Blog of the Little Bonsai

Personal Blog of Steve Baumber

Despite the ancient Diocletian's Palace, Split was worth only a day in our hectic schedule. The next day we caught a bus out to Trogir, and found ourselves jostling with the crowds in yet another Dalmation fortified old city. It sounds a bit spoiled, but at this point we were getting a bit numb to the statues, stone facades and marble streets. Our picture fingers had atrophied and our minds drifted to other thoughts, like the fact that ice cream seems to be the national food. Luckily we were jolted out of our daze when we caught a bus out from Split to the city of Šibrenik, which proceeded to amaze and surprise us with a beautiful old town centre. The centre piece is a hulking white stone Cathedral of St. Jacob, featuring marble carvings galore. Sibrenik is also the easiest place to get to Krka National Park, a short city bus ride away. Manicured and used since the 14th Century, the falls that occur along the Krka river have provided water power to wheels that turned corn mills, wool carters and pounders, and eventually hydroelectric turbines. It's a very easy place to hike around on boardwalks, featuring souvenir shops galore. It's defintely a place where nature has been framed and contained by the human presence. We spent longer than we expected in the nearby town of Skradin due to a funny bus schedule, but playing crib on the bus bench passed the time. Regretfully leaving Sibrenik we caught a nice fast train to the capital city of Zagreb and have joined up with my cousin Tristram. Loyal blog readers may recall that Trit's shoebox-sized room was our first stop on this crazy journey, when we landed in London last October. We have been walking the tram-filled streets of the city for two days now, and it being the birth place of Nikolai Tesla we thought it fitting to visit the Technology Museum this morning. Despite the displays having only Croatian descriptions, the museum houses a neat mix of engines, ploughs, machines, gadgets, appliances, and the highlight, a recreation of a mine shaft that takes you from the old-days to a fairly modern mine in one short underground walk. Very cool, although it also felt like the set from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! One more day in Zagreb, and it's back south to Plitvice National Park to shake off the city in some real Croation wilderness. posted by Steve @ 8:10 AM	5.27.2006
Now that we're inching our way across the map closer to the Land of the Euro, things are getting a little more expensive. So, we've tightened our belts, not only to hold up our baggy shorts, but to save the eroding savings. This means muselix and plastic cups of yoghurt for breakfast, and cheese and tomato sandwiches for lunch (with a little salami if I can scrounge it from the deli in broken Cro-English). The island of Mljet was beautiful, and offered a lovely spot for our 1,200th cheese and tomato sandwich. But I'm not sick of them. Really. Please have pizza waiting at the airport when we return. Our shorts (lovingly stitched in Vietnam) are getting baggy thanks to our devotion to an exercise regime that we started in Laos, and have carried on with through four countries since then. Ev (the Kamloops Spinner) brought us two shiny new resistance bands, allowing us to take the workouts up a notch and really craft our "beach bodies". Which is just as well, as many Croatian beaches are happily "clothing optional", as we enjoyed today. As you relax on the white stony shore, the water is breathtakingly clear and blue and beckons you to dive in and cool yourself off. But lurking in the waters, just off shore, are hundreds of shiny little pincushions, which make a quick dip a little more daunting. The dreaded black sea urchin is not very toe-friendly, and so despite the blazing mediterranean weather, our dips in the Adriatic have been tempered with a healthy dose of "look before you leap"! Since leaving Mljet, we ferried over to Korcula, spent two days there hiking, biking, and tasting wine (the local speciality is called "Grk"). We ferried to Hvar this morning, and it's been a bit strange to be traveling through a country without touching the mainland! Hvar is yet another stunning example of a fortified Dalmation city. There used to be a lot of folks interested in sacking and occupying most of this area, from the Greeks to the Romans to the Venicians/Italians, and back to the Croats. The legacy of stone walls, towers and churches is amazing to walk through, and to gaze at from any viewpoint we hike to. Next stop on the tour is to take the big leap back to the mainland and the city of Split! posted by Steve @ 10:31 AM	5.20.2006
From Romania to Croatia in three days! Make that one overnight train to Belgrade, one day train to Bar (Montenegro), and one short bus ride to Dubrovnik. The train ride through Serbia was spectacular, but a bit frustrating. Every time you put your book down to properly gaze out the window, at perhaps a passing rolling green hill dotted with sheep, a deep river valley, or a steep rock-strewn mountainside, a tunnel would come along blanking out what you were looking at, until you popped out the other side in blazing sunlight to a brand new scene. It was as though someone behind us had an itchy thumb on the remote control! A word of caution; if you ever roll in late to Bar on the train, and a heavy-set female cab driver offers (in Serbian) to take you to the middle of nowhere to a lousy dive of a room and then refuses to take you back, and then grabs your mate's arm to extract 5 euros just for dropping you in the middle of nowhere, just say no thank you. The 3km hike back to town in the dark is a real pain in the ass. We eventually found a place to sleep that night, but at ten o'clock the bus station was also starting to look pretty good. Dubrovnik is a beautiful city, and a big change from the grey skies and cool weather of Bucharest. We're back in shorts and sandals, and it's nice to see the sea again. We hiked to the top of Srd Hill this morning overlooking the Old Town, and marveled at the thick and perfect fortress walls we toured around yesterday afternoon. As with our whole trip, we are dogged by the evidence of war. Atop Srd Hill is a memorial to Croatian deaths caused during the shelling of Dubrovnik and the fighting in the hills surrounding. There is an old chairlift station there as well, shattered by shell holes and bullet scars. From conflict 16 years ago in Romania, we have moved even closer to the remnants of war only 14 years past (and even less in parts of Serbia). The collapse of the former Republic of Yugoslavia uncorked a huge amount of ethnic tension in this entire region. Despite the reading we've done, and our visit to the War Photographer's museum to make sense of what went on, it is still difficult to appreciate who were the agressors or the defenders. All that seemed to be produced were sufferers. We leave Dubrovnik today, and head to the islands of the Adriatic - Mljet first, then hopefull Korcula next. Sorry no pictures, these darn internet cafes are getting more expensive and less camera friendly! posted by Steve @ 4:04 AM	5.16.2006
So much for the "vallies and side roads" of rural Romania; we were rained out! Traveling in the off-season also means that you may be caught in the off-weather. We had heard about the rains that had caused the Danube to flood in various parts earlier this Spring, but soon we were stepping a soggy foot off the train into Sinaia, a lovely, small resort town in the Carpathian mountains. A skier's destination in the winter, it is also home to the summer palace (the Peles and Pelesor) of various Romanian kings and their queens, complete with a royal hunting lodge tucked away in the trees. Our hike to the palaces was a chilly, rainy, although very green, walk. The only way to see the buildings is on a guided tour, and you're whisked quite quickly through some truly breathtaking rooms. It's a wonder that any walnut trees survive in Romania considering the amount of carved paneling, doors, statues, and furniture within the rooms. Out of 160 rooms in the Peles, you are only taken to 16, and in the Pelisor (the Queen's retreat) you also see only a fraction of what was built. As with so many fortresses and palaces that we've had a chance to see on our travels, it's almost impossible to grasp the resources required to create the beauty that surrounds you. Marble motifs, carved tables in teak wood that took 100 years to complete, frescos and paintings by masters such as Klimdt, Russian Faberge lamps, Italian crystal mirrors three metres high, and endless oak, ash, and walnut paneling. Ay yi yi! What's harder to believe is that the treasures are still owned by the descendents of the Romanian Royal line, and in three years this beautiful National treasure will be returned to them for their sole pleasure, at the exclusion of the public. I'd show you pictures, but cameras were not allowed inside. Having thoroughly doused our appetite for the damp highlands, we have continued our journey across Romania to Bucharest, the capital city. Where were you on December 21st, 1989? I suspect that I had finished final exams at Mount Royal College and was Christmas shopping. If you were a university student in Bucharest, it was most likely that you were caught up in a protest against Nicolae Ceaucescu and would have witnessed about 1,000 people being shot or run over by tanks in the streets of Bucharest. I don't even remember this happening, even though Tiananmen Square, which happened in June of that year, is certainly something I recall. Perhaps it's because, unlike in China, the people and students of Romania truly caused change that day and in the months following, taking their country from a Communist dictatorship to a struggling democracy. Today, on a cool, overcast day, standing in the same spot where many gathered in front of a balcony and gave their voices against Ceaucescu at the cost of their lives, it was hard not to feel that despite globalization, so much history continues unappreciated outside our small reality in North America. We have yet, in our seven months of travel, to visit a single country that is not rebuilding itself after decades of war and rebellion, or, as in Nepal currently, witnessing a harsh struggle for self-determination. Canada has felt sacrifice in war, but war and sacrifice has not reached into our society as deeply as we've seen in the countries we've visited. Thankfully, but I can't help to feel that Mr. Harper's balancing act between pleasing the Bush administration and expanding the activities of "Task Force Afghanistan" may burst our treasured bubble. posted by Steve @ 11:23 AM	5.11.2006
From Budapest it was a short train ride to the wine region of Eger. We managed to find the horseshoe-shaped street of wine cellars, located in the "Valley of the Beautiful Women", that offer wine tasting at ridiculous prices (a glass of wine is $0.50). If you liked the wine enough, you could fill your water bottle (or any other container you had handy) for $1.50 per litre. This explains the hazy recollection of the second half of the street, as we emptied our Nalgene water bottles, iced tea containers, etc. and happily stocked up for our next train ride! And how things change quickly! Originally we had planned to travel west and south through Hungary into Croatia, but after a heavy planning session in Budapest with Ev and Ian, it was painfully obvious that we had to go to Romania. More specifically to go through northern Romania, an area otherwise known as Transylvania. Yes indeed, we have crossed into the epic countryside of Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. This was the fellow whom Brahm Stoker made infamous (if not grossly misrepresented) as Count Dracula. Yes, he was known for impaling his captured enemies on big stakes in front of his castles, or various town squares, but he was not the living dead nor did he woo beautiful women or bite Tom Cruise (and hence Brad Pitt in a level of separation). After spending so much time in SE Asia where transport is slow and sporadic and border crossings that can become epic, it was like being in a candy store to be able to book a train ticket from Eger, in the middle of Hungary, to Sighosora, in the middle of Transylvania. Even more amazing was arriving on the afternoon after we left, on the same day, having relaxed in our train compartment eating sandwiches. And drinking wine (see first paragraph). As a starting point in vampire country, Sighosora is the birth place of our friend Vlad, but it is also an amazingly beautiful town and World Heritage Site. It has preserved most of its ancient Saxon and gothic buildings despite the modern city growing around it. Our several treks in Asia often brought us to the rural sections of various countries, into contact with people living as they have lived for hundreds of years. It's an experience we no longer have available in North America (outside of contrived open-air museums) and is rare in any western (or east-western) society. But in Romania that rural existence still thrives, with carefully tended farms, horse and wagon roads, and town markets. It's sporadic, but it still exists, and despite the neat-o factor of being in Transylvania, the real payoff is to touch the ancient past of our own culture. So, we are slowly making our way by train beyond the reaches of modern Romania, back into the vallies and side roads that time-travel us back to the closest thing to medieval Europe that exists. We are now in Brasov, and looking out at the Black Church looming over the old city as we perched in the forest at the base of Mount Tampa, it was pretty easy to disappear into the mists of time and imagine the peasant life of my distant ancestors... posted by Steve @ 11:44 AM	5.08.2006
They say that Budapest is the city of hundred towers. We think that it's the city of a thousand statues! You can't walk a section of the city without bumping into a bronze monument to someone famous, a Greek or Roman god, or some other appropriate reason to fashion a human likeness in metal and stick it up somewhere. In fact, after the Soviet occupation ended, they had so many statues left over they created a Statue Park. It was a good place to store all the Soviet/communist concrete propoganda that nobody wanted to look at anymore. Despite the scars of the CCCP persisting in the parks and the hearts of Hungarians, Budapest is a modern, laidback city. We've been walking quite a bit, splitting our time on both sides of the Danube, which flows (swiftly) north to south splitting the city. On the west side is Buda, and on the East is Pest, making two unique areas of the city to explore. Buda is more quaint, while Pest features the "downtown core" and many of the museums, memorials and squares. We spent yesterday afternoon in the National Museum, which was very well laid out to give a concise history of Hungary. As with the Mekong in SE Asia, the Danube has tied Hungary to its neighbours north and south, resulting in endless power struggles that it has been in the middle of or dragged into. As with Vietnam, it seems that a lot of blood has spilt for others on the road to the freedom and self-determination they now enjoy. After five days it didn't take long to realize that if Rome is a city devoted to St. Peter, Budapest is the city of St. Stephen! Yes indeed, this is my town, which I remind Rosemary of a little too often. Unfortunately, the statue at St. Stephen's Basilica and the statue by the Matthias Basilica on the Buda side don't look much like me, so nobody has given me any special treatment yet. I'm sure it will come. Yesterday evening Ev and Ian, our good friends from Kamloops, arrived bleary-eyed but safe and sound to the Red Bus Hostel, where we are staying. They brought us Twizzlers! We haven't seen red licorice since Canada! The four of us will be heading off tomorrow to one of the wine areas of Hungary, and sampling the local flavours. This idea of being able to get to another part of the country on a swift train instead of getting up at 6:30am to take a 9 hour bus ride will take some getting used to. Ahhhh, (Eastern) Europe... posted by Steve @ 12:00 PM	5.02.2006