Filed under: Croatia | Tags: budapest, Croatia, irish, letters, loneliness, miles from home, new years, osijek, teaching english, tenja, war, winter, women travelers
S,
I haven’t written for so long because every day that I travel, there is something different that happens and I don’t know where to begin. I loved your last letter about being in Japan, it was surreal like a Bunuel film — what it feels like when you are thousands of miles from home.
domesticity in Osijek
It’s really lonely here in Osijek. I knew I would be isolated, but not in the ways that I imagined. It’s difficult to make friends because people here keep to themselves since the war; they are suspicious of outsiders. Everything here is talked about in terms of before, during and after the war, and if you are lucky, you may be one of the privileged few to hear about people’s experiences. You’ll be exchanging the usual personal stats, name, where are you from, and then the war comes up and they start to talk: The teacher at the Jagoda school, whose retarded son developed deeper behavioral problems after spending 3 weeks in a crowded basement during the shelling and bombing of the city; the teenager I met whose father was shot by the Croatian army for going AWOL in Slovenia, whose mother leaves for months at a time to Germany or Switzerland and comes back with loads of cash; the woman I met whose village was occupied by Serbs and she and her family couldn’t leave for a year.
view from Jagoda school.
I spent an emotionally draining week before New Year’s helping a local church group put on a puppet show in Roma villages. In one village, I saw an old woman with her face as wrinkled as a walnut, smoking a pipe and pumping water from a well. Children ran around in hole-filled bedroom slippers. The villages have houses that are low to the ground, like little wooden sheds, trash piled high at the ends of roads. Slavonia sky at dusk is not polluted with light sources from strip malls, so it was the first time I’ve ever seen its true color – a dark, deep blue, clouds rolling over our heads so close that it felt as if I could hold my arms over my head and touch them.
another view from Jagoda school
On New Year’s Eve, I went to my friend Andrija’s for a Croatian celebration. The party was in the house that he lived in before it was bombed during the war. The place is now being renovated for his brother and future wife, but the rooms are still under construction. I drank Blackie, a currant-flavored vodka, and got dance lessons from Andrija’s ballroom dancing teacher. He was amazing! He is the only person I’ve ever met who could talk you through the steps, then talk to you about your life and before you knew it, you were dancing. He was my midnight New Year’s kiss. Later I fell asleep in a cinderblock room with a dirt floor with only a space heater to warm it, Andrija’s old room as a boy. Most of the other guests had passed out in this room as well, trying to keep warm under thin cotten sheets I remember lying awake, my brain racing from too much Blackie, staring at the imprint on the ceiling of where a poster had once been, the German dance teacher quietly snoring somewhere in the room.
New Year's in Tenja
Three days later Colin flew from Dublin to visit me. I met him in Budapest, then we took the train together back to Osijek. I didn’t get a chance to buy the international ticket in advance, so I had to take the 3 am train to Beli Manistir, buy a ticket to Pecs, then jump off the train in Pecs and buy a ticket to Budapest. Life in Osijek in a nutshell. The conveniences I know as an American are chucked by the wayside. I was so tired, I could barely see when the train pulled into Deli station. But whenI reached budapest, I felt as if I were home again. The sun was just rising, the Christmas snow floating in chunks on the Danube. Around Thanksgiving, I had fallen hopelessly in love with the city, and I couldn’t wait to share it with Colin, but he wanted to see Croatia.
view from my skylight window
Croatians don’t consider Osijek “Croatia.” They want it to be Dubrovnik and Zagreb. They want to forget the wide, flat land that’s littered with landmines. I didn’t tell Colin any of this. I had become fiercely proud of my new home. I wanted him to see for himself. We had a roller-coaster week. We spent one night just laughing and making up cartoon characters in a rented room near Keleti Station. Later, back in Osijek, he became distant. I felt so close to him, that I wanted him to be near me. I wanted somebody near me, and he was there, a freckled Irishman who was the closest thing I could have to home. I told him that no matter what his feelings were for me, just to let me care about him that week. The last thing we did before he left was watch television. I walked him to the courtyard door (the one that opens with a skeleton key) to catch his 3 am train back to Budapest. I know I won’t see him again.
Trdva (the fortress)
The Jagoda school where I teach is much better than the weekends in Tenja. The children in Tenja barely know Croatian so teaching English is a challenge. I don’t get to teach as much as I’d like, but I like helping with the classes.
Osijek has wide streets that make you feel as if you’re in a western film. People wander around during the day because they have no jobs. The other day, I was walking down one of the main roads listening to the click of heels on the pavement, a road where the only transport is the tram. It felt as if I were on a movie set. The buildings here are riddled in bullet holes, the streets jigsawed and caked in mud. I always try to find beauty in the abandoned, but I am learning that here, it’s not romantic. War is ugly and painful and leaves people broken. There is a certain life to all of this though. The outside world wants to hear the survivor stories, not the sadness. Here are the real stories: Segregated schools that still exist in this region, that there are no jobs, that people are still suspicious of their neighbors. I still don’t know what to do with all that I’ve seen and done.
I realize that I need to go home. I’m American, even if I don’t like to think of myself as ‘typically American.’ But being here makes me face my Americanness every day. I feel as if I left in such a hurry. Where was I going? I want to work on being closer with my family. I want to love someone without all my usual fear. I miss saying whatever Iwant to say in my mother tongue. It is tiring to speak in halted sentences, only saying half of what I am thinking and feeling.
I love and miss you and think about you while I’m here. I tell people how you just left New York at the last minute, because you always wanted to go to Japan. Everyone says you are so brave.
Filed under: Serbia and Montenegro | Tags: belgrade, buses, communism, eastern europe, frustration, journal, lost, trains, Travel, white city, winter
Beograd, the "white city"
7:30 am: The view from my Hotel Astoria room faces another gray concrete structure. The window curtains are orange and dim lamps cast a faint glow. The sun is rising, but it’s still freezing outside. The bus leaves at 10 and I refuse to miss it.
Last night in the bus station, Ari and I hopped from station agent to agent, asking when the next bus left for Osijek. “Last one,” we were told over and over. We wandered all around the bus station, through the train station, which was surreally quiet. A few military men paced in front of a bench, waiting for the next train. The further east I travel, I begin to see signs for cities in Ukraine, in Turkey, and Belarus. The famed Orient Express stopped here. I imagined Rebecca West writing passages of Black Lamb, Grey Falcon on loose sheets of brown paper. Not much has changed since then.
Or maybe it has. What we figured out later was that “last one” wasn’t “last bus,” but “next one over,” meaning the next station over. There is an entirely separate station for Croatian buses. This is when language barrier isn’t just a cute little travel tale to tell the folks at home. The importance and beauty of the preposition!
I am dirty and desperately in need of a toothbrush and a comb. The direness of my financial situation finally kicked in this morning too so I must get to an Internet cafe and track down some money. Two more months of European splendor! If I make it that long. It’s almost 8 am and I’m catching that damn bus back to god-forsaken Hrvatska.
8:43 am: Notes from god-forsaken Serbia
The Internet connection (or lack of) is painfully slow. I spent 45 minutes trying to connect, then gave up. I don’t even have access to email, my lifeline. I stormed back to my room to find 2 women dressed in french maid unifroms standing outside my door. One woman had a broom in her hand and the other a bottle of window cleaner. They pressed their ears to the door, probably checking if I was there. I marched between them, breaking up their little conspiratorial party. They burst into laughter. When I looked through the peephole in the door to see if they were angry, they had already gone.
I know I should make the best of this and not have such a crap attitude, but I am so ready to just go.
10:00 am: I made the bus. I should have asked Ari for 20 dinar for the seat reservation (roughly .32USD – it’s customary for a seat charge on Eastern European buses), but the lady who guarded the turnstile knew I couldn’t understand Serbian and let it slide. See, everyone is so nice here — I just wish the circumstances were different for me to enjoy it all. Am I not cut out for die-hard travel? How brave am I, living on the promises of friends for cash, blowing off my bills back home and doing volunteer work when I could use my own donation? I am so disappointed at how American I am acting right now.
11:00 am: I am still on this bus. The irony that yesterday the bus left on time and today I am on time and the bus is late is not lost on me. I am laughing to myself thinking of the Hotel Astoria’s idea of an “Internet cafe” — an unheated office room with an empty desk, a spinning rack of travel brochures and a pleather couch loaded with boxes. God I love Eastern Europe! I do, actually. I already miss Belgrade just thinking of my return to Osijek.
one last look before I go
(2.5.05)
Filed under: Serbia and Montenegro | Tags: belgrade, buses, danube, february, hotel astoria, journal, lost, off-season, serbia, snow, winter
On the bus to Belgrade. Stopped now in Vukovar. What a frustrating morning.
My roommate Ari and I got up early again to go to Pecs. We ended up on the wrong train going to Bizovac instead of Beli Manastir. So we jumped off the train somewhere close to Osijek city limits, took the bus to the station and decided why not go to Belgrade? When I went to get cash, the ATM said I had insufficient funds, so fucking A — I have $49.90 in my account, $262.00 which is unaccounted for. All I can say is, it had better be traced — what the hell happened to that money? The only thing I can think is that Dan mailed all my bills back home. Which sucks because that means I have no money to live here until my tax refund. Ari was cool enough to pay for this Belgrade trip. I’ll have to write home soon. I’m worried about the money, but part of me also feels like well, what can I do? Maybe I’m in deep denial, but years of growing up a poor kid has shown me things just work themselves out. In any case, I’m on my way to Belgrade, a completely unexpected trip.
12:00 pm: Crossed the border into Serbia. Surreal images of travel:
A black dog walking across the flat, snow-covered fields of an unknown village in Serbia.
Two girls getting off the Beli-Manastir-Osijek bus and walking down a road, disappearing into dark-blue nothing.
Six women dressed like hearts for Valentine’s Day walking single-file down Zupinjiska.
Even with all the ups and downs (and sidetracking) of this whole Osijek experience, I would pack up my life and disappear all over again. But with more money. And much more time.
8:00 pm: In a Belgrade hotel room, the Hotel Astoria.
Because Ari pissed around looking for postcards (“Oh, we don’t have to hurry, we have time!”), we missed the Osijek bus by 10 minutes. Already freezing and pissed because we had been walking around in the bitter cold for, like, 3 hours looking for said-postcards, I was thinking, I can’t believe this — two missed transports in one day. It’s like Osijek is this black hole that sucks you in and if by some act of God you do get out, it makes it near impossible for you to return.
Hotel Astoria is nice enough. Nice 1970s decor chic – red velour chairs in the lobby, wood paneling, shag carpet, an unhappy desk clerk pulled right from a modernist film. The room is no frills with starchy white sheets and a pilled brown blanket to keep warm. The wallpaper is nicked and peeling but hell – it’s clean, I have my own bathroom. For Ari’s $34.00 USD I can’t go wrong.
And I’m in Belgrade! The city has so much energy. There were times I felt as if I were in New York – the loud honking of traffic, beautiful smog sky at dusk. With Ari’s knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet and my scant Croatian vocabulary, we could decipher street signs and get around fairly well. People here are much friendlier than in Croatian cities, more helpful and willing to talk. The histories between the two countries are so complicated, relations so tense (it was difficult, for example, to exchange kuna for dinar here) — I couldn’t even begin to understand it as an outsider.
The architecture here is a majestic mix of communist-Hapsburg in all its grime-covered glory. There’s a park at the edge of the city overlooking the Danube, a bridge in the distance. The tableau reminded me of Pittsburgh. Even the winters are as cold as the ones at home. I would love to be here in summer when it’s full of life.
Hotel Astoria lobby
(2.4.05)
Filed under: Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Slovenia | Tags: borders, Croatia, film, first americans, flisar guesthouse, gypsies, Ireland, lake balaton, photographers, skoda, Slovenia, storks, Travel, vukovar
There were moments in my travels where the camera failed me, or I failed the camera. I wasn’t fast enough to load film or grab the camera from my bag, or I was flat-out too shy to risk that moment. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I chose to be a passive observer, knowing that the images – the ‘proof’ – could be lost. I retreated to memory, or the quiet of my journal to record those snapshots.
Slovenia, near the Hungarian border, a stork in her nest. You could see the outline of her against the setting sun, her long beak tucked into her chest. I couldn’t get over the size of her, balanced on top of two crossed telephone poles. I couldn’t believe at that moment that I was there.
Eastern Slovenia, on the balcony off a room at Flisar guesthouse. The moon was orange and hung so low in the sky that it looked as if it would drop into the field.
Croatia, getting off the bus at the wrong stop and walking two miles back to a gypsy village to teach English to elementary kids. I was pissed off and cold. I looked off to the left of me and there were fields, flat as the American Midwest littered with signs that had skulls and crossbones painted on them. They marked landmines. It was the first moment I really felt that there had been a war there only 10 years before and I was walking in the aftermath of it. I passed stucco-looking homes with red tiled roofs, laundry stiffening on lines. I never understood this – why put your wet laundry out in the cold? I missed my American dryer, which softened all of my jeans. I passed a gypsy family hovering over the hood of a red Skoda, screaming at each other. They were trying to make the car run, but the battery had died. There were chickens walking across the road. The bus never came.
Vukovar, the most painful and confusing part of my trip. When you first enter Vukovar, you are greeted by an abandoned tank, as if someone had jumped out of it and would return right away, but got sidetracked. Which is probably the case. Or they ran out of gas or died along the way to help, which is more likely what happened. Vukovar was the most heavily hit city in Croatia, and it shows. The buildings look as if they were cut in half. There is only part of a train station, and the trains don’t run there anymore. Maybe things have changed even in the two years since I’ve been there, but I look it up on the Web, and I don’t read about a change. Vukovar is along the Danube River, and suprisingly, a stop on the myriad of Danube River tours that are advertised all over the EU. And right at the stop where tourists are released from their cruise, there was the brand new Hotel Lav. My friend Ari and I were the first Americans to enter the hotel, so we got the grand tour. It had just opened a few days earlier from the day we arrived, and the woman at the front desk was very proud of it. There were no guests since it was January, an off-season for Croatia, and even more so in a part of the world that nobody wants to remember, or that nobody knows. We were lead by the desk clerk through mirrored hallways dimly lit, but very modern. One Ikea-esque room, furnished in blond wood and metal, looked out over a bombed-out warehouse roof along the Danube. “This is our presidential suite,” the woman said.
Lake Balaton, Hungary, a snake shooting through the water. A mother tossed her naked little girl into the lake, coaching her to doggie paddle. A man walked out to the middle and the water still went up to his waist. A 70s era discoteque building on the boardwalk stood faded and silent in the sun. I wondered what it was like to be here during communism, when the country was shut out from the world.
Ireland, a back road, somewhere in Dingle. I don’t remember any place names in Ireland, just the roads and the pitch blackness when it finally grew dark at 10pm. I loved that it grew dark so late, how you could see stars, or hear voices somewhere out there, but unlike America, it felt safe, like you could be out there for a long time and nobody could find you. And the smell was damp and clean and nothing like home.
Filed under: Pennsylvania, United States | Tags: aliens, february, fields, kecksburg, martians, Pennsylvania, rural, ufo sightings, westmoreland
replica of ufo that landed in Kecksburg on December 9, 1965
Ever since Jeff and I caught the Kecksburg episode of “Unsolved Mysteries,” we knew we had to check this out for ourselves. Kecksburg is only 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh, but pretty much anywhere outside the city limits feels like another world. We set out one very frigid February afternoon, along with our friend Bill, to see what the fuss was all about.
Kecksburg view from the car window
The last day of February was bitingly cold and damp and to make matters more frustrating, there were so many detours through PA66 that we passed Kecksburg a few times before finding it. It’s easy to miss — there isn’t a main street, just a house, an aluminum-sided shed-like building, a giant parking lot and a tiny sign pointing down a dirt road that directs visitors to a replica of the UFO that landed in this tiny patch of Pennsylvania land 44 years ago.
the road where we had to turn around and go back
On that cold winter night, Kecksburgers reported a burst of red light trailing through the sky, then landing in a field much like the ones we passed on our way into town. What they found was a UFO that was carted away by the government. The replica is a tribute to that UFO sighting.
aliencorn
At first, Jeff, Bill and I were a little disappointed about the acorn-like structure, then full of questions about its existence. Where were the windows? What did the heiroglyphs on the side mean? Was this monument to scale? Where were the aliens? Westmoreland County, where Kecksburg lies, has some of the most active UFO sightings in the country according to a recent article in Popular Science. The boys quickly got over their initial sadness so they could document our visit to Kecksburg.
Bill, frequent traveling partner, stands proudly beneath the majestic aliencorn
I think a person could fit inside that thing.
There were lots of cars parked in front of the windowless aluminum-sided building. This serves as the town’s Volunteer Fire Department/Bar/UFO store. We tried desperately to find a way into the store, but it was pretty dark inside. We weren’t feeling brave enough to interact with the locals in the BAR either.
We didn’t hear any noise coming from the Bar, nor did we see any citizens of Kecksburg. Granted, it was freaking cold as hell, and the town is a post office town, but it gave me an eerie feeling as it grew dark. My boots were caked in a strange, skin-colored mud, which I spent most of the ride to Pittsburgh trying to scrape off. Had the land been affected by alien radiation from the giant acorn? I carried that land with me as I treaded into our city home.
Westmoreland County in winter
Filed under: Armchair Travel, Pennsylvania, United States | Tags: apartment, home, house, newlyweds, pittsburgh, sundays
my first apartment (green house on left), 1974
I’m listening to the Howard Hanna Realty show, as I usually do on Sunday mornings. I’ve liked to do this since I was a kid living in a string of apartments; the idea of living in a house is alien to me, much like living in a foreign country. There is something voyeuristic about catching a glimpse of the home owners’ lives on TV, like unraveling a mystery through their whirlpool-style tubs, their kitchen islands and hardwood floors. A lot of the homes haven’t been updated since the early 90s, leftover shades of pastels carrying over from the 80s, reminding me that if it were mine, I’d have a lot of work to do.
The houses are way beyond what Jeff and I could afford, even in this economy, and now that we’re married, everyone asks us when we are going to get a house, as if marriage isn’t enough of a giant life-changing event. We’re still recovering from all the financial and emotional stresses of the wedding.
Jeff really wants a place to call our own, but I’m hesitant. The idea of owning a house is so overwhelming to me because of all the responsibility that goes with it. I’d rather travel and have a home base, albeit a rented temporary space. It is the contradiction that is Lisa: I want to carry my home with me on the road.
behind our apartment which was once a shoe store
our backyard
Filed under: Croatia, Slovenia | Tags: alps, Croatia, esl, food, osijek, Slovenia, soca, tenja, trains
Leaving Osijek feels more unreal to me than when I left the States back in the Fall. I spent this last week teaching and hanging out with Andrija and Ivana, and Rebecca, the girl from Belfast. Rebecca helped me teach by reading to the class. Her accent is so sing-song and beautiful. I asked her to keep reading because it gave me comfort, and because the students weren’t accustomed to Irish-English. These last lessons were held in Tenja. Goran, the local teacher, told me I had a gift for teaching, that I was a natural at it. I realized how much I love my language, trying to break it down for others to understand.
Andrija had Rebecca and I to his house for dinner yesterday. Plates piled high with cabbage slaw, roasted chicken, lamb cuts, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, and krempita for dessert. Andrija showed us his insect collection from his studies at the agricultural college. He told me that he loves talking with me, we never run out of things to say. And I thought this is how it was with C, and why I thought I was falling in love with him. Someday I will get it right.
What do I do now? About my family, finding more money, getting my shit together when it comes to relationships. I still don’t know what I want to do when I return to the States in April. I think it feels strange leaving Osijek because until today, I had a plan about where I was going. Now the months are wide open. Complete freedom. The Croatian fields outside the train window are still covered in snow. Blank sheets of white paper. I’m going to miss the border patrol at Magyarboly, who always remembered me because of my Magyar surname, who waved to Rebecca and me as they checked our passports and the train pulled over the border into Beli Manastir. I’m going to miss Goran and his impeccable English. Ketchup flips, Riki bars, and even the cold walks to the Centre za mir, waiting at Gundilica for the traffic cop to wave pedestrians through blinking street lights. I’m going to miss Ivana, her seven brothers, and especially Andrija, who left me with a copy of his favorite childhood book on the train. When I opened it, dinar from the war fluttered into my lap, now worth nothing but to mark the place in my reading.
We just crossed the border into Slovenia, en route to the capital. My heart swelled at the sight of the Alps, houses built into the mountainside. Clouds hugging the peaks. The Soca River is running quick, snow melting from the mountains and into the river bed. There is hardly any snow in the valley, but the land is dry like hay. I imagine myself on the side of one of these roads that I’m watching from the train window, standing at the base of the mountain, staring up at its enormity, feeling small and alive in the face of it. I’m one step closer to home.
Filed under: Hungary | Tags: budapest, danube, dreams, eastern europe, homesick, Hungary, memoir, november, off-season, running away, Travel, women travelers
detail of catarina's courtyard
I was so sick the first few days in Budapest that I spent most of them in the room, bundled in a quilt, watching Euro MTV because I couldn’t understand Hungarian. I watched Dancer in the Dark, thankful that I never saw it in English because what I could follow just didn’t make any damn sense in any language. When the antibiotics kicked in and I could talk again, I braved the snow and the language barrier enough to walk the streets. I learned to read maps. Each morning, I highlighted places I really wanted to see, then figured out how the hell to get there. I think of Budapest in flashes – the sun on the Danube, my vision blinded by snow. Standing outside my room, listening to all the apartments grouped in the courtyard around me – the clatter of forks; a cough fit, or a child crying; the click of clothing in the laundry room next to my door. Being accosted by a Dutch Hare Krishna who told every foreign woman that she was beautiful. Walking through the Jewish quarter, trying to imagine the ghetto during World War II. Most of the buildings were pockmarked and scarred, bright yellows and blues against skies that darkened much earlier than home. I ate Chinese food from a place near my little nest, a Magyar version of chow mein smothered over roasted potatoes sprinkled with paprika. I relished those moments alone.
Buda overlooking the danube
In a few weeks time, I had conquered my fears of being completely in a different place, and started to see how people could live in one place forever, allowing the language to fill them – in street signs and television and the tram clatter or at a train stop. Most of my English was spent writing to people at home, long handwritten letters that I knew would go unanswered because people didn’t write letters anymore. I didn’t care. I knew that the letters were love letters from my temporary home – they were meant more for me than anyone else.
I met so many people in the last few weeks I was there, people I still have contact with after all these years. It’s strange, to think of knowing someone for only a few days, yet feeling close to them in ways you may have known someone much longer. Maybe the brevity of time makes intimacy all that more immediate.
view from a room near Nyugati Station
I was flipping through a National Geographic article recently about train travel. There was a photo of a morning in a train station right out of an old film. It was Keleti station, and I became excited, because I had suspected it was Keleti station and I had been there. I knew what it looked like in early morning. I had traveled in and out of that station many times, watching the schedule roll numbers on a giant destination board hanging from the ceiling. I remember watching for the times, sitting on top of my giant suitcase, thinking that it felt weird to be on the road because it didn’t feel strange. It felt like that was what I was meant to be doing in my life.
Home felt strange to me and unreal. Now I’m home and Budapest feels as if it didn’t happen. It’s taking a lot for me now to crawl back in memory and write this, trying to recall what the air smelled like on those cold Danube mornings, as I wondered why I ever left home. I have joined the ranks of routine again, and I’m lost because I want to gain back that peace I felt when I was on the road. I miss Budapest because it was the gateway to the rest of my stay in Eastern Europe for the next six months. I learned the gifts of patience, solitude and the importance of accepting who I am.
