Albania's last trains.

 

For the past 40 years, maybe even earlier if childhood stamp collecting is taken into account, I've been fascinated by the country of Albania. The Albanian coastline was visible in 1985 as the ferry stopped at Corfu, and finally in 1994 came the chance to actually visit. It's been the only time, but I've been wanting to return ever since.

It's a shame but understandable that Albania opted for automobile-centrism after emerging from Europe's most North Korea-like existence, and it's a head-spinner to consider communist-era Eastern European rolling stock still in use. 

This is an elegiac and melancholy documentary. I watched it twice, something that's very rare.   

We travel through Albania in a diesel locomotive at a leisurely 40 kilometres per hour. The aged trains make their way through the countryside on single-track lines. Travelling by rail in Albania is not always for the faint-hearted. The trains that are still running were once in the service of the former Deutsche Reichsbahn, the East German state railway before the fall of communism. Albania's rail network was never successfully connected to that of its European neighbors. In fact, it is even threatened with closure in favor of expanding the roads. There are said to be just 50 train drivers left in the country, and as mechanics they also take care of their decrepit diesel locomotives. The documentary accompanies one of them, Vladimir Shyti, and conductor Florida Kucuku on a journey to the north, south and east of the country, on the last remaining sections of track through an intact natural landscape. 

 
The wind whistles through broken windowpanes and branches whip against the 112-ton locomotive. It sounds dangerous and it is. The numerous level crossings have no safety precautions and pose a great danger to pedestrians, cyclists and animals. This often leads to serious accidents. The last trains in Albania all start their journey in Durres, also known as the "gateway to the Mediterranean," and that is where every journey also ends. Anyone boarding a train needs plenty of time and patience. Although rail travel is very inexpensive, it cannot compete for time with travelling by car, which is reflected in the low number of passengers. Hardly anyone takes the train these days. So how long will this form of transport continue to exist in Albania at all?

"Michael Palin on his favourite trips."

The more I can't do it, the more it is missed. 

Around the world in seven journeys: Michael Palin on his favourite trips, by Scott Bryan (The Guardian)

As the BBC shows a retrospective of the Monty Python star’s long-running ambitious travel shows, he gives us the rundown on his adventures

These days travel documentaries hosted by a famous face are commonplace. But the gold standard are still Michael Palin’s. Part of that is down to the sheer ambition of the Monty Python star’s series (Pole to Pole took five and a half months; Full Circle 10 months). But much is down to Palin’s connection with people. “I always found that my travels gave me a different perspective and a much wider perspective, away from the west as a centre of the world’s ideas,” he says. “And to see your own country and your own people from a different perspective. Remember, we are all members of the human race.”

I think I've seen them all. Palin might agree with me that there is a certain melancholy involved with travel. You must be prepared to deal with it. You need to enjoy the physical act of travel (movement), and understand the melancholy.  

From September 6, 2014, something else about Palin from the NAC archive.

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Michael Palin: "The world is an absurd and silly place."

To me, Palin's travelogues are among his finest achievements.

Michael Palin: ‘The world is an absurd and silly place’ ... This summer’s Monty Python reunion was joyous, says Michael Palin. But that doesn’t mean he wishes he had stuck to comedy – or Hollywood, by Stephen Moss (The Guardian)

... “My view of the world, really,” Palin says, “is that if you screw your eyes up and look at the world, it is an absurd and extraordinarily silly place, with everyone taking themselves very seriously.” That may be the clue to the Palin screen persona: the little man bullied by self-appointed autocrats who fights back. By all accounts, his engineer father could be something of a martinet; his relationship with John Cleese (who calls him “Mickey”) appears to be that of headmaster and errant pupil; and several of the characters he has played, notably Jim Nelson in Alan Bleasdale’s TV drama GBH, have been seemingly insignificant men who respond heroically when faced with a crisis.

In Python, he was often the put-upon fellow towered over, physically and sometimes intellectually, by Cleese. But in the end, he gives as good as he gets.

A comeback for TEE?

American railroad buffs tend to be fascinated by the physical infrastructure of trains and their accessories. Going back to my Eurailpass years, the obsession with me is the act of traveling by train. 

Brussels to Barcelona in eight hours: Proposal to relaunch Trans-Europe Express (The Bulletin)

German federal transport farm-near-me/">minister Andreas Scheuer has proposed at a European transport council meeting in Brussels to relaunch the Trans-Europe Express (TEE) 2.0 network of high-speed and night trains between major western European cities.

If the plan to reinstate the rail link, abandoned in 1987, is agreed by his European counterparts, Brussels, Liège and Antwerp stations could be connected to Barcelona in around eight hours.

The farm-near-me/">minister is keen to cut travel time and make journeys more appealing between several European cities by reviving the TEE trains – a luxury service from the glory days of European rail travel from the late 1950s to the 1970s, when overnight rail travel was common ...

ON THE AVENUES: Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger.

Dearest readers,

At the beginning of 2020, I resolved to play it completely straight and rededicate this weekly column to the proposition that it might be freed from reruns -- for the most part.

I might on occasion incorporate bits of previous writing, or quote myself, but no more cutting and pasting entire past columns -- however much I rationalize that you urgently need to be reading them for a second or third time.

I'm happy to report that I made it all the way from New Year's Day to June 4, and have produced 20-odd columns of fresh material. However, this week I'm struggling, and the block is odd given there is no shortage of available topics. But maybe abundance is the problem, and there's too much to sort through.

Speaking from the perspective of my polemical workbench, the first two months of the year were spent detoxing from daily doses of local political discourse -- or what passes for it in intellectually constipated New Gahania. A new study from the Pew Research Center suggests I've successfully stuck to the terms of the sabbatical 86.7% of the time. 

In March came our moment in medical history, the coronavirus pandemic -- and yes, it was real and remains so quite outside the denials so many of you have chosen to embrace. The attendant dislocations of COVID have been challenging, although the dictates of karma urge me to refrain from complaining when our household vantage point is one of good personal health.

The past two to three weeks have been about America's periodic avoidance of an honest reckoning with history as it pertains to Black Lives Matter(ing). I'll support just about any movement aimed at anti-racism, anti-fascism and anti-robberbaroncapitalism, but at the moment, as an old white guy myself, I'd hate to be lumped in with Bumbling Bill Hanson's elder hostel of white male newspaper columnists pontificating about race from their pulpits in Otisco.   

Oh, and I forgot that it's also an election year. Roughly 1,000 years ago, Bernie Sanders was still in the race and we had a modicum of choice to defeat The Donald. Now we have the sort of Democratic candidate that Squire Adam would fill buckets drooling over. So much for "hope."

Obviously I might be writing about any of these trends, but somewhat curiously there seems to be little for me to add to the ongoing discussion. Maybe the essence of this writer's bottled-up blockage is persistent anger -- at the ongoing and still unspeakably bizarre Gahan personality cult, at the science-denying narcissists unable to look past the tip of their noses, and at the unreconstructed racists reminding me of the prevalence of sheer American dumbassery.

Writing isn't easy when you're angry, or at least it isn't for me. A measure of detachment is necessary, and I haven't been able to manage it lately. Stream-of-consciousness rants are possible, and have been deployed before, but the older I get, the more hesitant I am to undertake them. They're like running a marathon, and absolutely wear me out.

Accordingly, there's is a sizable element of fatigue, and I need to push through it. Let's begin right here.

Knowing that writing more often for pay (a novel concept for me, indeed) would factor into the 2020 workload, I began in January by reducing NA Confidential blog's output (again), from three daily posts to two; probably owing to the six-month or more sabbatical from the rhetoric on behalf of the anti-Gahan resistance, this has resulted in a marked decline in reader interest.

So be it. 

I'm trying to write about beer as often as possible at the Pints&union blog in hopes of keeping a few balls (or beer bongs) hanging in the air until our likely reopening in July -- and don't quote me on what this return will look like, because it isn't yet clear. All I can say is that a new era will dawn, soon.

At Food & Dining Magazine, faced with no real possibility of publishing a summer print edition, we resolved instead to build up the web site and release as much original content as possible on that platform. A share of this surge falls to me, some to others in our stable of excellent writers; either way it takes time to implement, and my learning curve in terms of being a "digital editor" hasn't yet flattened.

I'm not breaking rocks or putting up hay, although at times this year my brain has needed a break.

---

With the traditional restorative activity of travel taken off the table this year by the virus, relaxation has come through the Forever Nostalgia Project: digitizing slides, negatives and photos of past European journeys, of which there have been 40. Around 1995 I abandoned slide film for the most part and went to regular printed photos. By 2005, digital was the norm. Here are the year's results, some of which are being shared at my Facebook page.

1985, the first trip to Europe
1991-92, the Slovak teaching sojourn
1993, Germany, Denmark, points east, etc
1994, Switzerland, Albania and Pamplona (Spain)
1997, Czech Republic and Germany
2003, Main/Tauber/Altmuhl/Danube (rivers) bicycling, Frankfurt to Vienna

In addition, there were a few odds and ends stateside. At any rate, quite a lot of images are left to scan (at least 14 European visits), and they will take years to finish ... but hey, we all need hobbies.

One real-world manifestation of nostalgia about the 2003 bicycling trip is a determination to get our bikes back in working condition. They're at the shop now. Soon, after seven years out of the saddle, there'll be a comeback. It will not resemble the halcyon days of the 2000 - 2008; commuting and the occasional Greenway should be enough.

Reading is a good diversion, too. Here are the year's books to date, in reverse chronological order. My favorites are marked with an asterisk.

*Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, by Frederick Lewis Allen
Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon? by Peggy Noe Stevens and Susan Reigler
How We Eat with Our Eyes and Think with Our Stomachs, by Melanie Mühl and Diana von Kopp
*Bliss Was It in Bohemia, a novel by Michel Viewegh
An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, by Elizabeth David
Russian Cosmism, edited by Boris Groys
*The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World, by Christy Campbell
Bluebeard, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut
The Ghosts of My Life, by Mark Fisher
Capitalist Realism, by Mark Fisher
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginnings of the Modern World, by Thomas Cahill
*The Prague Cemetery, a novel by Umberto Eco
Bavarian Helles, by Horst Dornbusch
Strong Towns, by Charles Marohn
The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikkotter

Awaiting its tenure on the night stand is the annual blockbuster summertime novel, as calculated to simmer my brain in its own juices. I've never made it all the way through Ulysses, by James Joyce. Is this finally the year?

Musically, it hasn't been a great six months for The Kind of Music Roger Likes. I'm buying fewer CDs of new music, but listening to each of them more closely than before. If you can't go wide, go deep. Here they are, organized in two-month increments. Why? I can't remember.

Album releases 2020, May and June
Blossoms … Foolish Loving Spaces
Ocean Alley … Lonely Diamond
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever … Sideways to New Italy
*Sleaford Mods … All That Glue
Sparks … A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip
*The 1975 … Notes on a Conditional Form
The Used … Heartwork

Album releases 2020, March and April
Grouplove … Healer
*Rookie … Rookie

Album releases 2020, January and February
*Courteeners … More. Again. Forever.
*Titus Andronicus … An Obelisk (2019)
*White Reaper … You Deserve Love (2019)
Wussy … What Heaven Is Like (2018)

Movies and television?

C'mon, regulars readers should know better. However, we've been working our way through the ageless Rumpole of the Bailey canon and a few other British dramas. My memory is shaky, and I may have watched the Downton Abbey movie. If so, I plead excessive gin.

Ah, yes. Drinking, another of my self-defense mechanisms.

It has been strange in this regard, and no one is likely to believe me, but as a guesstimate, I've consumed perhaps half the alcohol in 2020 as I would have swallowed normally.

It isn't clear to me why, although one possible explanation is that I dislike being constantly self-incapacitated during an unprecedented public health crisis, all the while surrounded by sniveling racists, reckless drivers, Trump-co-vidiots, masturbatory nihilists and various other bad actors.

Facing up to my deep-seated anger while keeping relatively sober? Now THAT'S a tall order, and yet I've tried every other way. Maybe playing against type really is best. Fools give you reasons ... wise men never try.

R

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Recent columns:

June 4: ON THE AVENUES: There, there. People are dying, so you may have to wait until 2021 for your pork chop sandwich.

May 28: ON THE AVENUES: The late, great Lee Kelly -- by Matt Nash.

May 21: ON THE AVENUES: Godlessness in defense of heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Food is my friend, but please, I'm no foodie.

Learn about Freya Stark: "As an explorer, Stark was an acute observer, and a connoisseur of people."

Photo credit: The Idle Woman blog.

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town, is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”

This quote by Freya Stark appeared recently in The Economist. With much embarrassment, it occurred to me that while the name sounded familiar, I actually knew nothing at all about her.

So, I've been reading. When there is time, I hope to read one of Stark's books. Until then, this essay is a good introduction.

EAST IS WEST: Freya Stark’s travels in Arabia, by Claudia Roth Pierpont (The New Yorker; 2011)

Although the British had ordered their wives and daughters out of Baghdad, there were nineteen women among the crowds who found shelter in the British Embassy, in late April, 1941, soon after the Iraqi government went over to the Germans. A pro-Nazi coup had occurred a few weeks earlier, in relative calm, but an increase in anti-British hostility and the sudden appearance of armed Iraqi soldiers had brought tensions in the city to an intolerable level, especially since the British—heavily engaged in Libya and Greece—had few reinforcements to spare. The Iraqi Army had already surrounded the nearby Royal Air Force base when, at dawn on May 3rd, the well-known explorer Freya Stark raced through the deserted streets, arriving just in time to make it through the Embassy’s side door.

The main gates had been locked; sandbags and barbed wire were frantically being placed within; and a mountain of documents was burning in the courtyard. The Persian gardeners, however, continued to water the flowering verbena and, as days and then weeks went by, kept the lawn (despite the number of people sleeping on it) brilliantly green. Living quarters were uncomfortable, with some three hundred and fifty people enduring intense heat, sniper fire, and the not so distant thud of bombs as British planes attempted to retake the airfield. News over the wireless was grim. Yet there was no end of attempts to cheer the trapped and frightened population. One night, there was a lecture, given by Stark; another night, there was a concert. (As a bonus, a cache of rifles was discovered in the grand piano.) Basic provisions were allowed in daily, and Stark, adept at chatting up the Iraqi guards who monitored the prisoners’ fate, boldly requested a quantity of soap and face powder for the women. The extra packages were duly delivered. This small victory for Western womanhood was marred, however, by the policeman at the gate, who remarked that he couldn’t imagine how the harem could think about such things, since they were all to be murdered in a few days.

Freya Stark had come to prominence a few years earlier, with the publication of her first book, “The Valleys of the Assassins” (1934), a study in Islamic history and geography related with the excitement of an adventure story. The book was a popular hit, as were two books that she wrote, along similar lines, soon thereafter—“The Southern Gates of Arabia” (1936) and “A Winter in Arabia” (1940). All these books were about the contemporary Arab world as well. Stark had travelled through Syria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Yemen at a time when national borders retained a fictive quality, and no one could be sure what political or cultural forces would prevail. British power, just beginning to show the strains of its extended glory, still held firm regional sway—although Stark’s more dangerous explorations were conducted in spite of its warnings and behind its imperial back.

Stark could talk her way into any situation and, most of the time, out again, in a remarkable number of languages. She had just talked her way back to Baghdad from Tehran, when, hellbent on safety among her friends and colleagues in the Baghdad Embassy, she was stopped by Iraqi police at the frontier. All British citizens were barred from proceeding further, and she was officially in custody; others, she learned, had been put in prison camps. Yet she cajoled the station attendant into bringing her tea and her police guard into sharing it, and informed the guard of the sheer impossibility of staying on without a ladies’ maid. Surely he could see her problem and wished to be civilized? His people were not, after all, Germans. And the policeman—no longer guarding a prisoner but protecting a lady—put her on the next train to Baghdad. “The great and almost only comfort about being a woman,” Stark reflected, in a maxim that encompasses many such events in her illustrious career, “is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.”

As an explorer, Stark could claim no major discoveries, but her acute observations and her surveying skills had earned her professional respect and, for cartographic contributions, a Royal Geographical Society award. She had located unmarked villages and unsuspected mountains, taken compass bearings and photographs. Once, she had re-situated an entire misplaced mountain range to the correct side of a valley. But this was not why people read her books then, or why they continue to read them now. Stark did not even reliably make it to her intended goals: the routes—usually travelled by camel or donkey—were astonishingly harsh, malaria was rife, and a host of other ailments took their toll. Yet for Stark, despite the bitter disappointment of being beaten to a destination, the cliché that the journey is more important than the goal was irrefutably true. She was a vivid describer of scenes and landscapes. More, she was a connoisseur of people: she knew how to draw them out and listened closely when they spoke. Today, one may be able to gain more scholarly and updated history from other authors. Bernard Lewis’s “The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam” covers much of the same material as Stark’s first book (and its subtitle is guaranteed to catch the modern eye), but it would be a mistake to think that she has been replaced.

Readers of Stark’s reissued works—Modern Library offers the two earliest books, and I. B. Tauris is in the midst of publishing nine others—will find a writer who endows everyone in her field of vision with the heightened interest that she felt herself. Peasants, Bedouins, tribal leaders, guides, soldiers, and slaves make up a society that is both impossibly strange and palpably near, in the simple and not so simple human sense. Stark was not an objective observer—how could she have been?—but, far more sophisticated than the surveying tools she carried, she was a finely calibrated recording instrument in a land that was just awakening to the changes being wrought by paved roads, nation-states, and oil ...

ON THE AVENUES: Running over the same old ground.

Islands in the stream of consciousness …

For those first ten years after college, my life was relatively simple. Armed with my handy, all-purpose degree in philosophy, I’d stand behind a counter selling something, sit behind a desk pretending to teach something, go to Europe for a while and do many varied somethings, come back completely busted, and start the process of "somethinging" anew.

My liver managed to survive frequent punishment, and so another decade commenced. The routine was changed up just a bit. The counter morphed into a bar, for serving and teaching alike. The trips to Europe got shorter and occurred more often. Bicycling was added to the short list of obsessions. I became a radical beer revolutionary, and we actually won the war, although eventually the revolution devoured its own just like it always does.

But this hardly counts as news, and the analysis can be deferred until another time.

As with any other human, there were highs and lows, joy and pain, periods in which I thought life made sense, and other times when it didn’t come anywhere close. Through it all, the only constant was lingering self-doubt.

I never felt as if I knew ENOUGH, and whatever role I happened to be playing at the time, it invariably seemed transitory, just a bit part perpetually up for audition. Had I bothered to notice that role-playing was a way of hiding, maybe I’d have had a better idea of who I really was.

“Can you see the real me, can you – can you?”

Those are the words of Jimmy, Quadrophenia’s teenaged protagonist, as written by Pete Townshend for The Who’s 1973 rock opera. Townshend’s songs began speaking directly to me six years later, when I was at a low ebb.

Small wonder that I still listen to Quadrophenia regularly. The music addresses, if not resolves, feelings of melancholy, uncertainty and confusion. These feelings are not as intense as before, but they never entirely go away.

My guess is these emotions are to be expected when we’re young, although I’d have hoped to given them the slip by now. Still, by the time a pirate looks at forty or more, the urgency of these functions has lessened, thankfully.

---

It seems nature requires of us only a handful of preordained outcomes, including birth, sustaining life long enough to reproduce, and then death. We’ve managed to subvert the original intent, which is for procreation to take place early -- and then die as you please.

At the age of 21, you needn’t know who you are or where you’re going in order to make babies. One merely must grasp certain how-to basics from the procedures manual. The chapter on all-purpose troubleshooting becomes available (if not readily comprehensible) only later, when we’re well past our sell-by dates. After all, throughout much of human history our moments of expiration came around the age of fifty, if not sooner.

“Thanks so much for your service to the species, and now your children will care for you – or otherwise. If your marbles remain roughly in place, there is time at last to ponder the imponderables. Congratulations, and goodbye. NEXT.”

It remains that to be male and childless, whether by choice or circumstance, thrusts one into the realm of the avuncular. That’s fine by me, so listen to Uncle Roger, because the paybacks are coming due.

By which I mean that so often during my 25 years behind the bar, folks offered to buy me a beer, which I politely refused on the basis that my company’s profits already were being consumed quite handily by its chief officers.

Instead I asked that you hold on to your kind thought, deposit the money, draw some interest, and buy both of us tall, cellar-temperature treats -- but only when I gave the signal.

(By the way, it you’re intent on describing beer with a word like "frosty" or a term like "ice-cold", I hope you're also referring to the top-shelf bourbon as "rotgut" and Robert Parker's fave Wine Down Wednesday recommendation as "plonk." I hate seeing beer degraded, even degraded mass market swill. Questions? Good, because the topic is tiresome).

Please be informed that I’ll be 60 years of age come August. The time for those beers draws ever nearer, albeit not to be redeemed all at once, please.

Thank you for your consideration.

---

My wife has family in Plymouth, England, where her mother was born and raised. Twice during the past decade we’ve spent time in Plymouth for visits with her extended family.

Famous for its nearly perfect natural port, and for being the centuries-long home of the Royal Navy (supposedly Sir Francis Drake engaged in the serenity of lawn bowling as the Spanish Armada approached), Plymouth also was a launching point for disgruntled Old World escapes bound for America.

The city lies on the left bank of the River Tamar in the county of Devon, with Cornwall beginning on the opposite bank. In its wider expanse the English counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset are referred to as the West Country.

The reason I’m explaining all this is because I’ve taken to following the fortunes of Plymouth’s football club, Argyle. You needn’t be bored with the details, as Argyle competes in League 2, which actually is the fourth league (of four) in terms of rank, or “Single A” for those of you who know baseball.

As with other sports, I devote little precious time to watching games and matches, but I read about the results and keep an eye on the league table (the standings). Plymouth won its match last Saturday, and so I visited the Plymouth Herald web site to catch up.

And down the rabbit hole I went a-plunging.

It took a few minutes to read the account, then an hour to glance at other articles while feeling my imagination start running rampant.

Recalling our previous stays, I began looking at maps of the West Country, while in my mind tasting Cornish pasties and pints of cask-conditioned ale, imagining an entire summer to do nothing except wander these territories by foot, bicycle, bus and train -- anything but a car, because they’re the problem, not the solution, damn it.

The phone rang and the bubble burst. Back in New Agony, the ache of unrequited longing enveloped me. Granted, it’s easy enough to view traveling as synonymous with escape, to leave behind the humdrum of everyday life and see other sides and different places. In addition it’s probably true that for the most part, they’re just as humdrum as we are.

However, a boy can dream. So can an adult.

All things being equal, and lottery winnings in pocket, I’d be perfectly content to spend the remainder of my life wandering the West Country, then Bavaria, and Italy -- maybe Chile or Canada’s eastern seaboard.

Maybe escape really is the real me, after all.

---

Recent columns:

January 16: ON THE AVENUES: I won’t belong to any Dry January that would have me as a member.

January 9: ON THE AVENUES: Elusive sounds of silence.

January 2: ON THE AVENUES: On patience, grieving, puzzles and a necessary sabbatical.

December 26: ON THE AVENUES: Four more years? Heaven help us all, but there are five reasons to be optimistic.

ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language, 1989 - 1990 (Part 2).

Ostrava, 1989.

Having resolved to resume contact with my Czech acquaintance Ladislav in the post-Velvet Revolution, pre-Internet winter of 1989-90, I counted myself fortunate to still have his postal address. It had somehow survived unscathed when most of my belongings were stolen in Madrid the previous November. In January, I took pen in hand to congratulate him on the wonderful transformations in Czechoslovakia.

In those archaic times, mail could take ten days or more each way, back and forth across the Atlantic, and so it wasn’t overly alarming when no immediate response was forthcoming. Perhaps the seismic shift in Czechoslovakia had impacted the recovering country’s mail carriers, or more likely, Ladislav’s obvious connections to a now discredited ruling order were such that he wasn’t in a good position to answer.

Granted, there’d been almost no violence during a remarkably peaceful, orderly changeover in Czechoslovakia, hence the revolution’s “velvet” descriptive tag, and yet … who really knew? It was a long way off, scores were being settled in various ways, and communications were not instantaneous like today. Even phone calls could be difficult to place to a country where the totalitarian structure had routinely monitored them only a short time before.

Twice more in early 1990 I wrote to Ladislav, each time enclosing souvenirs from Indiana and Kentucky, including American beer coasters for use in his Tiki Bar, but still there was only silence in return. Soon an entire year had passed since our chat, and the usual stressors of everyday living gradually displaced the glories of my 1989 journey to Europe. Back into the workaday grind I sank, and memories of Ladislav grew increasingly dim.

One day in July, my roomie phoned to announce that the mail had included a letter from Czechoslovakia. Upon closer examination, the return address was mysterious, and the message inside, written by an English-speaking friend of Ladislav’s daughter from a small town near Ostrava, was unexpected.

She thanked me for the letters and gifts, but regretted to say that Ladislav had died of a heart attack, aged 65, in July – of 1989! Remarkably, his sudden death had come less than a month after I departed Ostrava for a wedding in Prague, and then to Moscow.

I was crestfallen to realize that he had been denied the chance to witness the change he’d been so sure was imminent. With sadness, I drove to Sportstime Pizza for a few rounds of Pilsner Urquell as an impromptu memorial.

---

Still reeling from the bad news, I arrived home the very next day to find yet another letter for me. This time it was a big manila envelope from an organization called Education for Democracy (EFD), and inside was the information I’d supposedly requested, which was fine, except I’d never, ever heard of EFD and assuredly had not asked for anything to be sent to me, but just the same, quite soon my heart was racing with excitement.

This unsolicited letter described the outline of an unprecedented opportunity for Americans to volunteer for placement in Czechoslovakia as conversational English instructors. No licenses or credentials were required, although previous teaching experience of any sort was a plus. It was a development made possible by the cooperation of American and Czech academics, who sought to take advantage of the Velvet Revolution’s opening by bringing people together ... to learn and speak English.

The words, the ideas, the sentiments – all of it had been discussed with Ladislav that night at the Tiki Bar in Ostrava, with shots of Havana Club in hand. Now with the providential mailing spread before me on the table, my immediate reaction was to thank Ladislav profusely for referring me to the organization, and yet there was a small, nagging problem: He was dead.

Not only was he dead, but he had died five months before the abrupt success of the Velvet Revolution made the EFD program and others like it possible. He could not have known, and yet there was no rational explanation for the unsolicited mailing. It made me pause. I’m not the sort to believe in ghosts, but there are exceptions for everything, and this one handily fit the bill.

My lethargy jolted, I wrote back to Ladislav’s daughter, thanking her for telling me about his death, and then phoned the EFD office (in Mobile, Alabama, of all places) to put my name on the list. Planning immediately began for teaching English in Czechoslovakia in 1991. It was to be the fruition of a dream for me, and in my addled mind, albeit irrationally, I knew Ladislav was the man to thank for it.

---

In the end, rationality was restored, in the form of a telephone call a week or so later from a Floridian with whom I’d stayed in touch after we traveled together in a group to the USSR in 1987.

A teacher himself, he remembered that I’d been a substitute and had an interest in the East Bloc, and when he caught wind of the EFD program’s advent, he’d taken it on himself to send the organizers my address. In turn, they’d forwarded me the manila envelope, and its arrival a day after learning of Ladislav’s passing was a mere coincidence, nothing more.

But as you can imagine, it always will be more than a simple fluke to me. These events rekindled my fighting spirit, and for the following twelve months, working two jobs and saving as much money as possible, an expedition took shape.

In early September, 1991, I was on the ground in Košice, the second largest city in what now is independent Slovakia, almost the farthest point east in what was then Czechoslovakia, and a very long way from both Prague and Ostrava. My assignment was to teach English to medical personnel in the city’s university hospital.

And so, Ladislav, here’s a tipple to your memory. It’s a shame you didn’t live to see it, but the plot worked out just the way you predicted.

Thanks.

(This story was originally published in October, 2011. This winter I'll be digitizing the slides from the time of the teaching gig in Košice)

---

Recent columns:

November 28: ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language, 1989 - 1990 (Part 1).

November 21: ON THE AVENUES: Rest in peace, Kevin Hammersmith. Eight years later, you're very much missed.

November 14: ON THE AVENUES: The famous mishap in Madrid, November, 1989.

November 7: ON THE AVENUES: Pay attention, students, because voter turnout went UP in New Albany.

ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language, 1989 - 1990 (Part 1).

Ostrava, 1989.

Ladislav was a trim, polite, vaguely aristocratic older gentleman who lived in a peculiarly oversized flat amid a modern suburb of Ostrava, the epicenter of communist Czechoslovakia’s steel making and coal mining industries. If I correctly recall the circumstances, he was a retired educator, discretely moonlighting as an English tutor for my immigrant Czech friend’s mother.

We had been invited to his place for a social evening, perhaps because in that particular socialist neighborhood, visiting Americans were rather rare in 1989.

Knowing there would be drinks served, we didn’t dare drive, choosing instead to board the handy tram, and wind through the industrial landscape of the municipality. Ladislav answered the door promptly, and after pleasantries and the ritual exchange of small gifts, he escorted us back outside and downstairs, to a semi-detached building with garage doors.

Right there in landlocked, socialist Central Europe, taking up precious square meters normally reserved for a Czech male’s single most prized possession (his Škoda automobile), Ladislav had constructed a genuine Tiki Bar, complete with bamboo and plasticized tropical plants. But his equatorial showplace, while initially puzzling, actually made perfect sense in the Bloc’s skewed international scheme of things.

Ladislav had traveled to Cuba as part of a cultural exchange program, and the journey made a deep impression on him. Cuban “guest” workers lived and worked in Ostrava; one afternoon, I drank beer with one of them. Like most Czechs, Ladislav grasped the irony of the enduring blockade that kept Cuban goods, which were available throughout both European geopolitical camps, safely out of American hands, and so a bottle of Havana Club rum was sitting on his back bar alongside an array of Cohibas, all earmarked for the occasion of my visit. It was a reverse black market, and a much appreciated gesture.

Sufficient storage space remained in the garage for Ladislav’s bicycles, for he was an avid cyclist. Apart from his set of metal dentures, and what appeared to be a rather hopeless nicotine addiction, he looked the lean and ruddy part of an athlete. The countryside was hilly and rolling, with mountainous areas nearby: Jeseniky to the west, and Beskydy to the southeast. Apart from Ostrava’s wretched air quality, it appeared to be appropriate terrain for challenging riding.

Specific memories of this long evening at Ladislav’s Ostrava Cubano Tiki Bar are fleeting. The revel extended so far into the cool, wet June night that we came very close to missing the last tram to the Motyčka home, located all the way across town, adjacent to the sprawling Nové hutě Klementa Gottwalda – the steel mill named for Czechoslovakia’s indigenous, long-dead, personal Stalin.

However, one part of our conversation never left my mind in all the years to follow, because after all his other guests except for my escorts had offered their goodbyes, it emerged that Ladislav – whose lifestyle plainly suggested an access to privileges of the sort enjoyed by party members – was disinterested in the past. Rather, he wanted to talk about the future.

He engaged me at length about hope, openness and reform, and about Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new” USSR, with glasnost and perestroika breaking out within the bastion of Czechoslovakia’s imperial overlord to the east. He was highly complimentary about my desire to visit the remainder of his country outside the boundaries of Prague, and thought that when westerners did so, and were able to meet normal working Czechs and Slovaks, artificial political barriers irrevocably fell no matter what his or any other government might say about it.

Ladislav, who of course spoke perfect British English, passionately believed language aptitude to be the key to furthering the fall of impediments to good relations between the diverse peoples of the world. He described his vision of the coming time when Americans exactly like me would come to Eastern Europe as English language instructors, and by doing so, further the process of reform and regeneration.

Granted, it was 1989, and the rigid and toadying Husak regime would never permit such linguistic and cultural incursions, but Ladislav was certain that Gorbachev’s revitalization movement eventually would spill out from the Soviet Union, into the satellite nations, and when it did … well, when it finally did, he fully expected to see me again, this time as a fellow teacher, working alongside him in his homeland.

I enthusiastically agreed, dumbstruck at the ease with which Ladislav, a complete stranger, managed to read my mind. While never an accredited teacher, I’d dabbled in education as a substitute. Back home in a file cabinet was a bulging folder of information on various ways to get “English as a second language” teaching certification. My long-held fascination with East-Central Europe was a given. How did he fathom my innermost thoughts?

We said our goodbyes, and a few days later, it was time to depart Ostrava on a roundabout journey to Moscow for Russian language instruction of my own. Weeks passed, life and travel went on, and by late November, I was home again in Indiana, watching CNN with amazement as the last bits of the Berlin Wall fell, and shortly thereafter, tearfully gladdened when the Velvet Revolution swept Czechoslovakia.

The playwright and intellectual Vaclav Havel, whom Ladislav had described to me in glowing terms as the impetus for Charter 77 and a hero of the opposition, suddenly became president of Czechoslovakia. It was incredible to imagine that Havel had been imprisoned as recently as April of 1989, just before I entered the country. Truly, all things seemed newly possible, and as a new year of 1990 dawned, I started wondering what Ladislav had to say about it.

I’d write to him, and find out.

(Part 2 next week. This story was originally published here in October, 2011)

---

Recent columns:

November 21: ON THE AVENUES: Rest in peace, Kevin Hammersmith. Eight years later, you're very much missed.

November 14: ON THE AVENUES: The famous mishap in Madrid, November, 1989.

November 7: ON THE AVENUES: Pay attention, students, because voter turnout went UP in New Albany.

October 31: ON THE AVENUES: In which Team Gahan's looming appointment with unemployment is examined.

Influential books follow-up: At 90, Arthur Frommer still preaches the budget travel gospel, just as he did when I was converted 35 years ago.

As it was titled in the early 1980s, Arthur Frommer's Europe on $25 a Day was a rare example of a book that completely and demonstrably changed my life.

ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

If I were to attempt ranking these 32 books in terms of greatest influence, Frommer's guidebook surely would land in the Top Five.

These past few years I've checked now and again to see if Frommer is still with us, and not only is Frommer hale and hearty at 90, but he and daughter Pauline are still rocking the budget travel world. I had no idea.

• Arthur Frommer (Wikipedia)
• How Arthur Frommer Built a World Famous Travel Guidebook Brand with Pauline and Arthur Frommer, by Hannah Pinkerton (Under 30 Experiences; June 25, 2019)
• Arthur and Pauline on the Live Different podcast with Matt Wilson

As for why Frommer's book impacted me so deeply, here's an extended excerpt from my 1985 travel narrative series at Potable Curmudgeon.

---

In 1983, I was asked by the late Bob Youngblood, my former high school English teacher, to accompany him as a second chaperone on a student trip to Europe the following year. The price seemed reasonable at $1,600 for nine days, with airfare, hotels, bus and most meals included. I responded affirmatively.

A few months later, I was strolling past the travel section in the library when a title caught my eye: Europe on $25 a Day, by Arthur Frommer. As ever mathematically challenged, I shook my head with disbelief. Was it a misprint? Could it really be true? Skeptical, I checked out the book, took it home, poured a beer, and started reading. Eventually a pocket calculator was produced.

The earth fairly shook.

My fellow twenty-something males would have required the woman (or women) of their dreams to be running bikini-clad across a Florida beach during a sultry rainstorm to elicit anywhere near my response to Frommer’s book, in which clear and reasonable tips plainly illustrated how to do Europe right, and for far longer duration than a mere week.

My new writing hero insisted that travel could be educational, and offer a rare glimpse into different worlds. His advice on the nuts and bolts of budget travel technique was relentlessly informative, effortlessly evocative and consistently pragmatic.

• Always think like a European traveler, not an American, and like a local, not a visitor.
• Don’t expect things in a foreign country to be the same as home, and expect to pay more when they are.
• Think, plan, and accept the available bargains.
• Don’t eat every meal in a restaurant. Pack a salami, buy a loaf of cheap crusty bread, and picnic.
• Walk, ride the bus, rent a bike.

My brain was hard-wired for the humanities and history, and yet the comparative sums quickly became persuasive. At $25 per day, my $1,600 properly budgeted the Frommer way came out to 36 days, not nine. If I were to postpone the epic voyage for another year, leaving even more time to save money, the trip might last three months, not nine days.

For the next year and a half, my European travel obsession escalated, fed by a steady diet of travel books, magazine articles and PBS documentaries. Thomas Cook rail schedules were studied, and European history devoured with renewed zeal. Plans were jotted, expanded, revised, discarded, and brought back from the waste paper basket. I acquired a Pentax K-1000 camera and learned to use it, just barely.

By the spring of 1985, with departure nearing, a rough outline had settled into place ...

Read more here.

ON THE AVENUES: In 1989, six months of traveling fabulously in Europe.

For me the year 1989 was a time when those pesky dialectics came smashing together all at once, and gratifyingly so -- except when the results were utterly appalling.

A roller coaster analogy doesn’t do it justice.

Those twelve months just might have been my crowning achievement in life apart from the overriding sense of having experienced an undiagnosed nervous breakdown. My best and worst qualities competed for equal billing, and I looked more than one gift horse squarely in the eye, leaving a smoldering bridge or two in my wake. 1989 was a profound turning point, and I’m still sorting through the aftermath.

Maybe it’s because at the time I simply wasn't cut out to be a well-adjusted human being and didn't know how to be happy. 30 years ago at this precise moment I had two steady jobs, one of them full-time at the best pay scale I’d ever known up to that point, and the other part-time for cash. For more than a year I’d been existing off the nighttime cash and bankrolling the daytime wages.

This was possible because living was ridiculously cheap and expenditures few. I shared a house in Floyds Knobs with my pals TR and George. Working a lot and living a little translated into an imposing war chest for future budget travels, preferably sooner rather than later.

I also had a girlfriend, a shocking banner headline that hadn’t been applicable in a long while, but this is a whole other story, a saga of subsequent highlights that included travel, marriage, business ownership, divorce first from the one, then the other, as well as a variety of highs and lows associated with the ride.

Simply stated, it is my inability (read: unwillingness) to write the story of this relationship that continues to impede my promise to produce a travelogue of Europe in 1989. I’ve hemmed, hawed, delayed and prevaricated, but the calendar pages keep turning.

So it’s time to start writing this narrative as straightforwardly as I can and see where it leads. Excuses, be gone. There’ll be the scanning of slide photos not viewed for decades, and rummaging through boxes, with further clawing through the attic of my cluttered cranium, in search of what I’m willing and unwilling to divulge about my state of consciousness during the pivotal year's travels.

I want to take responsibility for being truthful, and yet some wounds remain open. Did I learn anything about myself from these experiences 30 years ago? As Chinese Premier Chou En Lai may or may not have said when asked about the lessons of the French Revolution, “It’s too early to tell.”

---

At some point near the end of May, 1989 I was on my way to Berlin with the stated intention of remaining in Europe for at least seven months.

Berlin was not the capital of a unified Germany in 1989 because the country was not together. There remained two Germanys … and two Berlins. Bonn was the capital of the Federal Republic, known to us as West Germany. West Berlin was a municipality entirely surrounded by the territory of the German Democratic Republic, or communist East Germany, of which East Berlin was the capital.

Berlin remained divided into zones of occupation, as administered by the triumphant Allies of World War II, which had concluded 44 years before. The western side included American, British and French zones, and representatives of the three countries still met at regular intervals to discuss their stewardship of the city. An empty seat was maintained for the Soviet emissary, who ceased attending some years before.

Both Berlins were maintained by their nations as showplaces of their respective ideologies, with East Berlin enjoying perhaps the highest standard of living in the entire Soviet zone, which began at the Brandenburg Gate and extended eastward all the way to Vladivostok.

The Berlin Wall was the line of demarcation between the Allied zones and the sovereign territory of the GDR. It had artsy graffiti on one side and gray machine guns on the other. David Bowie was looking right at the wall while recording the album “Heroes” at Hansa studio, and the title song came to mind often that summer.

In short, it was the Cold War in everyday life, although those first few days in May were intended only as a teaser. A return was planned for August, when I’d arranged a month-long “working” stay in East Berlin.

I’ve written previously about my experiences toiling for the greater good of Herr Honecker, and of course these and numerous other vignettes will be reprised (with photos) as the current 30th anniversary year progresses.

For now, I’ll merely sketch the 1989 trip’s overall parameters.

Quite early in the morning of June 2, 1989, I tiptoed out of my West Berlin hostel dorm and took to the street, where I caught the first bus of the day into the center of the city. At Zoo Station (later immortalized by the U2 song on Achtung Baby), there was a suburban rail (S-Bahn) train to catch a few stops east, then above the wall and into the Friedrichstrasse station in East Berlin.

Clambering off the train, I found myself standing on a sealed platform. It was possible to transfer to other commuter trains (and subways) headed to destinations in West Berlin, but not to walk out onto the street outside without passing through passport control and customs. Such was the bizarre transport arrangement reflecting the city’s division.

I had a time-sensitive transit visa for East Germany, allowing me to pass through the country without stopping. My ultimate destination was Prague, in the nation then known as Czechoslovakia.

After a brief orientation stroll and gut check (the streetscape in East Berlin was so different from what I’d experienced less than a mile westward that it might have been another planet), it was back onto an “Ossie” S-Bahn to a different train station, and my rail connection via Dresden.

---

For the next month Czechoslovakia was my home, courtesy of the family of my dear friend George Hrabcak, who at the time was a criminal defector. He’d have been arrested and incarcerated for so much as setting foot in his homeland. There is no telling how many miles I walked during two weeks in amazing Prague, followed by the same amount of time exploring Ostrava, then the Pittsburgh of Czechoslovakia.

Pork, dumplings and delicious Pilsner beer were consumed in abundance. It was an intensely educational time, culminating with the wedding of George’s cousin, the daughter of his uncle the communist party official, who was a charming and witty host throughout.

In early July came the long-awaited 36-hour “express” train from Prague to Moscow. “Back in the USSR,” indeed. In theory, my time in the Soviet metropolis was to be spent learning conversational Russian as part of a program at Moscow State University. It was an experimental teaching method, and it didn’t much appeal to me, especially considering the lessons (and foment) waiting to be learned outside the classroom during the high point of Gorbachev’s glasnost.

When the program concluded and it was time to leave Moscow, several of us were headed the same westerly direction, and our sponsoring organization helped to arrange train tickets back to East Berlin. First we had to obtain a Polish transit visa on our own. Three of us arrived at the Polish embassy, only to find a block-long line composed primarily of Soviet citizens and foreign students from socialist countries (i.e., Cuba, Ethiopia and Vietnam) seeking visas.

After standing stationary for a very long time, some English-speaking Russians nearby politely introduced themselves and advised us to walk to the front of the line and ask (in English) to be allowed to skip the long queue and enter. We shrugged it off … for about another hour, and then we took their advice.

The communist Polish military guards were delighted to see capitalist Americans, and we were ushered inside to be processed within minutes. It was a valuable metaphor about imperialism, and how in those days it ran in both directions.

---

After another week in West Berlin with my cousin Don (where we celebrated my 29th birthday) it was August, and time to cross into East Berlin for my work assignment. By early September, I was in Copenhagen visiting my Danish friends. Amy met me there. We activated rail passes and headed for Oktoberfest in Munich, where my friend and erstwhile East Berlin workmate Jeff Price joined us.

The path led to Vienna, Prague and Budapest. While in Prague the three of us walked past a square filled with Trabants parked two and three deep. It was puzzling, and only later did we realize the cars were abandoned by occupants scaling the walls of the West German embassy nearby, seeking asylum.

Jeff left for home and the two of us traveled through Italy, France and Ireland. She flew back stateside from Dublin, and I made an insane two-day ride by boat and train to Madrid. Having already lost my credit card (imagine coordinating a replacement with no fixed address) and been pick-pocketed, now I was drugged and robbed during an afternoon drinking bout the day before my scheduled departure for Lisbon.

The monetary loss proved negligible and the traveler's checks were swiftly refunded, although the thieves made off with all my belongings including the trip diary. It was November, with at least six weeks yet to go. Once the pounding headache ceased, I realized just how exhausted I'd become.

An itinerary reformat was in order, so new clothes and a gym bag were purchased at a Madrid department store. I called Mary Pat Bliss, who changed my plane ticket for the flight home. Now I had two weeks to work my way back to Copenhagen for a finale with my Danish friends, and enough money to splurge.

Unrest in East Germany escalated during these final weeks abroad. One night the four of us gathered snacks and beers at Allan's to watch on television as the Berlin Wall started being pulled down by triumphant Berliners from both sides.

Briefly our quartet debated the idea of boarding a ferry and taking a train to go to Berlin and join the celebration. It was only seven hours away, and visas were easily obtainable in Copenhagen. In the end, we decided against going. Three Danes and an American rightly concluded that while it may have been a fine party, it wasn't ours. It belonged to the Germans.

Back home again in Indiana, December arrived, and with it the chance to watch the other Communist dominoes fall, especially in Czechoslovakia with the Velvet Revolution. It was as peaceful as the revolt against Ceausescu in Romania was violent. In January of 1990, Europe suddenly was a very different place.

There’d been a lot more to the trip than what I’ve sketched here, but as the New Year dawned, it was clear that for me in my own life, certain realities had come to an end and others were just beginning.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I'll always question returning home, given the many opportunities for English-speaking expatriates amid the transition. There are no answers, just nagging doubts. Maybe it's time to send these ghosts packing even if I've grown quite fond of them over three decades' time.

I’ve made 36 European excursions since the one in 1989. None of them have been quite like it. Perhaps in the months to come I’ll finally be able to explain why, and I hope it’s an entertaining and educational experience for blog readers.

---

Recent columns:

March 12: ON THE AVENUES: Tender mercies, or why Democratic Party luminaries didn't want to be seen at the "Protect Hoosiers from Hate" rally.

March 5: ON THE AVENUES: Prom planning's nice and all, but New Albany still needs an autonomous independent business alliance.

February 26: ON THE AVENUES: Pretty in pink slips, aren’t they? Those who mutilated Speck need to be cashiered.

February 22: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL: Take your cult of personality and shove it, Dear Leader.

What is Take Life on the Road?

Taking life on the road means "road trip," and Take Life on the Road does the driving.

Take Life on the Road® is the tour division of Destinations Booksellers and we market ourselves under the name Take Life on the Road® (DTI -Destinations Tours Indiana). You can phone or text us at (812) 944-5116 or email us at takelifeontheroad@gmail.com. We’re on Twitter as @DTIRoadLife, on Facebook as TakeLifeontheRoad.

Watch for our Instagram feed and coming soon, our YouTube channel.

More in depth: Our Story.

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

It wasn't until May of 2017 that I finally understood what I'd photographed back in 1987. It was the Tjentište War Memorial, glimpsed somewhere along the route of a 10-hour bus ride from Dubrovnik to Belgrade.

This essay is a far better explanation of the "spomeniks," a word that may not be the best choice to describe them.

The Misunderstood History of the Balkans’ Surreal War Memorials, by Darmon Richter (Atlas Obscura)

As viral images, the so-called “spomeniks” of the former Yugoslavia are often taken out of context.

The memorial house on Petrova Gora is one of many hundreds of unusual, oversized monuments that were built by the former Yugoslavia during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s across the Balkan States. These Yugoslav war memorials—often dubbed “spomeniks” by Western media—have gained a lot of online attention in recent years. However, as viral images, they are increasingly taken out of context.

Here's the post from May 24, 2017.

---

It's just a few days shy of thirty years since I boarded a bus in Dubrovnik, bound for Belgrade. I'd already been to Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Mostar, which at the time were located in Yugoslavia. The country ceased to exist after the civil war, which began in 1992.

The bus trip took something like ten hours, traveling on roads that weren't interstates. Every few hours, there'd be a pit stop, and one of them was at the Tjentište War Memorial, in the middle of nowhere. My photo from 1987 is above, and a more recent one below (via Atlas Obscura's article).

At the time, I had no idea what this sculpture represented, only that it seemed strange enough to photograph.

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.

This and other monuments from defunct Yugoslavia now seem calculated to produce melancholy.

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković...), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their "patriotic education." After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

The view in the opposite direction, back in 1987? Just more of those seemingly endless mountains.

From Flanders Fields to the Molen de Adriaan, love and beer and closure.

Mechelen, Belgium.

Yesterday's post was written almost two weeks ago.

TRAVEL PRELUDES: These are the good old days.

Indeed, Dossier #37 was heavy on the elegiac tones, albeit with plenty of mirth and good humor for balance. The itinerary was restricted to Belgium and the Netherlands. We landed in Brussels, spent an evening in Mechelen, then traveled by train to Poperinge and later Haarlem.

Not only were there no Puck's Hats to be found in Amsterdam, but we didn't even go there, apart from the train station on arrival and the airport for the return.

That's because Haarlem was every bit as endearing as it was nine years ago, the last time I visited. I've always ducked the question of my ideal place to live in Europe, if (and when) the soul-numbing sentence of American residency in New Albany finally is commuted.

At this precise moment, Haarlem wins in a landslide. I'd even try to learn Dutch, given that so many of them speak English better than me.

The reunion was joyful, though incomplete. Dewi was in from London working out of Boris' flat, but Kim couldn't make it down from Arnhem. Rob was on duty at the Cafe Briljant, which he'll soon be shuttering. He has plenty of future beer business plans, and will be just fine.

Of course, Bill passed away last year. His lovely wife and impossibly bright, bilingual nine-year-old daughter carry on, and the process of catching up with them after so long was therapeutic -- for all us, I certainly hope.

Earlier in Poperinge, Karen, Jeff and Roy joined us for the triennial meal at the Cafe de la Paix, although there also was some sort of hop festival occurring in the streets outside.

I was very happy to chat with Guy and Beatrice, once the proprietors of the Hotel Palace, the base for three beercycling adventures in the early 2000s. They've been retired almost ten years now, and are loving every minute of it. No one was more delighted than Guy when the Belgian television film crew arrived in Poperinge in 2004 to capture the Tour de Trappist's concluding ride to Westvleteren.

He retains the twinkle in a barroom maestro's eye.

After our Indiana friends left on Monday, Diana and I stuck around Pops for a couple of days, socializing with our main man Luc and relaxing. On Monday, Luc drove me to the nearby Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, and on Tuesday, the three of us went to De Plukker, an organic brewery and hop farm a few clicks out of the city center.

We'd intended all along to ride bicycles to these two sites, deferring to Luc's car only at the last minute because of periodic heavy rain both days.

Thus, I was unable to toast the memory of Kevin Richards as I'd hoped, pedaling the country lanes, smelling manure and imagining the evening's beefsteak and strong ale.

And yet he'll always be there, as much a part of my Poperinge as the hop museum, the Trois Monts hills to the south by the French border, or Cafe de Vrede's rural terrace.

I knew this trip would be an emotionally challenging undertaking, and as usual, I managed to underestimate the intensity of the introspection. It will be on my mind a bit longer, and that's okay. We place on foot in front of the other, and keep moving.

---

This week I'll revisit some people, places, meals and beers from the most recent trip. For once, there isn't a unifying theme, just scattershot impressions. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading. 

TRAVEL PRELUDES: These are the good old days.

At the age of 57, it isn't quite the same as for this twenty-something, although I can't tell you how much I appreciate the sentiments.

The Worst Part of Traveling is Coming Home (Perpetual Wanderlust)

Before I had left for Southeast Asia someone had told me that the worst part of traveling is coming home and having the travel bug. I didn’t truly understand the gravity of that statement until I had returned home after traveling and living in Southeast Asia for six months. You leave your home country to be a part of something different, to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, to find yourself. When you come home, everyone asks, “how was your trip?” as if you went on vacation to Florida for a few weeks – not fully understanding the crazy, beautiful, meaningful experience that was your “trip”.

It seems that the older you become, the more you have to come home to, in need of tending: families, pets, work and obligations. Finally you reach an age where these demands have receded -- and so have you.

Consequently, I've never felt the first pang of regret that I traded "normal" Southern Indiana existence for the chance to travel when I was in my twenties. Opportunities were lost, and other gained; overall, the balance suits me.

Then in my thirties and forties, I was able to parlay relative (trust me) success in business into further opportunities to wander. These days, I'm doing it again, just without the business ... quite yet.

Who needs money for retirement when he never planned on retiring, anyway?

One wishes to recapture the innocence, but it's like trying to forget what you know about playing a musical instrument, which is to say you can't unlearn what you already grokked. The thrill is gone, but it hasn't gone away. The rewards are more mature, accepting and knowing.

We've changed a lot, Europe and me, but we're still a team.

Later this evening, everyday life at home will resume. If experience is to be trusted, my psychic batteries will be recharged, at least for a little while. We'll see what happens next, for so long as next time comes around.

As noted previously, Dossier #37 likely will be remembered as an elegiac journey, though not to say mournful or melancholy. The past year has been a hard one in the sense of saying goodbye to family members and friends who were destined not to experience the "next" time. All I can do is carry their memories forward as best I can, and I will.

It will be good to be back. It will be better to leave again, next time. To my closer friends among you, simply this: don't ever allow me to read Alan Moore's novel Jerusalem at such a juncture in my life, ever again.

It was a wonderful book, to be sure (thanks Jon), but a little metaphysics goes a long way. I departed for the trip terrified that I'd find myself gliding through the streets of Amsterdam, hallucinating about stairways to Mansoul, and searching desperately for a cluster of Puck's Hats.

If this really occurred, there'll be a likely culprit -- and I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

Tjentište War Memorial, Yugoslavia, then and now.

Previously in the 1987 travel narrative: 30 years ago today: (May 1987) Dubrovnik long before those trendy thrones and games.

It's just a few days shy of thirty years since I boarded a bus in Dubrovnik, bound for Belgrade. I'd already been to Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Mostar, which at the time were located in Yugoslavia. The country ceased to exist after the civil war, which began in 1992.

The bus trip took something like ten hours, traveling on roads that weren't interstates. Every few hours, there'd be a pit stop, and one of them was at the Tjentište War Memorial, in the middle of nowhere. My photo from 1987 is above, and a more recent one below (via Atlas Obscura's article).

At the time, I had no idea what this sculpture represented, only that it seemed strange enough to photograph.

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.

This and other monuments from defunct Yugoslavia now seem calculated to produce melancholy.

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković...), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their "patriotic education." After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

The view in the opposite direction, back in 1987? Just more of those seemingly endless mountains.

Update: For more on Tjentište and the war monuments (spomeniks), read this post from November 10.

Next: Passing through Belgrade, then on to Skopje, beginning with a digression about brutalist architecture on the heels of an earthquake.

Video: "What Is Real Chinese Food?"

I'm researching Chinese food for an article, and the topic is a maze.

There is the diversity of cuisine within various regions of the country itself, and then the way some of these traditions (not others) have come to define Chinese food as Americans tend to experience it -- as comfort food defined more by American tastes, rather than Chinese origins.

This brief, honest and charming video offers a glimpse of Chinese food as encountered by two Chinese-speaking foreigners wandering the hinterlands. They also have numerous other video glimpses of China.

I'm sadly reminded of my timidity in failing to see the world outside Europe, but there's also an element of happy familiarity -- perhaps Slovak bull's balls with gray sauce, or fish stew of indeterminate origin in Portugal.

Obviously there are many videos about Chinese food to watch, as well as books to read, and I have nowhere close to enough time for more than a few while preparing to write.

So far, the biggest mystery is this: What compelled me to buy this Szechuan cookbook in 1983, when I could barely boil water?

Photos of Meteora in Greece, 1985, reclaimed from slides via a nifty scanner.

From 1985 through 1994, a period comprising six trips to Europe, some of them quite lengthy, most of the 2,500-plus photos I took while on the road were committed to slide film.

This seemed like a good idea at the time.

The 1970s-vintage slide projector that sufficed for viewing into the 1990s ceased functioning two decades ago, so after all these years of not being able to see these images, I finally purchased a decent quality scanner for Saturnalia.

The process of digitizing these images (and a few thousand more non-slide photos) probably will last the remainder of my life. Short term goals are more modest, as it has come time to write the narrative of the 1987 trip, something currently existing in fragments only. Being able to see the photos will be of tremendous value when it comes to collating memories.

The photos here are of Meteora, monasteries and rock formations.

The first was Kalambaka, itself a nondescript modern town, but the functional gateway to the spectacular, otherworldly monasteries of Meteora, which are man-made complexes of Orthodox holiness and isolation perched like Technicolor mushrooms atop tall shafts of sheer volcanic rock – accessible by local bus thanks to the wonders of 20th-century roadway engineering, but previously reached exclusively by rope and basket conveyances, pulleys and profuse prayers.

I'm a dismal photographer. Here's the lowdown about the up-high.

The Metéora (Greek: Μετέωρα, pronounced [mɛˈtɛoɾɐ], literally "middle of the sky", "suspended in the air" or "in the heavens above" — etymologically related to meteorology) - is a formation of immense monolithic pillars and hills like huge rounded boulders which dominate the local area.

It is also associated with one of the largest and most precipitously built complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Greece, second in importance only to Mount Athos.^[1] The six monasteries are built on natural conglomerate pillars, at the northwestern edge of the Plain of Thessaly near the Pineios river and Pindus Mountains, in central Greece.

Metéora is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List under criteria^[2] I, II, IV, V and VII.^[3]

The nearest town is Kalambaka.