12 Days of Slovenia & Trieste (Part 1): Chapter 40 in an ongoing love affair with Europe.

Hungary, 1987.

Surely you know by now that my maiden voyage of exploration to Europe was in 1985, lasting three months and sticking largely to the well-worn backpackers' tourism routes in "Western Europe," as it was delineated at the time. 

Granted, geographically both Greece and Turkey lie to the east, and proved very exotic by Ohio Valley standards. Even today cynics doubt whether either of these countries will ever be "western" in any comprehensive sense, but it wasn't until my quick three-day visit from Helsinki to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) that my travels took me into the realm of Raygun's evil empire: Eastern Europe and the USSR.

It is no exaggeration to say that I was immediately hooked on further prospects to explore these seemingly unknown areas. I spent two months in east-central Europe in 1987, and three months in 1989. Much of this time was spent in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany. Smaller segments brought me to Poland, Yugoslavia, the former Baltic Republics and Bulgaria (Albania and Romania came later, in the 1990s).

It became evident very quickly that while it was easy to classify these places in one lump sum as belonging to the Warsaw Pact/East Bloc/Communist monolith, in fact each had distinct cultures and meaningful histories spanning centuries, prior to a mere five decades following World War II. Since the Berlin Wall's fall and the subsequent dismantling of the postwar settlement, I've continued to be intrigued, and we regularly dip back for visits into the east-central territories.

This time around it's Croatia and Slovenia, ending in Trieste (an Italian city, but only just barely), and as usual I've been asked why we go, especially in the chill of winter.

Actually the temperatures are about the same as Louisville around Thanksgiving, and they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in these places, which is a bonus for both of us. Besides, my wife is from Maine and she prefers cold-weather holidays; furthermore, it's off-season and travel is less expensive.

I can't deny that a measure of contrarianism contributed to my original interest in these locales. The idea of going where few Americans bothered was very appealing to me. Even better was the bargain price structure compared to capitalist Europe.

However there was a cost to low price. During Communist times it took extra effort (visas, mandatory currency exchanges, avoiding prohibited areas), as well as added time and difficulties in matters like communication. Each country had its own language, with fewer speakers of English. Usually there was a way to achieve one's itinerary, although it might take a while.

Those times are gone, and several former Warsaw Pact countries use the Euro. Seemingly millions of tourists inundate cities like Prague, where in 1989 you could lie down on the Charles Bridge and have a nap without being disturbed. Conversely, regions like Transylvania and eastern Slovakia receive far less in the way of throngs.

Following is a good introductory link to a part of the planet that still intrigues me these many years later.

20 Reasons Why Eastern Europe Is Extremely Underrated (And Worth Traveling to), by Nicco Martel (The Travel)

Liege leads to a rumination, or sometimes to Durbuy.

Photo credit.

Bluegill pointed the way to a photo essay/travelogue about Liege, Belgium.

Where the heck is Liege? by Kleesbutterfly

My first reaction was this: I haven't seen Liege, but at least I had a beer in the city's train station once -- the old one, because now there's a completely new train station (2009).

Then I remembered that our intrepid band of beercyclists had traversed Liege in 2004, approaching from the north along the Meuse, pausing to watch as the Tour de France got underway, then continuing to Durbuy.

Liege is a city that usually doesn’t make the top of a traveler’s bucket list. But Liege taught me to never underestimate an under-the-radar destination. It may not be as big or flashy as more renowned places, but discovering the hidden gems of a city can be a pleasure in itself.

This is so very true. The list of lesser renowned European cities we've visited in recent years includes Mechelen (Belgium), Porto (Portugal), Catania (Sicily), Tallinn (Estonia) and Gdansk (Poland). Each of these places yielded ample and at times incredible treasures sufficient to reward a short stay.

It's understandable for us to covet Paris, Rome and Prague. However, we shouldn't neglect Perpignan, Trieste and Brno.

ON THE AVENUES: 800-lb “gorilla” marketing.

ON THE AVENUES: 800-lb “gorilla” marketing.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Twitter Patter

@will_smith: “Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness.”

@JayBilas: “What if grudges make you perfectly happy?”

In April, the New Albanian Brewing Company completed a project in conjunction with two undergraduate marketing classes at IU Southeast. That’s my alma mater, where I never took a single business (or mathematics) class in route to a philosophy degree. I managed to avoid science save for a solitary biology class, although that’s another story.

The marketing project was instructional, and also loads of fun, especially given that I’ve always enjoyed cultivating a reputation as the Antichrist of “business education as usual.” Suffice to say that this is overblown; still, the cooperative venture between NABC and the pedagogues came as somewhat of a surprise to some observers.

It shouldn’t have. While I’ve enjoyed several instances of good-natured jousting with the School of Business faculty over various ideas and concepts, I’ve always been interested in how their students, most of them half my age, might react to the assignment of understanding a business like ours, and then rebranding NABC as a brewing entity first and foremost, and a brewpub/restaurant (with two locations) second. In short, how are we to be better known as a brewery?

Now a measure of youth has been served (not literally), at least insofar as this sampling is concerned, and as expected, the results were all over the map. All the groups did a fine job, while some did better than other. Even those groups that were less than cohesive in an overall sense had useful nuggets of solid ideas to offer NABC.

There were tags and phrases, organizational suggestions, web site revisions, practical steps to clarify the message, and many more. I deeply appreciate the efforts of all participants, and hope to do something like it again, some day in the future. However, I must confess to being surprised by one consistent aspect of all the presentations, which might be described as a general reluctance to boldly step outside the box and embrace unconventional, guerrilla marketing tactics.

Perhaps this was a reflection of inexperience, or requirements of the curriculum and what information they’d previously assimilated, but knowing their instructor Mike Breazeale’s guerrilla proclivities, I’m inclined to doubt it. To me, it’s a universal condition, seeing as children are raised to conform to the pre-conceived, not extend perimeters.

For instance, even in this fragmented age, there was a shared assumption among almost 60 students as to the inevitability of television, radio and billboards as prime means of informational conveyance – but not newspapers. As I’d guessed going in, there was nary a mention of the word “newspaper,” apart from references to Louisville Eccentric Observer and whatever ephemeral shards remain of the Courier-Journal’s late and unlamented Velocity.

Curiously, there was much less mention of social media than I’d expected. Is it so ubiquitous to young people nowadays that it isn’t even necessary to bring it up?

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By the end of the venture, I’d started thinking about the nature of human conformity.

I’m obviously no sociologist – although sometimes I play one on the blog – and yet I’m struck by the extent of default acceptance of conformity in everyday life. It’s the path of least resistance, and seemingly we’re in no position, or lack the interpretive tools, to step back from our unquestioned assumptions and subject them to something approximating analysis.

There is an insinuation to the effect that as one goes forward, there’ll be compliance with the norms far more often than not. Perhaps this is true because in the sense of large, humanity-wide samplings, norms gradually came into being precisely because they address the temperaments of the species, and often because whether sensible or not, the norms have become codified, and the weight of social and legal systems reinforces them.

For many, it’s entirely understandable that blending into the mass is the simplest way to live. Trust me: It takes quite a lot of energy to challenge the mainstream, even in small ways such as those I try to extol, and to be truly different. For instance, it’s both funny and sad to note the reaction when you begin describing an urban landscape that isn’t auto-centric. Before the first paragraph is through, listeners begin nestling their car keys.

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And so it happened that about the very same time the IUS marketing class project was completed, I received an e-mail from Cavalier Distributing, NABC’s statewide wholesale distributor in Indiana, to the effect that the infamous Central Indiana package store chain known as Big Red Liquors had asked Cavalier about stocking our 22-oz bomber bottles.

I objected, and vehemently.

Since 2009, when New Albanian Brewing Company first began distributing our beer statewide in Indiana, we have made absolutely no effort to sell anything to Big Red Liquors. Cavalier has followed suit -- at our request. From the start, I made it clear that we wanted nothing to do with them. The reason for this is that NABC has no desire to be partnered, whether directly or ephemerally – neither in a mercantile sense nor metaphorically in any sense – with Big Red. We have a history, and it is an unpleasant one. I hold few grudges. This is one of them, and Jay Bilas is right: It makes me perfectly happy.

I understand that some will find it incredible that I’d intentionally deny my own company the opportunity to sell beer through such a large retailer. However, to me, it isn’t always about money. I directed a letter to Big Red’s president asking his company to cease and desist from purchasing NABC beers – to please just leave us alone – until the Big Red employee with whom I cannot co-exist either apologizes to me for the slight that led to the grudge, or is no longer employed by the company.

Isn’t that reasonable? Isn’t life too short for one to be compelled to fluff entities that are revolting? I could not care less if refusing to conform to expectations of the buyer-seller relationship makes me a pariah, because for each potential customer who’s into abject bondage, another appreciates the liberating connotations of telling Big Red to stuff it.

It is so very difficult to convey the value of taking the road less traveled. Still, I recommend the diversion.