Zagreb to Budapest

Here I am in Budapest. The city shares Zagreb's grand Austro-Hungarian architecture but is grittier, livelier and more chaotic. The train ride was blissful after so many bus trips. I met up with a Swede who was heading to Budapest from Croatia where he had been working. We ended up sharing a flat in the center of town for 30 Euro. The woman who rented it pounced on us as we got off the train, common in a lot in cities like this.

She was a bit of a scam artist. Her booze-breath and how she ushered us into a bus through the back door without paying made me think twice. But everyone does it in these countries anyway. Turns out, she supports her daughter who attends college in the U.K. by renting out her places to bewildered tourists who haven't a clue as to where to go :) It's a real disadvantage to land in a place like this at night. I arrived at 10 p.m. when the tourist and money exchange bureaus had closed. The ATMs in the station were all broken, too. Taxi drivers circled like vultures just waiting to overcharge someone like me carrying a 500 pound backpack going across the river to Pest. So I caught up with her and Swede and muscled my way in. He was very nice about it.

The city is divided by the river into Buda and Pest. Buda is where all the churches, museums, stores, etc. are. Pest to the west is where the old fortresses, castles, Roman ruins, etc. are. It's quieter and things are spread out. Today is a working day. I have no real interest in running around to a bunch of museums. I would rather write and drink coffee and meet people. Tomorrow we will head over to Castle Hill in Pest for some sightseeing and wine drinking.

It feels so good to be back in a city with character. When I am in cities like Zagreb or Belgrade I shrivel up and can't function. They feel bewildering, not because they are big cities but because they are so grand and manicured. I like grit. I need noise and people around me. I need the kind of atmosphere where people are coming and going, talking and laughing, where there is loud music, coffee and too much smoke. Where there are nooks with cafes so small they seems to close in on you. San Francisco, New York, Brussels, Sarajevo, Pristina and Budapest are like that. Another thing they share, that I think makes me feel more at home, is that they are home to more than one culture.

Sarajevo to Zagreb

I here in Zagreb getting soaked. It's raining like mad. My luck with the weather finally ran out and damned if I can find an umbrella for sale. Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, is like Belgrade: grand with monuments to itself strewn across the city. But the atmosphere is warmer except in this Internet cafe, Cafe Charlie. Dull and lifeless place. But it is early and it is one of the few around here that is open.

I drove with the bus from Sarajevo to Zagreb last night. Arrived at 6 a.m. Compared to the trip from Priština to Belgrade it was 1st class luxury. The heater was cranked up and no nasty drafts blew through the back. On the other hand, I ran into the first total asshole of the trip. A completely drunken young guy sitting across the aisle from me is trying to recline his seat. I help him - it was tricky and he was finally getting on my nerves with all his heaving and sighing - only to have him sit down next to me. I told him to get back in his own seat, twice, loud. He does and starts panting something like ˝yeah, yeah.˝ I look over and he has his dick pulled out of his pants masturbating. So I yelled at him, got the second bus driver and then yelled at him some more to put his fucking dick back in his fucking pants. Then I moved to a seat up front. A nice guy said not to worry, that they would make sure I was okay until we got to Zagreb and not to be scared. I wasn't scared. I was pissed off. It was if my annoyance at all the times gross things like that have happened just welled up inside me and then poured out.

A friend in Sarajevo told me a story about a Bosnian woman who was being hassled during the war by a Chetnik soldier, who was doing strip searches. He took the beautiful woman aside and told her to strip, clearly indicating that he was about to enjoy a thorough search. My friend said she responded by 1. asking him if that was the only way he could get some, and then 2. promply pulling down her skirt and underwear, and 3. saying, okay. then go ahead. The soldier was embarassed and promply told her to pull her clothes back up. When she walked away she told him not to dare touch a single one of the young girls in line behind her. Now that takes balls.

I tried to explain how in the United States, the media is full of images of women being raped, murdered, kidnapped, beaten. I can't count how many weekly crime shows center around solving crimes against women. It sinks in, at least with me. I realized how much when I watched an American crime show last week on the sat TV. I read a book once about a war photographer who described how months after he had been in all sorts of danger he suddenly became scared during on particular incident. He said people always wonder if they would be cowardly if put in dangerous situations and then spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid finding out. What our imagination conjures up is far worse than reality.

At any rate, I miss my little, chaotic Sarajevo. Yesterday, I walked to the top of the city where an old Austro-Hungarian barracks is disintegrating. The stone sentry platform in front overlooks the city. It was the most beautiful moment. The sun was beaming on the snow around, the mist floating about the mountains. It was silent except for the call to prayer echoing through the city as a flock of ravens cawed while flying overhead. I tried to remember each and every detail as I walked home. I wanted to trace my finger along the city like lovers do each others' face, imprinting in the fingertips the feel of the eyes, the lips, the cheeks, the hair. Too many times I have left people or cities without a proper goodbye, with an empty space where memory belongs.

P.S.
There are a few places worth a visit if you are ever in the Balkans - places that are seldom in the tourbooks. In Sarajevo, visit Cafe Tito. Cafe Tito stands out from all the other umpteen cafes in Sarajevo. Helmets from World War II are used as lampshades, and donated memorabilia cover the walls - Tito's photos and metals, a LIFE magazine cover when Tito was its "Man of the Year," posters of Bosnians thronging to the streets to see him pass by. You have to take the tram or a taxi out there. Just ask any Sarajevo Taxi driver (don't bother with the generic taxis drivers who don't know the city half as well and are likely to overcharge) where Cafe Tito is. If you take the tram, head out going past Skenderija, pass the Tito Barracks on the right (the future U.S. embassy site) until you see a Bingo parlor on the left. Cafe Tito is across the street, tucked down behind the fast food place, along the river. Then if you suddenly get the urge for a tattoo, pay a visit to Paja Tattoo and Piercing Studio. It's hard to find, but worth the effort. Go to the main taxi stand in the Skenderija section of town, next to the iron bridge. Across the street is a shopping center entered by passing the statue of a woman with outstreched arms. Decend the main stairs, go left and it is a hole in the wall place a few meters on. I got a beautiful tattoo there on Wednesday. It is my only souvenir besides the t-shirt that reads: I'm a Muslim. Don't Panic. I got John a Tito baseball cap, which is kind of like a Che baseball cap. If you should find yourself in Priština, Kosovo - a city that defies the senses by being a charming pit - make sure you go to a little music store on Nene Teresa street, between the Parliament, whose white gates are lined with laminated photographs of Albanians who were killed during the 1998-1999 war, and the Grand Hotel. That is the main thoroughfare through the city. A character who looks like he came straight out of some wise guy movie runs the shop. When cranks up the Kosovo-Albanian hip hop it floods out of his store so narrow it fits only two people at a time. He can be found on the sidewalk with a buddy playing some kind of shell game. All I can say about Zagreb is avoid Internet Cafe Charlie unless you want a sterile atmosphere and unfriendly help. That reminds me, in Sarajevo you get friendly help but blah atmosphere at the Internet Cafe Click, in the heart of the old Turkish Quarter. On the other hand, the keyboards can change to the English format, making it easier to type. The Euronet Y Internet cafe in Skenderija isn't so international, but it is cheaper by 1 KM. The savings add up after a few hours. The cafe is always busy and the music loud and good. There are many other Internet cafes. Ultimately I liked the Euronet one the best.

A Good Heart

Nov. 22, 2005
Sarajevo
I have been wondering how people here live with the past. How do people grapple with a time when so much hate was directed at them that a war became a genocide. How do they look at their neighbors, ethnic Serb or Croats, and find peace? Someone who had lived through the terror in Argentina during the 1970s told me once that the quest for healing was an American issue. They don't need to heal, they can't heal. Maybe that is true but when I ask people here they say the same thing, more or less. They make a distinction between their Serb neighbors and the Chetnik fanatics who brutalized so many (of all ethnicities) during the war. Why, they ask, would they want to hurt or hate someone just because they are of the same ethnicity (or religion as it works here - Serbs are Orthodox, Croats Catholics, Bosniaks Muslim) as the Chetniks? There were plenty of victims on all sides and it would be pointless. Many Bosniak soldiers I talked to said the same thing: I could have killed, raped, burned, pillaged during the war, but I did not want to. What reason could I have for doing that? they ask. So it occurred to me today that when you have a clear conscience it is easier to have a good heart. Then you can see people as humans and as individuals.

Sarajevo in the Snow

Nov. 20, 2005
It snowed all day today. I walked up and down the city streets as the snowflakes drifted from the sky, even though my feet were wet and half-frozen. It was beautiful and peaceful and melancholy. Sarajevo is a city that gets under your skin. I didn't notice it at first. Actually, Belgrade was a breath of fresh air. I could think clearly for the first time since landing in the Balkans. But the flat, majestic city is frozen compared to chaotic, little Sarajevo. I craved the mountains and the crazy cobblestone streets that wind up into the hills. I missed the fog that covered the valley. I missed the rickety trolleys that loop around the city.

I checked myself into a little pension in the old town today. I need to force myself to write before too much time goes by. It is lovely to have a place of my own, even if it is a little room. But it overlooks the entrance to the stately mosque. I can't remember which mosque, but it is the one with a spigot from which crystal clear water runs.

I am supposed to be writing a short piece about a bar called Cafe Tito, named after the iron-fisted leader of former Yugoslavia. There is an intense nostalgia for Tito. Young Sarajevans, born after his death, will tell you that Tito represents a time when their country was strong, peaceful, affluent. They have good reason to long for those days. The war was bad enough, but 10 years later unemployment, corruption and the government are catastrophic. Part of the problem is the intransigence of the Bosnian presidency. The Bosnian Serbs and Muslims blame each side for holding things up, for holding the country hostage to ethnic priorities.

The Bosnian Serbs fear a powerful central government, saying that it will be a Muslim state. The B. Muslims say the B. Serbs are holding progress up, hanging onto the Serb mainland and a mythology of greatness. I spent a couple hours with a B. Serb who fled from Sarajevo because he wanted nothing to do with the war. Eventually he ended up in California. Strangely enough, we met on the shuttle from Belgrade to Sarajevo. Reality is so random at times.

From his perspective, a centralized government as it is developing now will mean the country's Serbian heritage will be supressed. For example, why should the language be called Bosnian and not Serbian-Croatian, as it was before the war. It might be okay for the Muslims but what about the Serbs? he asked.

The people say over and over that they want peace. But it is the politicians and religious leaders who are making peace so hard for the people. There are two different versions of the war, from why it began to what happened. One version is Serb and the other is Muslim. They'll have to get the story straight pretty soon.

I will eventually leave Sarajevo but I want to soak everything in for a few more days before going to Croatia. In the meantime, I am watching the snow.

The Old Man From Visegrad

Here is another story.
A man: he is a grandfather, father, husband, brother. He lives on a hill overlooking a little village called Visegrad (pronounced Vishegrad). The sparkling green Drina River flows through the village. It's beautiful, peaceful. The man, his father and his grandfather lived there all their lives, with Bosnian Serb and Muslim neighbors.

He is old now, but when he was a boy during World War II his parents and all but one brother were killed when that war touched Yugoslavia. He grew up and had a family of his own. Then came the next war in 1992. One July night or day, I don't remember now, the Bosnian Serbs militia, calling themselves Chetniks (after their cutthroat predecessors in World War II), came to his home and torched it. They shot 17 people there. He saw them shoot his wife in the back as she ran for her life. Watching snowflakes drift lazily, wetly toward the foundation of a new house on the land, I wonder how fast could an old woman run down a hillside? The camp fire is beginning to die down when I try to picture what happened. All I can think of is whether the mothers held their children as they were shot, or were they all fleeing frantically? I won't try to imagine the terror. I don't want to get too close to that darkness.

After the men left, the old man came out from hiding and tried to drag his wife up the hill to a small cemetary. She was too heavy for him, so a young man helped him. All told, he has lost two generations of his family to the two wars.

There was nothing the man could do, so he left and did not return for years. Seeking safety, the old man walked for miles and miles, ferried over a river, trudged up Mt. Igman in the snow. The women, the children and the toddler lying dead around his little house rejoined the earth. Later, the bones of some were collected and identities recorded. Others were never found or never identified. The problem is that to do DNA tests you need some genetic material from the deceased and from a relative. But there was no one left of some families to donate DNA. Whole families were wiped out during the war.

This story is like so many other Bosnian stories about the war. The details are different but the suffering is the same. What makes me shudder about the old man's story is that it's like someone hit replay and 50 years later the same film was showing. What breeds contempt and anger - evil - deep enough to carry on for so long? How do you heal the poisoned heart? With peace and security?

The man has begun rebuilding his home on the hill in little Visegrad near the green green Drina River. His son and the son's sons help. He loves his home, covered in plum blossoms by spring and snow by winter.

A little old lady - one of his B. Serb neighbors - who looks like she must be 100, strolls quietly by in her headscrarf and long skirt. She keeps an eye on the houses on the hill. The old man's daughter-in-law tells me that her sons almost surely knew what was going to happen to the family. Why didn't they warn us? the man wonders, as does what is left of his family. As the old woman slowly vanishes down the long country path, I wonder, did she stroll by to watch the team collect the bones of the man's family?

Sarajevo - Heartbreaking Forgiveness

Nov. 4, 2005
Here is a simple story about the war told to me during Bajram, over coffee and baklava.

1992, Sarajevo. Indira, her husband and brother in law sit at the dining room table in their little duplex. A shell lands on the roof of the house right outside the window that they are facing. Shrapnel hits Indira and her brother-in-law, Samir. They survive. But a piece of shrapnel hits Indira's husband in the head. He is killed. It's an ironic death because he is one of the top three neuro-surgeons in the former Yugoslavia. A young man, he leaves behind Indira, 34, and two children: Adi, 5, and Aida, 7. The family thinks the attack was meant to kill the young surgeon so that he could no longer keep people alive. Indira gets nasty calls after his death, which was celebrated among the Bosnian Serb forces, as seen on TV.

The three retreat to the basement level of the house, where Samir and Saida live. Adi begs to ascend the few steps to his home, but it's too dangerous. Shells and bombs pound Sarajevo. Finally he is allowed to go upstairs. He tells his mother: "Father's smell is everywhere."

Shivers shoot up my spine when the family tells me the story. Can you imagine how they felt? Saida said it broke their hearts.

About a year later, Aida is coming up those same stairs when shrapnel hits her in the arm. She would have lost the use of her arm entirely if a surgeon had not recognized the symptoms that remained after the first operation to remove the deadly metal. The nerves in three of her fingers are still damaged, leaving her with little feeling in them, and the arm is slightly shorter than the other. Both children have pursued medicine as adults. Adi wants to become a surgeon. Aida, whether she ever wanted to or not, can't.

Aida is 21 now. She said she doesn't like talking about the war that, in her words, "stole her childhood." But she wants others to know the truth about what happened to Bosnia. That it was not a war. It was an aggression against the non Bosnian Serbs that killed between 100,000-200,000, on all sides. The hardest thing for her to understand, she said, is that the B. Serbs won't admit what happened. They deny the massacres or claim that they were protecting themselves.

Bosnia is so bruised. It seems so unfair that its people continue to suffer. High unemployment, corruption, bad leadership, bias, and simple neglect. Bosnians are restricted from traveling to most countries in the world without a visa - a stamp that is seriously difficult to come by for them. Saida's brother only sees his two children and wife every few months, when the children have holidays. They are living in Vienna (his wife's parents live there so her visa was approved easily), but the Austrians continue to refuse his visa request, even for a short visit. It's a huge issue for the Bosnians, who feel isolated by the international community, like they're the neighborhood pariahas. You'd think they could get a break after everything that happened. The B. Serbs and B. Croats have citizenship in Serbia and Croatia, respectively. The Bosniaks? Bosnia is their mother country and, many say, it feels like they're being shut up in it.

But instead of hating the city where her father was killed and can feel like it is dissolving, Aida said she wants Bosnia to be peaceful, united as it was before the madness: a Sarajevo where everyone is welcome and respected. "I was born here, grew up here," she said. "I want to work in Sarajevo, raise a family in Sarajevo." Meanwhile, the three-headed hydra that comprises the presidency can't come to the smallest understanding. Each of the three presidents, a Bosnian Muslim, a Bosnian Croat (they head the federated territory) and a Bosnian Serb (head of the B. Serb province, Republika Srpska), are to blame. But all agree that the RS side is standing in the way of progress and wants really to be part of Serbia, or at least separate from Bosnia. It makes no sense. For one, it is an artificial boundary created by the Dayton Acccord. And, two, the RS territory is not contiguous. The intransigence is keeping the country from moving forward, direction EU membership. I have talked to dozens of people, many former soldiers during the war, and they all same the same thing: we want peace and respect, not war. One former soldier told me that he has two sons, thus two good reasons for never wanting war again.

I don't they will never understand why Bosnian Muslims were massacred, raped, tortured, and so reviled by the B. Serbs that attacked them. But I can tell that it hurts them, burdens their hearts. Who woulnd't feel hurt with so much hate directed at you and so much resistance to living side-by-side.

Today, the legacy of the war festers like a bloody wound covered by a giant Band-Aid. Maybe if someone could answer Saida's simple question (one that is spraypainted in big letters on a building downtown) people could begin to heal. Saida's question: WHY?

Sarajevo

Here I am in the object of my decade-long desire. Now that I am in Sarajevo, I am not sure my curiosity can stand up to the city. It's a mess: burned out homes and Soviet-style office buildings. Birds were nesting in the holes left in the side of a house from Serb shelling during the war. It's like walking through ruins of some ancient civilization. The sides of brick houses still reach upward - just one long column of bricks on either side of the house. Rubble of what used to be homes or offices are strewn about one-time front yards and walkways. The metal that still manges to hold those uniformly ugly 1970 Soviet-era architecture together is rusted, the color dried blood. Indeed, there was enough blood shed here to have painted some of the buildings with it. Stringy, sooty apartment blocks line street and after street. Holes from bullets, shells and grenades scar so many buildings that you stop noticing them, just expect to see them. Of course, arriving in any bus station means taking the first steps in the worst part of town.

The old Turkish Quarter is another story. It's lovely. I've arrived the day before Ramadan ends and lucky for me my host and friend, Saida, lives right in the old town. The call to prayers echoes through the narrow, cobble-stone streets. An eery song that I never get tired of. The bridge where the Arch Duke Ferdinand was assassinated, thus setting off World War I, is about 3 blocks away. For three days during Bajram Muslims celebrate by eating, visiting and drinking gallons of coffee. It's baklava time. Consumed all day. We go to a nearby graveyard where Bosnia's post-war president is buried. His grave, covered by a white cupola, is surrounded by hundreds of gleaming white, obelisk shaped tomb stones made from granite. They are the graves of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) who were killed by attacking Bosnian Serbs, led by Slobodan Milosevic. They are all the same: died 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 while the international community continued to block weapons to the Bosnians but refused to intervene. A wave of anger and shame swept over me as I watched the families kissing the cold white stone instead of their sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, lovers, sisters, daughters, mothers. They are buried on top of old graves because the city ran out of room and couldn't move outside the city where most cemetaries were before the fighting penned the people in. They buried the dead at night to avoid being bulls-eye targets for the snipers on the hillsides above them. The guard standing over President Izetbegovic's grave looked so lonely and stark and proud. I might be just projecting. Maybe he is bored, but I doubt it. Bosnians are proud of their former president and for having survived death and destruction with grace.

Below, down the winding streets, the Turkish Quarter is lined cafes, little Cevapcici shops, hole-in-the-wall stores selling the special coffee pots traditional to Bosnia. Turns out, Turkish coffee is really Bosnian coffee, so they say here anyway. The Turks drink tea, Saida pointed out. But because Bosnia was ruled by the Ottomans until the late 19th century, it became known as Turkish coffee. Here it's just called "kafa." Strong, hot and sweet. Sarajevo is also famous for its water. Outside the main mosque water spews from a spigot and people stop to take a drink or just wash their hands. It's clear as crystal. They say that if you drink the water from the fountains you will return to Sarajevo.

Slovenia to Sarajevo

Nov. 2, 2005
Somewhere in Bosnia (Bosanski Brod I think)
I thought it was bad enough to find a Burger King along the Austrian autobahn. In Slovenia, a bleak strip of land below Austria, there stood the golden arches of McDonald's. Aaah, EU membership has done wonders for little Slovenia. Here in Bosnia, about 50 miles past the Croatian border, in a little village, was a Chinese store along the road. Store might be an exaggeration: it was a house with the same cheap Chinese-made junk you find an any 99 cents store in the U.S.

Aside from Chinese stores, there are houses being built in every direction you look. Next to the new homes are the burned out hulls of their predecessors, destroyed during the 92-95 war, or left to fall apart by those who fled the fighting/genocide. I didn't want to assume anything so I asked a Bosnian girl, Jasma, who has been studying in Germany. The first town over the border belongs to the Republika Srpska. (The Dayton Accord, which ended the fighting 10 years ago, divided Bosnia into two regions. The Bosnian Serbs got the RS and the Bosnians/Bosnian Croats formed a federation.) It's a dreary, muddy town with every other house ruduced to its grey cement foundation. The RS gets less money, Jasma said, than the Bosnia-Croatia federation for reconstruction. What a dismal place. Rats rumage through garbage strewn around. If this is bad 10 years after what was it like during the war?

Brussels to Sarajevo

Nov. 1, 2005
Achen, Germany
I am sitting here on the bus underway from Brussels to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina with a busted knee and wounded pride. I left Brussels this morning (after a lovely few days with Marie-Rose in that beautiful, so civilized city) on the bus. Here in Achen we stopped for a break and to change buses. When I returned from the bathroom in the rasthaus (think Howard Johnson rest stops) the bus was gone. I had dawdled a little because this was the first time back in Germany since I fled in 1991 after four years living near Dusseldorf. And the bus was serving Nescafe instant so I thought I would get a bag of cookies and ingratiate myself.

I circled the parking lot three times as the German truckers chuckled at my frantic search. My huge backpack and carry bag full of presents and papers put me off balance so when I absentmindedly stepped up on a curb for another look in the rasthaus for a familar bus face I tripped over it instead, tearing my pants wide open, gashing one knee and bruising the other. Truckers were amused - the baaastards. I was almost in tears, thinking, "Oh my god. I am stuck in Germany!"

Finally I noticed another nook where the bus might be. Eureka! I ran up, panting "Ich suche der bus for Sarajevo!" They reassured me, the giant pink bus was in fact going to Sarajevo. All I could think of saying at the point was, "Here are some cookies for everyone." Since everyone had already finished their coffee and moved on a cigarettes they found my offer a bit strange. But the bus driver dutifully offered each rider one. Turns out, it's harder to offer communal gifts to people whose language you don't share.

So here I am in a pink powderpuff bus with 15 strangers and two drivers near Cologne. We have the finest of American media to amuse us: a video of the most violent fistfights on the Jerry Springer show. I can't believe I am driving through Germany watching a bad Jerry Springer video. (By the way, the fistfights are all staged, like professional wrestling. There are three variations on how they begin and unfold.) Funny to be back in Germany even if it is just passing through. To see German signs and hear German as the language of the land. It's appropriate that I am only passing through Germany, a place I once lived in intensely but left behind what seems like a lifetime ago.

SF to London

28 Oct. 2005
London Heathrow Airport.
Leaving was tearful as expected- at least for John and me. The day I left, I pulled him out of his studio to hold him for as long as we both could stand still. He was so worried for my safety, that I would never come back. Traveling feels hollow now, without John and the girls. I was sitting in a London SOHO cafe straight out of a tour guide book - six wrought iron tables inside, three outside - and I kept thinking how they would enjoy seeing Trafalgar Square, or how John and I would sit in Victoria Park. I was starting to relax over a cup of tea when John called and that sinking feeling whipped me back into reality: that I had left them alone at home. Again. Left them to rid myself of the craving for movement, for being in unfamiliar places, for being in the Balkans - a craving that has gripped me for a decade.

I promised them I would not travel for at least six months, hopefully longer. Leaving is too painful. Like the world is sinking. It's because of the DC arrangement. Each departure feels permanent. The trip to New Orleans was just too much. Too much leaving too soon too often. The months we were separated, the NO trip and this journey have congealed into a big slew of remorse. But I also realize that I don't want to travel as much as I thought. Wanderlust is no match for loneliness. There's not as much to escape, either. I've decided to get a job in January or take the internship at CIR if they accept me. I want to cook and clean and walk the girls to school. I just want to stay put for a while. But my career will take me away again. I am a reporter and want to report about the world. I want to live in London some day ad be able to jump in a plane to any country. Mobility. Without mobility is restlessness, a feeling that keeps me moving, looking for the new and different.