Time enough for the korso

It became obvious that Rijeka is a port city as soon as we got off the train. The station was surrounded by a large series of silos, presumably storing grain from inland fields before it's loaded onto mediterranean ships. The city, surrounded on three sides by steep hills sparkling with lights, sits at the upper end of Kvarner Gulf along the eastern Adriatic Sea. The warm humid air filled our lungs thickly, a formal announcement that we had entered a new climate.

It seems that in all mediterranean countries, the evening korso, or promenade, is ritualized to the point that at least a few main pedestrian streets in the heart of any town fill with socializing strollers of all ages on any given evening. We had a few hours to kill before our ferry would be heading down the coast, 

so we joined them here for a while before grabbing a pizza and stopping for groceries for the 20-hour trip ahead of us. 

The Ljubljana-Rijeka Line

It was a short two and a half hours by train through Slovenia down to the Croatian port city of Rijeka. The two cars pulled by the engine were barely full and it seemed like most of the passengers were people who'd spent the day in Ljubljana and were going home to small villages in the countryside. 

The scenery lives up to what I'd read about Slovenia being one of the most forested countries in Europe. The leaves were well on their way to their fall peak as large areas of bright yellow mixed in with dark hills covered in pines. Tidy terra cotta-roofed villages took on an alpine look as we wound our way through the hilly Karst region, crossing into Croatia at dusk and descending to the Adriatic coast in the dark.

   

Hybrid Slovenia

  
 

The morning we woke up in Ljubljana was chilly and drizzly. Once we realized we hadn't yet withdrawn any Euros to check out of our hostel we set out along the Ljubljanica River through the center of the small city to find a bank. The dragons of Zmajski Most (Dragon Bridge) looked a little less threatening in the cool grey light of the morning. 

  

The architecture throughout the Old Town appeared to me as a graceful mixture of Baroque and Art Nouveau (which here I will assume reflects the Austrian influence brought by centuries of Habsburg rule) along with the Mediterranean red terra cotta roofs and high frequency of Pietas (which I think I can assume reflect Slovenia's position next to Italy at the southern edge of Europe). The stretch of town on our way out to the train station was sprinkled with taller modern glass and concrete buildings, and from the vantage point of the Ljubljana Castle, situated on a high bluff in the center of the city, we could see the  concrete apartment blocks typical of formerly communist countries repeating themselves out in the suburbs.

  

A large number of nuns on the streets was immediately noticeable (I had already counted eight by the time we reached an ATM). A second obvious element of city life here is the number of bicycles flying in all directions. I do see a lot more of those on the streets and sidewalks of Budapest compared with New York, but their ubiquity here jumped out at me (and almost over me a few alarming times).

  

The large market at Vodnikov Trg was filled with everything from bananas and beeswax candles to enormous amounts of flowers. The side streets of the Old Town are filled with expensive, stylish boutiques and outdoor cafes with hip waiters balancing trays of cappuccinos. The grey wet weather, however, seemed to maintain a strict mitteleuropean catholic rule over the city that lasted all day.

   

    

Ljubljana, 2:12 AM

The few train passengers who disembark with us in Ljubljana quickly disappear into the night. We walk past the few taxis waiting at the station and find ourselves in a seemingly deserted, quiet city. In planning our trip and seeing the 2AM arrival time, we'd been tempted to camp out behind a monument somewhere for the four hours until dawn, but we erred on the side of caution and reserved a room in a hostel. It was surely a relief now that we were here since it was 1-degree Celsius/34-degrees Fahrenheit outside! 

After ten minutes walking the dim streets to the Ljubljanica River, we were greeted by the dragons of the Zmajski Bridge. The Ljubljana Castle glowed purple in the distance, floating over the city in the darkness.

Train to Ljubljana

The scene on the Venezia line: blankets, socks, water bottles, jackets, a guidebook sitting on an empty seat, sandwiches wrapped in paper, bottle of beer, limp duffel bag, crammed suitcases, woman gets up and walks into the next car, returns to grab a small bag and leaves again, train eases into a nameless station with one dim lamp glowing, then accelerates on into the night. Train stops for a while, engine shuts down, border guards work their way down the aisle, pistol strapped to belt, checking passports, asking questions, stamping passports and moving on while another is checking behind each of the ceiling panels, moving his stepladder a few feet at a time until he's done with our car and on to the next. Eventually, the train moves on into Croatia. In Zagreb: many people grabbing handfuls of duffels and dispersing out into the orange glow of the station dock. Those of us left on board spread out into the empty seats... lights go out, scarves and jackets pulled over faces, train moves on into the night. Another stop, a new set of border guards in a new shade of blue uniform, new set of questions, another stamp. The train eases forward another three hours to Ljubljana...

West Balkan loop

Tomorrow we leave for about a week through parts of the former Yugoslavia. We'll sort of be playing it by ear as we go, so the agenda might change as we miss a key connection or so (this time of year the ferries in the Adriatic Sea run a couple of times a week as opposed to one or more per day in the high season). 

The loose plan as it stands before departure is: we've got our train tickets for Ljubljana, Slovenia tomorrow. We'll spend Monday there before getting down to Rijeka, in Croatia to catch the ferry down the coast to Dubrovnik. After that we'll make our way back up through Bosnia and Herzegovina via Mostar and Sarajevo before returning to Budapest. How long any of those legs last will depend on what we encounter, but the long distance ferry is only twice a week so if we miss that we'll likely just take buses down the coast or something. From what I've read about the area, I don't expect it'll be too disappointing to find ourselves stuck or going off plan because the whole region looks completely fascinating. The trick for me will be keeping a willingness to give something up for the sake of not moving too fast to get too much in. Long hours reading on the train should dial things down a notch.

Save it while you can

The sun is setting at rush hour in Budapest now. This weekend it'll be rushed ahead some more when daylight savings time ends. 

The length of the day is slightly exaggerated for me since Budapest is about 5 and a half degrees latitude further north of where I've come from. Days were longer in the summer here, so I suppose I should get ready for the longer nights to come.

Another old bomb, another evacuation

On my second day in Budapest last July I learned that a district downtown here was evacuated the previous day because of a WWII bomb. The live 500-kilogram bomb was discovered during an excavation. The next day I read about another one having been discovered elsewhere in Hungary. Since then other stories about other bombs found during construction have continued to pop up. From my count there have been five more stories since July, including the one in yesterday's news, about an area around the Margaret Bridge being evacuated while a bomb was lifted from the Danube. Often story includes some version of an account from a neighbor having lived above a buried bomb for years without realizing it.

It makes me curious about how common this sort of thing is elsewhere in Europe...

Old school Hungarian geography

We went to the Agricultural Museum in the Varosliget here in Budapest on Sunday. The building housing the museum isn't that old by local standards. It was finished in its current form in 1908 for the Millenary anniversary of Hungary to showcase the various indigenous architectural styles. 

100 years is still plenty old enough to build up whatever blend of wonderfully smelly particles that go into "old museum" musk. The exhibits have the density that comes from years of squeezing in new 

displays in among the older ones. Many of the cards listing information about the exhibits have long ago yellowed, and some are written with a heavy dull pencil tip. All of these textures add up to a rich, dense sensory reminder of the old Catholic school I attended until 5th grade. 

While I was swept up in the atmosphere, a lot of insight is still offered about the role its landscape has played in Hungary's evolving hunting, fishing, forestry, conservation, crop and livestock traditions. I've always enjoyed the dioramas in these types of museums, and the ones here interestingly blend the building's gothic architecture into the scenes of Hungary's plains, marshes, and prehistoric cave life. (By the way, either the cave dwellers of prehistoric Hungary had particularly big boobs, or the clay models of them here were just a lot of fun to make.) 

As a kid I used to love those old maps in which colorful images of mines and cows and fish were superimposed over the regions that chiefly produced those products. This was like finally getting to walk around inside of one of those.

   

Vienna Prater

  

Our last stop in Vienna Sunday was a few U-Bahn stops out to the Prater Park, where there is an amusement park called the Wurstelprater. Our purpose was to see the Wiener Riesenrad, the giant ferris wheel built in 1897 and featured 50+ years later in the movie The Third Man. 

We were immediately taken by the rest of the place, however, with all of the roller-coaster screams, dinging bells, flashing pointing arrows, balloon sellers and other chaos. Best by far was the carousel. I've never understood how some people get to be carousel fanatics, but the one here with its misbehaving horses had us rolling! While the horses were supposed to go around when the music played, one kept taking shortcuts across the middle while others were distracted by us onlookers.