I'd witnessed, noting that the rowdy specimens I experienced were draftees being shipped out for basic training, as were the meek (hungover?) soldiers glimpsed outside our window. They may have been one and the same.

Soon we had arrived in Zagreb, and Rady made it a point to invite me to Skopje for a visit. I told him it might not be for a couple of weeks. His card was filed in my pouch, and we said goodbye.*

---

As it turned out, the youth hostel in Zagreb had a suitably priced bunk bed for one night only, after which a school group was coming on Monday to fill all the spaces.

I recall having a few mugs of cheap lager beer on a patio outside the train station, with time for a walkabout. Interestingly, the only observation I saw fit to record was "construction work on Trg Republike," this being the central square in Zagreb. When Croatia became independent, the name was changed to Ban Jelačić Square.

What was the construction about? Here's the answer, courtesy of the Yugoslavia Virtual Museum.

The 1987 Summer Universiade, also known as the XIV Summer Universiade, took place in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. It involved participants from 122 countries and over 6,000 individual sportspersons and members of teams.

The city of Zagreb used the event to renovate and revitalize the city. The city's main square (Republic Square) was repaved with stone blocks and made part of the downtown pedestrian zone. A part of the Medveščak stream, which had been running under the sewers since 1898, was uncovered by workers. This part formed the Manduševac fountain that was also covered in 1898.

This was the work I saw occurring, two months prior to the main event,

On Monday morning, I hopped aboard a train into the interior, eventually passing out of Croatia and into the rugged mountains of Bosnia-Herzegovina. My destination was Sarajevo, and a date with Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

To continue to follow the 1987 story: THE BEER BEAT: Praljak, Yugoslavia's civil war, the brewery in Sarajevo and the bridge in Mostar.

---

* I did visit Radojko Petkovski later in Skopje, dropping by his office unannounced; he promptly offered me his living room couch and was a joy in every respect.

My first stab at these recollections came in 2008, later to be updated frequently until finally/maybe finished in 2017.

Back in 2008, when I found several internet references to Radojko Petkovski in the context of seismology, there was a dim memory of Rady being divorced or separated, with a young son who didn't always stay at his apartment with dad. I can't recall whether or not I met his son, who'd have been quite young. It's all too hazy after all these years, but I believe I did.

Still in 2008, just a few months after mentioning Rady here at the blog, I received a note appended as a comment to the Yugoslavia story:

I googled the internet for the same reason as you did, and I found your text. My father was Radojko Petkovski, Prof D-r. seismologist, who maybe you met in the train, probably returning from his visit to his brothers in Slovenia. It gives me a smile to see that he made an impression on you during yours short trip together.

Sadly, he passed away on 1st of June 2007.

Best regards,

His son, Milan

P.S. I can write you what happened after, since most of my youth has gone through that bloody period, but it will just ruin my smile.

I never got in touch with Milan, and in the larger scheme of things, I've no idea whether Rady was a "good man." At the advanced age of 59, I'm no longer certain how we measure such things, or whether we even can. But, for those few springtime days in Skopje, and in that far-off time, he was extremely nice to this fumbling and disorganized budget traveler ... and I'll never forget the hospitality. Thanks, and rest in peace.

12 Days of Slovenia & Trieste (Part 3): Finding my way to Ljubljana in 1987.

The Dragon Bridge, Ljubljana in 1987.
Vienna Secession style (circa 1900).

The following was posted at NA Confidential on May 25, 2017 as part of a series in celebration; it was the 30th anniversary of my lone visit to the country formerly known as Yugoslavia, and an excuse to finally scan those slides.

From May 15 through May 31 in 1987, I visited five Yugoslav “republics” that are independent countries today: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia.

The sixth republic, Montenegro, wasn’t on my 1987 itinerary and neither was Kosovo (ethnically Albanian but part of Serbia at the time). However, during a day spent in the city of Ohrid, the presence of Albania could be vividly sensed, lying twelve miles away across the stately waters of Lake Ohrid.

Other Yugoslav cities that I passed through were Zagreb, Sarajevo, Mostar, Kardeljevo (now Ploče), Dubrovnik, Belgrade and Skopje. I exited Yugoslavia at the Bulgarian border as the only American on a bus bound for Sofia, somewhere around Gyueshevo.

Even for those with a moderate grounding in European history, these place names still appear mysterious and vaguely eastern. Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic country made up of Christians, Muslims and Jews, and speaking a half-dozen languages (in two alphabets). Over the centuries, the inhabitants of these regions were the subjects of various foreign empires, including Rome, Venice, Hungary, the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turks.

The cultural kaleidoscope was calculated for sensory overload, and looking back on these scant three weeks in my life, my time in Yugoslavia seems almost otherworldly. Naturally I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and yet I’m fully aware of how much was missed or only partially digested. In truth, I was still in training, learning the ropes.

However, one thing about Yugoslavia has stuck with me. The people I met were amazingly hospitable, unfailingly friendly and invariably helpful to this flailing American in spite of the many language and cultural barriers.

These pleasant memories made it all the sadder for me during the 1990s, amid the murderous, decade-long Yugoslav civil war, when numerous barroom discussions began or ended with someone asking me if I could see the conflagration coming, all the way back in ’87, when I was there.

No, I didn't. Not at all.

But those men and women who’d been so nice to me – what had become of them? I didn't know then, and still don't. It's a melancholy feeling, indeed.

For a local's guide to Ljubljana in 2019, go here. This story will be continued tomorrow. 

---

FINDING MY WAY TO SLOVENIA, 1987

On Friday the 15th of May in 1989, I began the day at a hostel in Perugia, Italy, before embarking on three legs of a single day's rail journey: Perugia to Florence, then to Venice, and finally Trieste.

To this day I can't explain why I didn't spend the night in Trieste before crossing the frontier to Ljubljana, capital of the Slovenian republic in the federation called Yugoslavia. Trieste later came to be a bucket list destination, but my first time was a wash, with barely time to walk a bit and grab a bite of street food (pizza, or something like it) before making the decision to press on.

I returned to the train station in early evening slightly glowing from some cheap Italian table wine scored from a shop, and promptly suffered the first noticeable lancing of an otherwise hopeful seaside mood.

Rounding the litter-strewn corner to an isolated side platform, I saw the rusted, elemental Yugoslav train waiting for the ride to Ljubljana. There were only three passenger cars, and they had no frills left to give.

In 1985, my first brief glimpse of communism had come from the vantage point of a sleek Finnish tour bus. Now this unadorned vintage Balkan rolling stock hinted at what was to come during the next few weeks roaming southeastern red-starred Europe.

A port and border town, Trieste’s geographical resting place was much in dispute following World War II. Yugoslavia's Marshall Tito (Josip Broz, a Croat by birth) eventually acquiesced in his demands, and Trieste remained Italian, which it had been for only three decades after forcible detachment from the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire at the close of the previous war.

Consequently, a sizable population of ethnic Slovenes living in Trieste's suburbs and hinterlands became Italian citizens overnight. Their descendants appeared to be my fellow outbound weekend passengers, probably visiting relatives on the other side.

They began boarding the so-called "express," many encumbered with multiple bags, bundles and boxes. No one was speaking Italian. It was almost as though the dilapidated Trieste rail siding was an extension of Yugoslav sovereign territory.

The train finally began rumbling slowly to the east. We lurched uphill toward the border, into Trieste's famous karst hinterland (that's a limestone topography) with those darkened mountains ahead for which the Balkans are both celebrated and feared. It all seemed less imposing when brightened by a setting sun.

At the border, my passport merited little more than a cursory glance. The visa inside was duly stamped by the youthful, uniformed guard with the rifle slung over his shoulder. It all seemed unusually relaxed, a condition not always to be repeated in the Bloc during my journeys later that summer.

The locals had it somewhat harder, and their packages were inspected closely. Once inside Yugoslavia, the train began emptying as we stopped in one small town after another. After three and a half hours, just shy of 22:30, the express that never was shuddered to a halt at Ljubljana's central station.

Excited, I bounded down the worn metal steps into a warm and humid night, hoisted my pack, turned to follow the crowd, and was greeted by a full-scale reprise of an Animal House bacchanal, minus the togas.

---

Unsteady chorus lines of drunken young men were chugging bottled beer, the liquid streaming down their faces as they stumbled across the rails singing verses of unknown songs, with nary a female in sight.

To my right, a group of them were merrily urinating on a rail yard wall. Some were shirtless, half-heartedly wrestling. Others were projectile vomiting.

Although obviously harried by the mayhem, train station personnel looked on it with remarkably equanimity, as though the performance had been seen many times before.

And so it had.

Two days later while in route to Zagreb, a seismologist from Skopje explained that what I’d witnessed was a semi-regular occurrence throughout Yugoslavia. The revelers were the latest cohort of military draftees, celebrating their final night of freedom before shipping out to serve the motherland for two years.

Upon arrival in Ljubljana, I didn't know any of this.

Rather, standing on the platform transfixed and appalled, watching the crazy party, a question occurred to me.

Why the hell had I come here?

As throngs of thoroughly inebriated future Yugoslav soldiers milled through the debris in Ljubljana's otherwise unoccupied train station, I found myself an object of curiosity and attention, perhaps the lone western backpacker.

It must be said that the scrutiny wasn't threatening, and the general mood remained one of revelry. Gingerly picking my way gingerly through the ranks of the fallen, taking care to avoid evil smelling puddles, I scanned the strange directional signs in an effort to locate a safe path into the station's nerve center.

Two of them stood out: "Informacija" (information) and a pictogram of bank notes and coins.

Money was the first priority, as I'd passed from lira to dinars. In pre-Euro times, every border crossing required exchanging the previous nation’s currency into the next one. In 1987, there were few ATMs even in Western Europe, much less the East Bloc. Similarly, the credit card in my neck pouch would be almost useless in socialist locales outside of special "hard currency" shops.

Back then, you changed money the old-fashioned way, with actual dollars or American Express traveler's checks. The man behind the only populated window miraculously spoke a bare minimum of English, and was able to answer my questions.

Yes, he would cash a traveler's check.

No, he could not help me find accommodations.

No (gesturing at the cacophony), the baggage check room was quite full.

Bureaucratic scribbling followed, and he began slapping down those one thousand dinar notes, again and again, until the pile was at least two fingers high.

Not a bad exchange rate: $100 per inch.

Public transportation had shut down, and so my search for lodgings commenced on foot. There was a chronic scarcity of streetlights, but I managed to navigate a half-mile to the first university-affiliated youth hostel listed in the guidebook.

There were cobwebbed padlocks on the door.

The second hostel defied all navigational efforts. It was dark, the streets were deserted, I was soaked with sweat and it was well after midnight. Reversing course back toward the train station area, I made for the first standard hotel.

The night clerk eventually responded to repeated buzzing, sleepily offering non-negotiable terms of one night in a single-bedded room for roughly a quarter-inch of my hard-earned dinar wad, or three times the rate I expected to pay in a hostel. Exhausted, notions of showers and naps were cheering. It was a splurge -- and a deal.

On Saturday morning, flooded in blessed daylight, the youth & student travel bureau was easily found, and a less inexpensive bunk booked in a three-bed student hostel toward the city center. The day was free for exploring Ljubljana -- sister city of Cleveland, Ohio -- and drinking a few delicious Union lagers.

University in Ljubljana. I was a
philosophy major in college, remember?

Raw sewage railway scandal at The Brexit Roadhouse. But what does Nigel Farage think?

In order to properly introduce today's link to The Guardian, kindly allow me to rewind 32 years.

30 years ago today: (May 1987) Sarajevo, Mostar and what came after.

... I was headed for the coast on Friday, and Mostar was the next stop, three hours by train from Sarajevo. It was during this ride that Yugoslavia's mountains became a tangible, visceral presence.

One of my memories of this trip was a long period when the train stopped and sat, apparently waiting for another train coming in our direction to pass over a stretch of single track. Here's the view from my window.

I was in the compartment nearest the toilet, which in the typical European fashion of the time usually involved a foot pedal and trap door which deposited one's leavings onto the track.

However, some Yugoslav trains didn't have a commode, just a hole in the floor. Mine was one of them. It remains difficult for me to imagine squatting on a moving train, and perhaps this is why, with yet another contingent of soldiers on the train, as we sat stock still atop the high mountain pass for an hour, they marched one by one to the WC, and ...

I was very glad when the train started moving again.

That's correct. You depressed the mechanical foot pedal, the hinged door swung down, and the tracks could be seen flying past. Theoretically there was a water line attached to ease gravity's task, but not always.

From defunct Yugoslavia we skip forward to debatably "United" Kingdom of today, where I'm genuinely surprised to learn that rolling stock this old remains in use. After all, it's been a while since I greeted the right-of-way void on the continent while using the loo on a moving train.

Train firms backtrack over pledge to ban raw sewage on railway lines, by Gwyn Topham (The Guardian/The Observer)

Operators admit target to end ‘disgusting practice’ by the end of the year will not be met

A pledge to end the dumping of human waste on railway tracks in England and Wales by the end of the year will no longer be met, Network Rail and train firms have admitted.

Although Network Rail’s former chief executive, Mark Carne, said in 2017 he had secured government agreement to end the “disgusting practice” by 2019, several companies will continue to use trains whose toilets flush directly onto the track.

In 2017 the Department for Transport had said all franchises would compel firms to ensure trains had modern toilets, but several operators have now applied for exemptions. Labour said it was “totally unacceptable that railway workers continue to endure such unsanitary conditions in the 21st century” ...

Language in the Balkans is Balkanized just like the Balkans.

Tito, Sarajevo -- 1987.

“This soup is as cold as the sea!" But he was not shouting at the soup. He was shouting at the Turks, at the Venetians, at the Austrians, at the French, and at the Serbs (if he was Croat) or at the Croats (if he was a Serb).”
― Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

When I see what passes for the English languages these days on social media ... well, our own Balkanization of language and thought seems fairly well advanced.

What Language Do People Speak in the Balkans, Anyway? by Dan Nosowitz (Atlas Obscura)

No one can seem to agree.

IMAGINE A SITUATION IN WHICH an American defendant hires a British lawyer for a trial in an American courtroom. The accused then demands that a British interpreter be found. British-American legal interpreters are hard to find, so the demand could delay the case for years, possibly even long enough that the case has to be simply thrown out due to the statute of limitations—despite the fact that, obviously, a British lawyer is perfectly capable of being understood in an American courtroom.

This actually happens on a regular basis in the countries that once made up Yugoslavia. The language situation in the Balkans is so unusual that there is no consensus, either among native speakers or linguistic researchers, about what to even call the … thing people speak in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Outside the region, it’s usually referred to as “Serbo-Croatian,” but neither linguists nor the people who actually speak it like to call it that. When asked what language they speak as part of a census, some people in the Balkans simply mocked the question, writing “our language” or, its insensitivity probably owing to distance, “Eskimo.”

For 1,500 years, language in the Balkans has been a galvanizing force, a source of political identification, a blunt tool, a rallying cry. There are languages like it, but no language is treated in quite the same way ...

Spomenik Monument Database is a book I simply must have.

From the book.

This minor obsession began with a photograph I took very long ago at a rest stop during a bus trip from Dubrovnik to Belgrade, in what then was called Yugoslavia  ...

 ... followed by the helpful intervention of the internet 30 years later, enabling a positive ID.

UPDATE: "Tjentište War Memorial, Yugoslavia, then and now."

The two fractal walls of the memorial were erected in the 1970’s to remember Operation Fall Schwarz, otherwise known as the Battle of the Sutjeska. The military action took place during World War II and saw Axis forces attempt to rout a group of Yugoslavian forces and capture their leader.

If you're the Twitter type, the author of a new book about these memorials maintains an informative presence: Spomenik Database.

The Spomenik Database is an educational resource intended to catalog and demystify the abstract WWII monuments (spomeniks) of the former-Yugoslavia.

As for the book itself, this holiday season it would make the perfect gift for your favorite beer-slinging fan of brutalist monuments.

Spomenik Monument Database, a book by Donald Niebyl

Spomenik – the Serbo-Croat/Slovenian word for monument – refers to the pioneering abstract memorials built in Josip Tito’s Yugoslavia between the 1960s and the 1990s, marking the horror of occupation by Axis forces and the triumph of their defeat during World War II. Through these imaginative creations, a forward–looking socialist society, free of ethnic tensions, was envisaged.

This publication brings together more than 80 examples of these stunning brutalist monuments. Each has been extensively photographed and researched by the author to make this book the most comprehensive survey available of this obscure and fascinating architectural phenomenon. A fold-out map on the reverse of the dust jacket shows the exact location of each spomenik using GPS coordinates.

30 years ago today: (May 1987) Dubrovnik long before those trendy thrones and games.

Previously: 30 years ago today: (May 1987) Sarajevo, Mostar and what came after.

Day 39 ... Sunday, May 24
Mostar → Dubrovnik. The bus to Dubrovnik from Kardeljevo. Good day, evening concert in St. Grad (?), town walls

Day 40 ... Monday, May 25
Dubrovnik. Hike out the coast, early to bed

Day 41 ... Tuesday, May 26
Dubrovnik → Belgrade. 5:00 a.m. bus. K (strikeout) in Belgrade, punt ... on 11:45 brzi to Skopje (arriving Wednesday)

Then as now, the rail line from Mostar to the Adriatic Sea ends at a port town. At the time, it was called Kardeljevo, named for a prominent Communist economist from Slovenia who died in 1979. Since the 1990s, Kardeljevo has reverted to its pre-Yugoslav identity as Ploče.

Kardeljevo's train and bus stations were side by side, and after a short wait, it cost a couple of bucks and took three or so hours to ride the bus to Dubrovnik.

On the way, we'd have passed through the minor seaside town of Neum, which meant little in terms of socialist Yugoslavia. I don't remember it at all. However, thirty years later Neum is otherwise landlocked Bosnia-Herzegovina's only connection to the Adriatic, albeit a port suited more for pleasure craft than larger scale shipping.

It seems that during Ottoman times, the sultan wrested a short stretch of coast from what was left of Ragusa, or modern Dubrovnik -- once a mighty trading colossus with territories snaking up the water's edge in what is now Croatia.

When current boundaries were drawn after the Balkan wars, Bosnia-Herzegovina was awarded access to the sea via a 20-kilometer stretch with Neum in the middle -- and the highway from Ploče and Dubrovnik running right through it.

In 1987, my bus rolled through the vicinity with nary a pause, perhaps stopping in Neum to swap passengers. In 2017, there are international borders to negotiate on both sides of the town, and to evade them, Croatia threatens to build a massive bridge and roadway from north to south via the adjacent peninsula -- which Bosnia-Herzegovina duly opposes. The oft-delayed project supposedly is a "go," although it remains moribund.

Dubrovnik certainly was well known to savvy visitors in Yugoslav times, as was the country's then underdeveloped and still spectacular Adriatic coastline, which was host to a disproportionate number of nude beaches (no dummies, those Titoists).

To be sure, there were far fewer American than Western European vacationers, particularly German and French. These days, other factors have come into play.

'Game of Thrones' Tourists Are Besieging Dubrovnik, by Kriston Capps (CityLab)

The medieval city in Croatia is having a geek-culture moment as the setting for King’s Landing in the HBO series (not to mention the new Star Wars movie). But not everyone appreciates all the attention ... The city has survived every war that the Balkan Peninsula has delivered to its doorsteps, but a different force now threatens: tourism.

In 1979, UNESCO World Heritage status was conferred on Dubrovnik's walled Old Town; unfortunately, this meant little to Serbian and Montenegrin military units, which shelled the city in 1991, damaging more than 50% of the historic buildings. Repairs continued through the 1990s, and it is said that nowadays the only discernible evidence of the damage is roof tiles of a slightly different shade.

There was a woman waiting at the bus station to hawk her overnight lodgings. We rode a local bus to the suburbs, roughly a mile's walk from the Old Town. The room was affordable, and I had a day and a half to explore, beginning in the center.

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Massive medieval walls connect with the Minčeta Tower (right of center), built in the 15th century as a major component of Dubrovnik's defenses.

The Old Town from the walls.

The Stradun (main street) in 1987 ...

 ... and today.

I'm clueless about my reference to "St. Grad." Was it the beer? My best guess is that it means the Church of St. Saviour, although I remember nothing about the concert.

Next, the Monday walk along the coast.

Something about this random street scene has always stayed with me.

This bad photo shows three of the beers I drank while in Dubrovnik, probably on Sunday night. There is a vague recollection of purchasing grilled sardines from a street stand, a fresh loaf, and these beers -- and feasting back in the room.

I have few regrets from these early years of my travels. It's clear to me that there were many more options than available time, with inexperience coming into play, and the necessity of adhering to a budget. There was no wiggle room when it came to money.

Still, decades later, I can't explain my decision to abandon the seacoast for Belgrade after only two nights in Dubrovnik. Granted, the room in Dubrovnik was a bit more than I wanted to pay, but what hadn't yet dawned on me was the likelihood of a 45-minute bus ride in any direction resulting in completely untouristed (and cheap) villages.

If it did occur to me, perhaps it was a bit too frightening a prospect to abandon the more populated areas. I regret not doing so, although I'll always cherish the experiences I had ... and can remember.

Next: In route to Belgrade, a stop at the Tjentište War Memorial.

30 years ago today: (May 1987) Sarajevo, Mostar and what came after.

Previously: ON THE AVENUES: My Franz Ferdinand heritage trail, 30 years ago in Sarajevo.

Granted, my 1987 trip notes were sketchy and inconsistent, but they were even less coherent in Sarajevo and Mostar. Maybe I was enjoying myself too much to write (read: drinking too many cheap draft beers).

Day 33 ... Monday, May 18
Sarajevo. "Mickey" $5.50 room, 170 dinar beer, affordable city

Day 34 ... Tuesday, May 19
Sarajevo. Chair lift (Neil/Caren)

Day 35 ... Wednesday, May 20
Sarajevo. Mosque, etc

Day 36 ... Thursday, May 21
Sarajevo. Rain, shut in.

Day 37 ... Friday, May 22
Mostar. Suitable 4,000 dinar room, decent weather

Day 38 ... Saturday, May 23
Mostar. Good day, up to SOC, Mostar's Moberly, sidewalk pivo, etc

A dollar bought around 500 dinar, which helps to make sense of the quoted prices. Beers at a pub were 40 cents, and even less if purchased in bottles at a shop. Meals were two or three bucks ... and so on.

SOC surely means Serbian Orthodox Church (more on this in a moment), and "Moberly" refers to my high school pal Jeff, who used to play acoustic guitar and sing as we sat around the bonfire and drank beer. There was just such a performer playing for tips in Mostar as I drank at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the famous bridge, hence my note.

There is considerable melancholy attached to my recollections of what is now independent Bosnia Herzegovina, given the country didn't exist in 1987, and was subsequently created only after the Yugoslavcivil war, a horrible conflagration that killed thousands.

The country then known as Yugoslavia always was intended to be a high point of the 1987 trip, and it definitely filled the bill. Just four years later, all of it went up in flames as I watched from America via television news. There hasn't been a return trip to the region during the decades since, although we keep talking about beginning the cycle anew with a tour of Slovenia.

Of all the places I've been, none seem as surreal in retrospect as this corner of the Balkans.

Roger, seeing as you were in Yugoslavia in 1987, only four years before the tragic and murderous civil war began, can you tell us all about the rampant warning signs you noticed?

Actually, no, I can't. I was entirely oblivious.

It should have told me something important about Yugoslavia that in the 1980s, Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, still was considered essential pre-trip reading. West's book, a survey of travel and history in the region, was published in 1941.

In fact, I did read it, and came away from the 1,000+ pages with an image of the Balkans as not dissimilar from Appalachian stereotypes about the Hatfields and McCoys. Between West's book and my university studies, I arrived in Yugoslavia with a passing knowledge of the country's history as a tacked-together Great War creation, a jumble of multi-syllabic Balkan peoples, religions and languages cast together into a "Kingdom of South Slavs."

At conception, Yugoslavia suffered from a feudal Ottoman legacy of impoverishment, turbulence and suffering. Nowhere in Europe were urban residents and rural dwellers so far apart. History simply had not dealt these people a very good hand.

However, by the 1980s an entirely new narrative had emerged. In it, the non-aligned socialist government controlling Yugoslavia following the viciousness of World War II had admirably succeeded in molding a cosmopolitan "Yugoslav" identity, as opposed to separate ethnicities and faiths. 

Tito in Sarajevo.

Marshall Tito (Josip Broz) was the hero of moment credited with had put an end to the bickering, and in many respects he genuinely had, partly through an instinctive understanding of the human terrain in a difficult neighborhood (the Balkans), partly through an aptitude for judicially rendered totalitarian methodology, and partly through the common Communist trick of keeping ordinary people so relentlessly busy in pursuit of the tiniest details of reasonable life that they were too tired to rebel.

But, yes, Tito kept things together for so long as his heart was beating. When it stopped, in 1980, the genies began creeping from their prison bottles. Those few short years later, when the country went up in smoke, and an unbelievable stream of abuses and horrors unseen since World War II took a crumbling Yugoslavia back to medieval times, I asked myself the question dozens of times: What happened to make these seemingly ordinary people leave their homes and go berserk?

On the other, apart from the stock hellos, goodbyes and how much, I came utterly without communication skills … and, apart from people like Radojko Petkovski of Skopje and a handful of other natives closer to my own age, Yugoslavia in 1987 was not the exact a patch of Europe where one could find great numbers of English speakers.

Consequently, although it was always possible to get by, and sometimes even deeper insights could be gleaned, conversations of greater depth with natives were seldom possible. I met other tourists, but when one communicates with another tourist, especially an English speaker, there is a natural tendency toward self-fulfilling prophecies, and to reinforce what already is known, rather than to ask questions and learn the score … and most of us had read from the same elementary tour guide playbook.

There are hundreds of answers, but the point to me is that when I was there, the question wasn't being asked, and if it was, I didn't hear it.

Shame on me.

---

The psychological highlight of Sarajevo was the chance to commune with the ghost of Franz Ferdinand, but my room was so cheap and Mickey such a genial host that I stuck around for two more aimless days of wandering, drinking local beer while reading the official vacation novel, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and plopping myself atop benches to watch urban life roll past.

I vaguely remember Neil and Caren, who were from Minnesota. They were following traces of their Jewish heritage; we became acquainted while riding a streetcar, and I joined them for their explorations. We had a meal far out in the suburbs, drank beer, and eventually found the chairlift. The recollections end there. Wherever the two of you are, I hope you're well.

I was headed for the coast on Friday, and Mostar was the next stop, three hours by train from Sarajevo. It was during this ride that Yugoslavia's mountains became a tangible, visceral presence.

One of my memories of this trip was a long period when the train stopped and sat, apparently waiting for another train coming in our direction to pass over a stretch of single track. Here's the view from my window.

I was in the compartment nearest the toilet, which in the typical European fashion of the time usually involved a foot pedal and trap door which deposited one's leavings onto the track.

However, some Yugoslav trains didn't have a commode, just a hole in the floor. Mine was one of them. It remains difficult for me to imagine squatting on a moving train, and perhaps this is why, with yet another contingent of soldiers on the train, as we sat stock still atop the high mountain pass for an hour, they marched one by one to the WC, and ...

I was very glad when the train started moving again.

As with Sarajevo, my room in Mostar was in a private home. It was roomier and slightly more expensive. The lure of Mostar was the city's multicultural reputation and its Stari Most, or old bridge.

Mostar is situated on the Neretva River and is the fifth-largest city in the country. Mostar was named after the bridge keepers (mostari) who in the medieval times guarded the Stari Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva. The Old Bridge, built by the Ottomans in the 16th century, is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's most recognizable landmarks, and is considered one of the most exemplary pieces of Islamic architecture in the Balkans.

As many readers already know, and as referenced in a previous installment, the bridge was destroyed during fighting in Mostar (1992-94) and later rebuilt. For more information on crimes against Yugoslavia's cultural and religious heritage committed during the civil war, visit Targeting History and Memory.

There were stray intact bits of the old Ottoman central district.

The market area.

The Serbian Orthodox Church (preceding and below; officially, known as the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity) was positioned on the hillside overlooking the heart of Mostar.

This Orthodox church was completely destroyed during the fighting, and its reconstruction finally was coming close to conclusion as of last year.

Travel writer Rick Steves offers this observation in a piece about Mostar, which looks as though it was written in 2007.

Now the bridge has been rebuilt and Mostar is thriving. It happens to be prom night. The kids are out, and Bosnian hormones are bursting. Being young and sexy is a great equalizer. With a beer, loud music, desirability, twinkling stars — and no war — your country's GDP doesn't really matter.

And yet, strolling through teeming streets, it's chilling to think that, just a few years ago, these people — who make me a sandwich, direct me to a computer terminal in the Internet café, stop for me when I cross the street, show off their paintings, and direct the church choir — were killing each other.

I know the feeling, although in reverse -- a few years after, not before.

Since Steves wrote, Mostar continues creeping up lists of must-see destinations. Cheryl Howard's 2014 account brings you up to date with text and wonderful photos.

I admit that Mostar took me by surprise. There is so much more to Mostar than the Old Bridge. From hiking through the nearby forested mountains, to taking in holy sites, posing with weird and offbeat statues, walking through medieval towns, swimming under waterfalls, exploring abandoned ruins and hunting down street art, I couldn’t help but wonder time and time again, why Mostar is not on more peoples’ travel radars.

I'd love to go back.

Next: Dubrovnik long before those trendy thrones and games.

30 years ago today: (May) An introduction to Yugoslavia in Ljubljana, then Zagreb and the way to Sarajevo.

Previously:

30 years ago today: (May) Hillsides in Perugia, Gubbio, Assisi -- and the end of Italy '87.

ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to wherever you are, and come to think of it, Ljubljana will do nicely.

A disorienting transition from capitalism to socialism went like this.

Day 30 ... Friday, May 15
Perugia → Firenze → Trieste → Ljubljana ... $23 hotel room!

Day 31 ... Saturday, May 16
Ljubljana. More rain; Dom Tabor.

Day 32 ... Sunday, May 17
Zagreb. Hostel; construction work on Trg Republike.

Remind me to never again arrive in a strange city at 10:30 in the evening on a Friday, especially when the conscripts have gathered for their final night on the town, and all the suggested hostels are padlocked.

Early on a Saturday morning in Ljubljana -- now the capital of independent Slovenia, then a major regional city in Yugoslavia -- things began settling down within range of sensible.

The youth travel office directed me to Dom Tabor, a hostel somewhere in the center of Ljubljana that evidently remains in operation three decades later. Today's Google street view of Dom Tabor conjures no memories, but in 1987 it had available space for a Saturday night, albeit not in the cheaper dorm rooms of my preference.

Instead, I was billeted in a single room. For my second night in Yugoslavia, I'd be paying only double my daily budget for a bed, not triple like the disastrous night before. This was progress, I suppose; still, my scant notes indicate annoyance at the relatively high prices of Slovenia.

Insofar as my brief travel experiences informed me, Slovenia seemed out of place, tied to Yugoslavia and at the same time feeling far more Central European than Balkan. The hilly setting in Ljubljana reminded me of Salzburg, in Austria, and the red tiled roofs were a Mediterranean flourish resting atop imperial-era Habsburg buildings.

In fact, without belaboring the point, the Slovenes were under the dominion of the Holy Roman Empire for a millennium, then the Austrian for another 400 years. Only in 1918 did the European powers-that-be assign them to the newly created Yugoslavia. It was an uneasy marriage, and Slovenia artfully slipped away from Yugoslavia in 1991, with little blood shed.

The violence came later, to the south.

In Ljubljana in 1987, there were snarling dragons guarding the old downtown bridge and a teeming Saturday morning market in the square; tarnished copper stains on buildings with chipped columns; the widespread occurrence of chain smoking and public spitting; and a curious aroma in the air that eventually registered as coal smoke, which I hadn't experienced in metro Louisville since childhood.

In the old town, there was a little pizzeria by the river, and I splurged on a small pie accompanied by draft Union Pivo, tasty lager from the hometown brewery, which I managed to locate later while walking after the sun finally came out.

However, I'd already learned it was more cost effective to drink from the bottle -- and by my reckoning, I needed more than one beer.

On Saturday afternoon, fearing none of the stores would be open, I abruptly strolled past a line of people waiting to enter one, which was doing business with the door propped open. Emerging with three half-liter bottles of Union, it was time to sit on a park bench and gaze at the hilltop castle.

Where the suburbs began, so did the unpainted gray housing blocks, which were Yugoslavia's (and the East Bloc's) solution to warehousing its postwar population. In these neighborhoods there proved to be more examples of commerce than I'd imagined, mostly products being vended from wooden kiosks: cosmetics, street food, flowers and newspapers.

At last mildly buzzed and relaxed, it was time to reflect. Determined to meet my lodging budget, I determined to keep moving, returning to the formerly chaotic train station on Sunday afternoon to find it placid and normal, the employees no longer overwhelmed by drunkards. In retrospect, I might have chosen a smaller Slovenian city than Ljubljana and regrouped, but it was a short hop of three or so hours to Zagreb … and a fateful meeting.

---

In January, 2008, it finally occurred to me to search the Internet for some of the names I'd recalled from my travels decades earlier.

One of them was Radojko Petkovski, whose name promptly surfaced in a handful of listings, each attesting to his collaboration on fairly recent seismology studies, fully befitting an apparent post-Communist career advancement for a man whose 1987 business card identified him as an earthquake engineer working for an institute of earthquake studies in Skopje, Macedonia (Yugoslavia).

The second class cars on the Yugoslav "express" train from Ljubljana to Zagreb weren't terribly crowded. Seated opposite me was a conservatively dressed, well-groomed man probably in his late 30s, quietly reading a newspaper. When the conductor came past to check tickets, there was momentary linguistic confusion.

The man smiled, spoke to me in accented English, and answered the conductor. As the door shut, enclosing the claustrophobic old-fashioned compartment, I was handed a business card and an elemental conversation ensued.

He asked me to call him Rady. He spoke a bit of English, and naturally I spoke none of the Yugoslav languages. There were to be future implications to the fractured dialogue, but for the moment, it was quite pleasant to engage with a local.

Soon we pulled into one of the intermediate stations, and resting on a siding adjacent to us was a train filled with dazed young soldiers looking out their windows.

I'd been trying to explain the scene at the station in Ljubljana, and Rady nodded; he'd seen it, too, and proceeded to explain what I'd witnessed, noting that the rowdy specimens I experienced were draftees being shipped out for basic training, as were the meek (hungover?) soldiers glimpsed outside our window. They may have been one and the same.

Soon we had arrived in Zagreb, and Rady made it a point to invite me to Skopje for a visit. I told him it might not be for a couple of weeks. His card was filed in my pouch, and we said goodbye.

---

As it turned out, the youth hostel in Zagreb had a suitably priced bunk bed for one night only, after which a school group was coming on Monday to fill all the spaces.

I recall having a few mugs of cheap lager beer on a patio outside the train station, with time for a walkabout. Interestingly, the only observation I saw fit to record was "construction work on Trg Republike," this being the central square in Zagreb. When Croatia became independent, the name was changed to Ban Jelačić Square.

What was the construction about? Here's the answer, courtesy of the Yugoslavia Virtual Museum.

The 1987 Summer Universiade, also known as the XIV Summer Universiade, took place in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. It involved participants from 122 countries and over 6,000 individual sportspersons and members of teams.

The city of Zagreb used the event to renovate and revitalize the city. The city's main square (Republic Square) was repaved with stone blocks and made part of the downtown pedestrian zone. A part of the Medveščak stream, which had been running under the sewers since 1898, was uncovered by workers. This part formed the Manduševac fountain that was also covered in 1898.

This was the work I saw occurring, two months prior to the main event,

On Monday morning, I hopped aboard a train into the interior, eventually passing out of Croatia and into the rugged mountains of Bosnia-Herzegovina. My destination was Sarajevo, and a date with Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Next: THE BEER BEAT: Praljak, Yugoslavia's civil war, the brewery in Sarajevo and the bridge in Mostar.

THE BEER BEAT: Praljak, Yugoslavia's civil war, the brewery in Sarajevo and the bridge in Mostar.

This article is one in my series of 1987 travel recollections. Previously came an introduction to Yugoslavia in Ljubljana, then Zagreb and the way to Sarajevo. 

Next in the series: My Franz Ferdinand heritage trail, 30 years ago in Sarajevo.

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We'll be taking a look at an informative Atlas Obscura article about the Sarajevska Pivara's (Sarajevo Brewery's) heroic role during the siege of the Bosnian city amid the horrendous Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s.

First, there'll be an admission of editorial incompetence.

Earlier this year, it abruptly occurred to me that those 2017 dates steadily ticking past me on the calendar had become synchronized with the very same ones from way back in 1987, serving to recall the day-to-day progress of my summer-long backpacking adventure in Europe during the penultimate year of Ronnie Raygun's second term.

Consequently, without preparation or much of a plan, I launched an exceedingly disjointed "30 years ago today" retrospective here at NA Confidential. The accounts didn't proceed chronologically because the project didn't begin in earnest until June. Eventually I settled on a system, commenced digilizing the ancient slides, then backtracked to pick up what had been missed.

However, as of roughly an hour ago, there is an urgent need for me to dive into the 1987 series again and reorganize the whole shebang, seeing as time spent in the former Yugoslav cities of Zagreb, Sarajevo, Mostar and Dubrovnik was completely omitted from the narrative.

It is beyond the scope of this column to make the necessary corrections all at once, so let's begin with the brewery in Sarajevo, which dates from 1864 and remains in operation today. I drank the typical golden lager beer back in '87, although remembering exactly what it tasted like is another matter entirely.

Significantly, it would be difficult for any brewery anywhere to continue brewing without predictable supplies of barley and hops, but since old-school breweries were built in proximity to their water sources, the wells kept functioning -- and helped keep people alive.

As an added bonus, the author's explanation of the complicated Yugoslav civil war's origins is brief, yet sufficiently clear.

The Bosnian Brewery That Saved a City Under Siege, by Stacey McKenna (Atlas Obscura)

The springs of Sarajevska Pivara became a sole water source for many Sarajevans

IT’S NO SECRET THAT WATER sustains life, and that a lack of it can just as easily rip life away. That’s especially true of the natural springs that run beneath Sarajevo’s Sarajevska Pivara, which have been crucial to the brewery’s crisp, malt-forward beers since its founding in the 19th century: The vitality of the underground waterways goes well beyond brewing.

In 1994, as Sarajevo found itself under a siege that would outlast any other in modern warfare, Sarajevska Pivara—and its water—became a lifeline. Creeks dried up, rivers became polluted, and both water and power lines were sabotaged, but Sarajevska Pivara continued pumping water and distributing it to locals ...

 ... Nowhere was safe, and even collecting water could be a deadly task. In 1994, a disaster relief worker for the International Rescue Committee estimated that 90 percent of the deaths in the city happened along the exposed banks of the Miljacka River, where families sourced non-drinking water. Yet Sarajevska Pivara’s pump continued to draw water from its deep underground wells.

(Sarajevo native Haris) Hadziselimovic recalls trekking to Sarajevska Pivara each day with his parents to help them bring water home. “We were simply taking canisters of whatever type we had, and loading them on a bicycle or a sleigh in the winter,” he says. “We walked for about an hour to the brewery, then lined up with people for several hours.”

By the time Yugoslavia devolved into bloodshed, Rich O's Public House was underway. I remember reading accounts of the siege and being appalled, having visited the city only seven years before. The regulars would ask me if I saw "it" coming, and of course the answer was no; a few days on the ground couldn't possibly be enough to predict the gruesome future.

Now the "future" is more than two decades in the past, except it isn't gone, because we've only recently witnessed a considerable aftershock when the Croat commander Slobodan Praljak publicly committed suicide by drinking poison following the confirmation of his verdict by the International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague.

I highly recommend this article.

The Cultured Destroyers Of Culture, by Gordana Knezevic (RFERL)

Before the war, Praljak had been a writer and film director. He had also been the director of various theaters, including in Mostar. With the outbreak of the war, the man of culture became a general and an adviser to Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. He was eventually accused of command responsibility for the destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar, one of the most striking Ottoman monuments in the Balkans, and a jewel of Bosnia's Islamic heritage.

Where did I go immediately after Sarajevo?

Mostar, where the Croats led by Praljak destroyed the famous 16th-century bridge over the Neretva River.

Yes, these are my original photos of the beautiful and (then) peaceful scene. In 1987, I spent several hours on each of consecutive days drinking draft Sarajevsko Pivo at a cafe overlooking the Old Bridge, which was rebuilt in 2004.

In closing, here are a few photos and a passage from a piece I wrote approximately ten years ago about my 1987 arrival in Sarajevo. It will be rewritten and expanded (with additional photos) when I get around to completing the 1987 travelogue.

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In 1987, the most recent translation of the Bible – that most valued of possessions, otherwise known as the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable – showed a main line running from Zagreb to Vinkovci, then another line branching off southward Sarajevo, through Mostar.

The map showed trains finally reaching the Adriatic at Kardeljevo, now known as Ploce, where I’d been told a bus could be taken to finish my journey to Dubrovnik, the famous walled city widely known as the “Pearl of the Adriatic”.

Sarajevo and Mostar were projected as stopovers for me after departing Zagreb, Croatia’s largest city, where’d I’d stayed for only a day owing to the youth hostel’s unavailability.

In truth, I was eager to move toward salt water … and time wasn’t at all an issue. It still was May, and I had until the last week of June to be in Budapest, Hungary. Before that would come Bulgaria, and maybe even Romania.

Safely aboard the train, and foraging from the sandwich cart, it soon became evident that mile after mile of the route through Bosnia-Herzegovina would be filled with jagged, unforgiving mountain terrain, evoking stories of the murderous internecine conflict between ideologically disparate partisan forces fighting against the German invaders during the Second World War, as well as just as frequently against each other in the bloody positioning for postwar supremacy.

Marshall Tito’s Communists eventually triumphed, and a non-aligned Yugoslavia became a well-known player on the Cold War stage, but as we all too sadly know, the full bill didn’t come due until the cataclysmic civil war of the 1990’s, which brought with it the disintegration of the nation as well as wanton death and destruction in Sarajevo, Mostar and many other towns and cities too numerous to name.

As a foreign visitor in 1987, there was no indication of the approaching conflagration, and in fact, memories of my time in Sarajevo are fleeting. As noted previously, my primary reason for visiting was to examine the place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914.

It was a bonus that the city, the center of Muslim life in Bosnia, had a historic reputation for tolerance, and housed mosques, various Christian churches and synagogues. Reputedly, budget accommodations were easy to find, along with burek, pleskavitsa (local delicacies), strong espresso-style coffee and pivo (beer).

It will surprise you to learn that I didn’t write a journal back then, although some photos were taken, but unfortunately, the film later was developed into slides, not prints, and these snapshots are no longer easily accessible without resorting to a 30-year-old slide projector that has a tendency to mangle to precious relics. It’s true that whenever I drank a different brand of beer, I’d record it, and the list documenting my drinking record survives intact, helping to explain where the money went.

In a scrapbook there is somewhat of a paper trail. As a card-carrying pack rat, I've always seen to it that ticket stubs, receipts and the like are stashed – even before they became the basis for tax deductions. These receipts show that on the chilly and overcast May afternoon when I stepped off the train in Sarajevo, I took a bus or streetcar to the vicinity of the central tourist office.

As was the case throughout my early travels, the very first objective when arriving in a new city (after the imperative to get there as early in the day as possible) was to master local logistics, and most important among these considerations was finding a place to stay, one in my price range, which at the time was no more than $10 a night.

In Yugoslavia, this could be achieved in two ways, both of which were legal (although the same could not be said for all the countries in the Bloc), and involved accepting the offer of what was called a “private room” for tourists.

On way to accept this offer was to book the room formally through the local tourist office, which kept the officially sanctioned list. The other way was to haggle with the housewives who typically met train and bus arrivals for the purpose of taking in visitors and making a bit of petty cash on the side.

In Sarajevo and Mostar, I chose the official route. Later, in Dubrovnik, the unofficial path was taken. All of them worked out quite well.

Naturally it was important to be oriented and to have a map, and one was acquired at the same office, along with directions to the high-rise building where I’d be staying. It was within easy walking distance, but as was often the case for an unworldly non-urbanite, navigating the perplexing numbered system of buttons for ringing the occupant took some time.

My initial rings were not answered, so I went window shopping nearby for a while, sniffed around the entrance of what appeared to be a tavern, returned to the building, and had better luck the second time around.

And so, after climbing w few flights of stairs, I stepped into the tiny foyer of an equally minuscule apartment occupied by a man nicknamed “Mickey,” whose coffee table boasted copies of tourist phrase books in English, French and German, and whose first words after greeting me and looking at my receipt was to ask whether I’d like slivovitz.

Before I could answer, and in a fashion that I would come to regard as routine in the Balkans, the bottle and glasses already were place between us on a tray. With the help of the distilled plum juice, we were briefly acquainted.

I was shown to my closet-sized room, and noticed immediately that nearby there was a washing machine. This was critical for a shoestring traveler who had been rinsing articles of clothing in Woolite and hoping they’d dry before the next morning, a system that usually works with t-shirts, socks and underwear, but fails miserably with jeans and larger items.

Mickey was happy to start a load of laundry for me, and he gave me perfect directions to a restaurant down the street where I could grab a meal, it now being early evening and the slivovitz settling queasily on an empty stomach.

At the eatery in question I was introduced to an institution that would be a constant throughout my ensuing Eastern European travels: The thoroughly egalitarian institution of the Socialist state-owned self-service cafeteria, a place where a foreigner was just as welcomed as the natives, and could point with ease to foodstuffs without the bother of an indecipherable menu … and, usually, a place that served cheap draft beer -- in this case, Sarajevsko Pivo.

I recall the lettuce being brown, the meat gray, and the beer sufficiently cold; moreover, the price for a plate of passable grub and a couple of half-liter mugs came to less than $2.

Sated and sleepy, I returned to my lodging to study the map and get a good night’s rest, because on the following morning, there was much Franz Ferdinand lore to indulge.

---

Tangents.

They remain a problem of mine.