Zagreb

Well, things being what they are, we got a late start and ended up in Zagreb with just enough time to…eat! We went to a wonderful old-style restaurant near Trg Republik and spent several hours there as the only people in the restaurant, with one waiter. I felt like I was in a movie. Except that the soundtrack was still American oldies, like Frank.

I’ve had a great time with Slavko and Cynthia on this portion of the trip, but I will be fine with getting home. Zagreb does look in better shape than many of the other cities I’ve visited. It still has an older, aura, sort of Austro-Hungarian style, at least in the section we visited. I couldn’t recognize the Youth Hostel I stayed in so long ago when we drove past, and the train station’s bigger. But, maybe because of the time of year, things were slow, and everyone was probably at the coast.

I made my plane just fine, and the trip to the hotel from the Frankfurt airport went smoothly. My German is really horrible; with the exception of English, I think I speak all these other languages like a 2-year old, if that. And everyone in these cities speaks English; it’s practically a crime.

My final breakfast was an uneventful but delicious buffet, while I watched TV and a news report about people getting massacred in Pittsburgh. No problems getting to the plane or on the plane for the very long trip back.

In Toronto, US customs made me unpack my bag completely. The woman was actually nice, and was amazed at how few clothes I had. She seemed perplexed by my interest in folk music and dance. I had to go through security twice, but finally made it through.

Safe landing in Seattle, bus ride back to Symphony Hall, where the lovely Sandra picked me up. And so, another adventure ends. If you’ve read this far, I hope some of it was at least entertaining and thought-provoking. For me, I do this to go back and remember details I might have forgotten. OK, till the next trip, then…in the mean time, today’s my birthday, and we’re going to the Dahlia Lounge to celebrate!

Gewurztraminer

We decided to go to Austria today to get some roast chicken. People here don’t have “happy” chickens, and use them mostly for eggs anyway, buying chicken when they eat it, at the store. We thought we’d go to the three-country area, go to some places Slavko and Cynthia hadn’t been to yet, and then have a nice dinner. Of course, first we had to ice cream for breakfast and to plan our route.

We ended up in Kloch, taking some time to go up to a ruined castle. They have concerts here in the summer, a nice venue if you can get the gig. Walking back to town, we stopped in at a wine bar of sorts. They specialize in Gewurztrauminer, so we tried some, having the requisite cold cuts, etc. with it. The wines were ok, but were enhanced by the food, which is often true of this varietal. We just took our time, talking, and enjoying the spaciousness of an unfettered day.

I asked Slavko about Slovenian folk music. He thinks it doesn’t really exist anymore. He thinks any that might still have been around has been taken over and transfromed into pop music, similar to that of Croatia and Serbia. They might use some folk instruments in those latter countries, but the music is pop. Now that I think about it, take a look at what has happened to folk music in the US. Is there any real music that is not pop anymore? Another question for teh ehtno folks. For me the issue has more to do with the context wherein folk music used to occur. When you have Macedonian weddings where all the music can be supplied by a computer, guitar player, and vocalist who reads the lyrics off the computer screen, who needs musicians, let alone folk musicians? Slavko said that all they do is waltzes and polkas, generic ones. He said that when he was gowing up, his mother and aunt used to dance together, that there were some dances done just by women. This might have been due to all the men being drunk (alcoholism is rampant here, especially with males), but it existed nonetheless.

We went to a nearby town, St. Anna am Geigen, and looked over their nice church on a hill.l Missed the organ rehearsal, unfortunately, but had some peaceful moments. That was before gthe rain came. it wasn’t too bad here. But they’ve had tons of rain over the past few months here (“Like Seattle.”). And the hailsotrms are outrageous. All the village roofs were damaged last year, and this year, Slavko and Cynthia’s roof had holes the size of baseballs in it. Their trailer, in which I sleep, had broken windows from hailstones hitting them on the side! All the apple orchards have to have mesh netting suspended over them to stop the stones from ripping off the leaves; otherwise, the insurance companies won’t pay for the loss.

We’re going to have a toast of champagne tonight (already had a second stop at the sweet shop for another ice cream on the way back) to celebrate my visit. They will drive me to Zagreb in the morning, and we’ll visit a few places before the take me to the airport for my 5:55 flight. I haven’t been to Zagreb since the International Folk Music and Dance Festival in 1974. The Youth Hostel is still next to the train station; i spent a lot of time there. I’ll be curious what kind of feeling i get from this last city on my trip.

Rotund Church

Today was a really low-key day, man, this is a different way of vacationing, that’s for sure. We had our usual coffee breakfast, then headed out to see a couple of interesting churches and eat at a restaurant, all near the three-countries border (Austria, Hungary, Slovenia). The first church was a new version built over an older one. It was notable for being designed by a famous Slovenian architect, Jozsef Plecnik. He had more free reign than usual, and made some interesting design decisions. These included putting plateware on the ceiling and pottery on the altar. These are crafts the area was known for. The black marble columns symbolized the earth, which the people were closely tied to. Most of the craftsmen have long since gone to Austria or Germany for work. But I like this church much better than some others I’ve seen.

Lunch was a leisurely 3-hour affair, starting with pear brandy, then: home-made sausages, lard and smoked-ham dip, home-made bread, fresh porcini and chanterelle mushrooms with smoked goose liver, fresh venison with turnip, parsley root, and carrot sauce with carmelized onions and a cranberry marmalade-apricot dipping sauce, a local Pinot, and finishing with flourless date-walnut cake with light chocolate frosting and whipped cream. Really, this place, run by one woman, her son, and one waitress, should be in Lonely Planet or something.

Dragging ourselves back to the car, we went to the nearby attraction for this area, the “Rotund Church”. This is a small chapel, actually, built in the shape of one of those turrets on a Victorian home. Inside there was seating in the  ten niches carved into the walls, plus some old paintings on the ceiling, with some on the walls. One of the paintings, of the Last Supper, is one of the few existing paintings anywhere to show two female apostles (This is a whole ‘nother topic.) The church was constructed around 1400, then remodeled and restored. Now, as opposed to some other churches, where I feel the natural spirit of the place has been destroyed, you could feel something about this place. You don’t have to buy into the Christian thing to know that something special, beyond any particular religion, was going on here, on a subtle level.

We returned via the ice cream place we’d visited a couple of times this week. We talked some about the dissolution of society among young people, here in Slovenia and in Austria and Germany. They don’t really have a future, have gotten into drugs and heavy metal, with lyrics about putting people against the wall and shooting them, black shirts, and then there’s the whole skinhead movement as well. Frankly, this doesn’t sound too different from the US subcultures, but I believe it’s perceived as more dangerous here due to the Nazi history of the area. And in the US, we still have the illusion of hope for a better world. I have to say that, as one example, reading how difficult it is for people in the US to get that everyone having health care should be a right and not based on any profit by anyone whatsoever, even with Obama’s pathetically watered down version of universal health care, this Balkan cynicism feels more accurate to me at the moment. I still will do my work with kids, and keep a vision of a better world, but I don’t think I have many (if any) illusions yet about the odds against us making it as a more evolved species, treating the gift we’ve been given as a species with love and care, and protecting our Earth home. Where’s that asteroid when we need it?!

Bled

Yesterday was our long travel day. We had our usual breakfast, just at  5:30, then headed east via Austria. We soon passed through Maribor, which is the nearest big city. It used to be a big industrial town. But, as elsewhere in Slovenia, and other countries which abandoned Communism, the first order of business was to eliminate the unions. so, the government just closed all the industries, mines, etc., throwing all the workers out of a job. The unions collapsed, and people are scrambling for whatever work they can find, at lower wages, and no benefits.

We stopped in a small Austria town to have a break of coffee and apple studel, sitting under some lovely oleander bushes. We headed up the river valley and started getting into the Slovenian Alps. Slavko and Cynthia have friends near the border who’ve retired to a small home, so we visited them, and their son (who goes to Barcelona University), daughter-in-law (from Mexico), and two grandchildren. I got my languages all screwed up again as I tried to explain what kind of work I did. The woman friend served us potica, a delicious pastr filled with walnuts.

Back on the road, we eventually hit Bled, which is a well-known resort town (Tito used to hang out around here). It has your classic castle-on-a-rock-on-the-hill and church-on-an-island-in-the-middle-of-the-lake resort pre-requisites. It also had a zillion people, so we continued on to the next lake, Bohinj. Lined by those Alps, I liked this much better. Slavko used to be on the Yugoslav Mountain Patrol. He filled me in on how he was saved by a dog after being trapped on a tree during an avalanche. We had a lunch of “golden carp” then took a short hike up to the Savica waterfalls. I was very glad to be walking on a trail; most of this trip has been eating, and I really miss exercising. At least in Berovo I got to dance some, and walked to Ratevo. One of the things I’m looking forward to on my return besides seeing Sandra is to do exercise via biking and hiking. Anyway, the falls were very nice, and cool too (it was a hot day, and I wasn’t dressed for the hike).

After the hike, we returned to Bled, avoiding killing the many bicyclists wearing no protective gear whatsoever on a road that could barely accommodate two cars. We went up to the castle, with its great views (just because the place is touristy doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful). About 6 folks were dressed in faux-medieval garb at the top, and proceeded to do some kind of choreography to recorded music. The music was a mash-up of Baroque’s greatest hits; it started with the ground for Pachelbel’s Canon and went downhill from there. We escaped down to the printing press. I’m spoiled by the Book Arts studio at Tieton, but enjoyed watching the fellow make a poster, with wax seal and quill pen signature and all. There was also an herbal shop, but it was closed. The whole place seems geared to make as much money as possible, but its impressive situation on a hug rock and the surrounding natural beauty overcome this somewhat.

We finished our visit with a desert at one of the many restaurant cafes. Here you could order the world’s best Krema Rezina (Krem Schnittel), which is two pieces of puff pastry surrounding Bavarian creme, whipped creme and dusted with sugar. I’m not a big fan of those (though the sample I tasted was good for its kind) and instead ordered a “Cuban Torte” hoping for something I couldn’t get in the states. Alas, not much to recommend here. Some “live” music commenced, three players: keyboard, accordion, and guitar, promising songs from all over, including Slovenia. They began with an instrumental version of “Amazing Grace” and it went downhill from there. We escaped to our car and a nice ride home through a river valley.

Ice Wine

The next day was very low key, which was fine by me. Cynthia and I took a walk into “town” to pick up their milk. The house here and other villages we’ve passed through in the car are often painted bright colors, such as lemon peel yellow, pumpkin orange, butterscotch, black raspberry, pistachio green, watermelon red, and cerulean. Makes for pleasant effects on the eyes and contrasts well with all the green around.

The older houses are also built in two ways. One way has the roof constructed first, with four posts holding it up, and then the rest of the house built from underneath, instead the posts. Another way is to have the walls of the houses constructed of young saplings woven together and then stuccoed over. They used to have thatched roofs, but today these are prohibitively expensive. They cost a lot to construct, are high maintenance, and the insurance premiums are astronomical.

Sovjak is built on 5 small hills, with a lake at the bottom and off to the side. Here, as in other villages we’ve driven through, there is often a small chapel-shrine, or just a crucifix at a center intersection. You can’t get away from all the churches, they’re everywhere, but are built harmoniously with the homes. I find the crucifixes oppressive, however.

After we picked up the fresh milk and talked with her neighbor, Cynthia and I returned home. We had a nice lunch, including corn Slavko picked a few minutes earlier. There’s lots of corn grown here, but it’s virtually all for the pigs. It’s not very sweet, and a little tougher than I’m used to. But cooked quickly and fresh, it tastes good. We left shortly afterward to pick up the honey Slavko forgot at the winery. He had also requested the wine owner to put some ice wine on ice for us to sample. Ice wine is the latest harvest wine, where the grapes actually freeze. you can look it up. It’s very sweet, but in a completely non-cloying way, delicious. I’d never had it before, and it didn’t disappoint. It was from 1998, and when first introduced to it, Slavko bought 19 bottles, nearly all that was remaining. Before that we had a “Sipon” wine. This grape I had never heard of, but the wine, again, was different and very tasty. I spoke to the winemaker through Slavko about the Seattle merchant who works out of a warehouse, Garagiste; I will try to hook these guys up with each other, as this kind of small, high quality winery is exactly what he is looking for.

We returned home and had a late night tea and conversation. I found out more about Slavko’s musical past, including that he had written some of the music for the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. He mentioned how the Yugoslav government used to finance bringing the Newport Jazz Festival to Beograd when it finished its run in the states. When he was 9, he attended a concert with Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima. It was so popular it had to be re-located to a stadium, and 40,000 people showed up. The army was called in to fix the lights (the stadium didn’t have any, so they flew them in from Zagreb). The concert, which was supposed to go from 8 till 10, lasted till 4 in the morning. The crowd certainly won over the performers, who’d been expecting “Communists.”

Graz

Yesterday started slowly. Cynthia and Slavko make coffee, from beans Cynthia roasts in the oven. They bring the coffee (Turkish style) along with homemade bread cheese and marmalade to the outside table, and then we spend an hour or so having a light breakfast and talking. It’s quiet, and there is a light breeze to cool things off.

There are many errands they run in Austria, shopping and otherwise, from time to time, and as their car insurance was going to expire soon, we decided to take a trip to Graz, which is only about an hour away. After arriving and taking care of the car details, we went into the city proper. I am finding that the older, “inner city” areas of these towns are what makes them appealing; otherwise the cities are just like some version of an American town, complete with McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken or the like. Graz was a walled city in the past (this helped it withstand the Ottoman invasions), and it’s inner section has been largely turned over to pedestrians. Thus it is pretty quiet and easy to walk through. It’s also fairly large and easy to get a bit disoriented.

We ended up in Glockspielen Platz at a bar. This is named after the clock tower which has one of those mechanisms where animated wooden figures emerge from behind doors and turn around on the hour bell strike. The next “show” was in a couple of hours, so we sat down and had a beer brewed at the bar, and ordered kebap, pommes frites and ajvar while we talked. There was also a thunderstorm to entertain us, my first real rain of the trip. At 6:00pm we had the show, not very exciting, but definitely not something I’ve seen in the states, very old world in my imagination.

We tried to find last night’s organ tuner in the main cathedral after this; he was supposed to be fixing its organ, but wasn’t there. This church was huge, and very different from the Byzantine ones I’d seen earlier in the trip, obviously; again, “You’re not in the Balkans anymore,” is the way it felt. I just can’t get into these edifices, and certainly not a place to worship anything I would believe is greater than me. It’s too gaudy, too snooty, too…false, I don’t know how to say.

We took a scenic room back home. At the border, I learned that when Slovenia wanted to join the EU, this particular town, sitting on both sides of the Mur (Mura) river, was going to be split up between Austria and Slovenia. The Austrians made it a condition of approval that Slovenia would build a sewage collection system for the river. The Slovenians did that, but the Austrians continue to send their waste directly into the river.

We went to a small sweet shop near Sovjak for dessert. Slavko ordered 7 pieces of cake for us, as an extravagant celebration, and to fulfill a previous promise to the owner. The cakes were delicious, light and not too sweet, very different from the American style. I think Sandra would like these. While ploughing through the cakes, Slavko talked about some of his history with folk music in Yugoslavija, including research and ensemble directing. He knows Atanas and Kete, and worked with Atanas a long time ago, as director of the Yugoslavijan orchestra that went to the Dijon festival (I wonder if he and Dragi crossed paths there?!). He talked about learning how to work with the dance leader, changing the way the music ensemble sounded, and how this positively affected the dancers in the larger ensemble, leading to a gold medal at Dijon.

Sovjak

Yesterday, Goran drove me to the airport at 4 in the morning. We were accompanied by Venus on the left and Jupiter on the right. We parted at the airport, and we’ll be in touch quite a bit over the coming months, I know. The flight to Zagreb was uneventful.

Cynthia and Slavko met me, and it was great to see them, it had been many years. We took our time going to their home in Slovenia. We stopped at Varazdin, a well-kept town in northern Croatia. It was clear I wasn’t in Macedonia anymore. The architecture was more northern, the language and alphabet were different, the food was different, the vegetation was different. With such a quick transition, it’s unsettling, but I was lucky to have them to help me with it.

As we drove nort, we talked about all kinds of things. One of my first questions was to follow-up on the topic of pre- and post-Communism perceptions. Slavko said that everyone here felt the same way: things were better during the Communist days. Apparently small party oligarchs or mafiosi-types run things here, similar to Bulgaria. From our conversation, I got the sense that everywhere on the Balkan peninsula, things were teetering towards some kind of ruin, economic, personal, etc. When you hear what the governments are doing, it sounds more totalitarian than Communism. People in Bosnia are starving, but that doesn’t make the news. The adoption of the Euro is actually a disaster from many populations (cf. our trip to Greece), save for Germany, which may succeed in dominating Europe economically where it failed in the past militarily. Meanwhile, the countries here are re-inventing their languages to try to carve out some kind of national identity separate from each other, making up words, in general obfuscating what could be clear discourse. it strikes me as a complete waste of time and misdirected energy, the absolute wrong thing to be doing in these times. All this was a fascinating discussion that will undoubtedly continue during my visit here.

We crossed into Slovenia and one difference I noticed was the almost complete cultivation of the landscape, plus the continuous string of small villages, house clusters, really. The Slovenes had centuries under Austro-Hungarian rule, a lot as serfs, and this shows. It’s lovely in a quaint kind of way, reminds me a little of what I saw in England. Rolling hills, with planted fields, vineyards, clumps of trees, small, well-kept homes, one set of these after the other. I miss the wildness of Macedonia, but this is also a refreshing view, not nearly as harsh.

Slavko and Cynthia live in Sovjak, where Slavko’s mother was born, and where he spent many summers as a child. He’s pretty happy here, as is Cynthia, and it shows in their energy and the way they approach their life. It reminds me some of how Sandra & I feel in Tieton, or when we have a few friends over for one of Sandra’s fantastic meals in the backyard in Seattle, when all we have to do is talk, listen, eat and drink. Cynthia has a garden, bakes her own bread, makes her own cheese. They kill a pig once a year, gets eggs from a neighbor, you get the idea. It’s very quiet here; the nearest city is Maribor, but it’s over 40km away, and there are few cars in this out-of-the-way place.

I have my own place in a small trailer next to their home. Slavko of course is constructing all kinds of changes to the home and property. Huge, 30-foot beams placed hydraulically into place by just him and Cynthia as they construct a shop roof, etc., pretty amazing. I admire his engineering and thinking skills, and I’m happy that he is so much more relaxed than he ever was in San Francisco, when we lived together.

He is getting back into the violin, so Sandra & my present of Wanda Wilkomirska Bach, and the James Ehnnes Homage DVD were timely and well-received. He and Cynthia also remain wine lovers, and with the education Sandra & I have done over the past years in Seattle, we had a nice time talking about favorites. We also went out to a winery nearby, in Kog. The owner, Milan Hlebec, is thought to be one of the best makers in Slovenia, and runs a farmhouse-B&B-wine tasting place. He brought out some 1990 chardonnay for us which was delicious and different, then a red, then a dessert wine. This was served with cold cuts, cheese with pumpkin seed oil (popular here), tomatoes, onions, and peppers. This was similar to my last meal with Goran at his house the night before, just a different scale. We sat with a young couple who raise bees as a hobby. The husband works as an organ tuner throughout Europe. I asked him if they were having the same problem with bees dying off as we were in the states. He said they did, and he thinks it may be  genetically modified corn and/or the pesticides and/or parasites that are contributing to it. They put formic acid and oxalic acid in the hives to combat the latter; it doesn’t harm the bees.

We will return to this winery tomorrow, when the winery hosts the opening of an art colony week. Artists from around the world meet, paint, talk, and, of course drink wine. Slavko and Cynthia are great at networking and meeting people who share similar cultural values. So, this will be interesting. Today, though, we are leaving for Graz, to do some shopping, eat some Austrian food and drink some Austrian beer.